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USA  Events' Link  Archive – Analysis

 2019  (12/31/2019)  Go to:  List top | Next section (12/30/2018) | List bottom 
      Climate change in Monsey  (INN 12/31/2019)
      Trump perseveres in 2019 — stands tall despite relentless attacks from Democrats and media  (Fox 12/31/2019)
• 
Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House for the second time; there was a government shutdown; special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation came to an end; the Democrat presidential primary campaigns began; the American economy enjoyed historic prolonged vibrancy; anti-Trump Republicans like John Kasich and Jeb Bush started and ended their search for a primary challenger to run against the president, and President Trump was fraudulently impeached by unhinged partisans in the House of Representatives.
• 
But through it all, President Donald Trump — the ultimate political outsider — continues to plow forward, never relenting in his focus of putting America First.
• 
In the face of unprecedented attacks from the left — including a mainstream media that in 2019 was fully exposed as a vicious partner of Democrat political operatives — Trump perseveres.
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Facing an onslaught of fake news that would have brought other leaders to their knees, Trump stands tall heading into the fourth year of his presidency.
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The year began with a government shutdown caused by congressional Democrats refusing to acknowledge the crisis at our Southern border.
• 
Undeterred, Trump demonstrated true presidential leadership by ordering billions in appropriated military funds to be used to construct the much-needed border wall.
• 
Even in the face of unprecedented liberal obstruction, more than 500 miles of a border wall is under construction thanks to the president.
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At his State of the Union address, President Trump declared that "America will never be a socialist country." That certainly hasn't stopped the Democrats from lurching further to the left.
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Throughout the past year, Democrats proved that they lied to the American people to get into power in 2018.
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Despite the promises, there was never any intention of working with Trump in a bipartisan manner on important policies for the American people.
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The real Democrat agenda started and ended with impeaching the duly elected president of the United States by any means necessary.
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Since Trump's election three years ago, 7.2 million jobs have been created — with nearly 2 million new jobs in 2019 alone.
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Additionally, wages have increased by 3.1 percent over the past year.
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On top of all that, the president has made it an ongoing priority to slash overly burdensome government regulations that stifle economic growth.
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In September, with Mueller's findings in the rearview mirror and Chairman Jerry Nadler's hearings on the report a complete failure — thanks in large part to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — the American people were ready for impeachment-crazed Democrats in Congress to turn the corner and work with the president on issues important to them.
• 
But Speaker Pelosi would have none of it.  Instead, she and her caucus of left-wing socialists made the ill-fated decision to turn a routine phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine into another partisan impeachment witch hunt.
• 
The sham inquiry that transpired over the next three months will do lasting damage to our republic because impeachment is now seen as just another political campaign weapon.
• 
Pelosi's continued refusal to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate confirms what's been known all along — this entire effort by the left is an orchestrated stunt designed to hurt Trump's reelection chances.
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Let it not be forgotten that in the midst of the Democrat impeachment circus and accompanying media frenzy, Trump never took his eye off the ball for the American people.
• 
In October, the president ordered the elimination of the world's most wanted terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, putting an exclamation point on his promise to destroy ISIS.
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When it's all said and done, his most lasting accomplishment may very well be his all-important effort to fill the federal bench with strict constitutionalists.
• 
While most of the optimism on the center-right is driven by Trump's historic record of accomplishment, it's also a product of the pathetic field of highly mediocre Democrats vying for their party's nomination for president.
• 
See related We Got Him! (Antonio Branco, 12/09/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      ISIS is murdering Christians in Nigeria - but it wants you next  (INN 12/30/2019)
      Too Stupid to Survive  (JWR 12/30/2019)
      Rep.  Mark Green: Want to save America?  Embracing this gift from the Founders is the only way  (Fox 12/29/2019)
• 
I'm more convinced than ever that the only thing that will save America is what started America: Federalism.?
• 
Imagine that governing is like two concentric circles representing the major tenets and beliefs of the two political parties in America.
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There used to be considerable overlap between the two circles, allowing Congress to govern in the overlap.?
• 
But with each year that passes, these circles grow further and further apart as the philosophies between the parties become more divided, and the ability to reach consensus and solve the problems facing our country becomes more difficult.
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Today, the differences are so stark that there is almost no overlap between the two circles.
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As a result of this ever-growing polarization, here's how we are governing:
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Might makes right.  The majority wins, and the majority makes the rules.
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This is the extreme our Founders tried to prevent — the consolidation of power, the centralization of decision-making into the hands of an elite few, in a word, tyranny.
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Real freedom disperses power.
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That's the ideal our country was built on — a federal system that shares political power and the responsibilities of governing among local governments, state governments and the national government.
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Sovereignty is reserved to the states, and federal power is exercised as one of the enumerated powers specified in the Constitution
• 
Our Founders understood that freedom is best preserved in a local context.
• 
However, today freedom — and the system of federalism that ensures it — is under massive attack as power continues to accumulate in the hands of an elite ruling class.
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By reserving power to the people, federalism releases citizens, local communities and state governments to innovate, create and specifically serve the wishes of the individuals in a given state or local jurisdiction.
• 
History is clear — concentrating power into fewer and fewer hands leads to tyranny.
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And today, dispersed power and a renewed federalism are again needed to offset the dangers of a centralized state and prevent the wishes of one state from being forced onto another against their wishes.
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... we can restore the balance of power and renew the spirit of federalism that helped form America — protecting the sovereignty and power of the states and empowering local communities to conduct their own affairs.
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The consequences of allowing tyranny are too great to consider. 
• 
Let's return to federalism, a fundamental concept of our nation's founding, before it's too late.
      Dan Gainor: 2019 was American journalism’s worst year ever – Here are 7 reasons why  (Fox 12/29/2019)
• 
American journalism experienced its worst year ever in 2019, marked by bias, hatred and incompetence in the left-wing media.
• 
From coverage of the phony Russia collusion narrative, to the hit job on Covington Catholic High School students, to the media-led impeachment fiasco, the year was one of unparalleled bias.
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Unfortunately, we can expect journalism to get even worse in 2020, as the anti-Trump media do whatever they can to keep the president from being reelected.
• 
As we end 2019, we can look back at these seven worst media failures:
• 
Impeachment
• 
President Trump's impeachment wouldn't have happened without an activist press leading the way.
• 
... Democrats bowed to their most-strident supporters – journalists.  This is why the news media celebrated the impeachment across nearly all outlets.
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Hatred of Trump
• 
The left-wing media hate Trump more than they hate anyone.
• 
It's the foundation of everything they do, from Twitter snark to promoting the bogus impeachment.
• 
The media also hate Trump supporters.  ... is one of many journalists who have referred to Trump voters as the "Trump cult." He even inquired if the president was using "mind control."
• 
The worst of Times
• 
The New York Times made news the wrong way when the paper ran a legitimate headline about Trump in August.
• 
The headline in the print edition of the newspaper was only five words: "TRUMP URGES UNITY VS.  RACISM." (Yep, he did.)
• 
Left-wing critics chimed in almost immediately, outraged that the accurate headline didn't bash the president sufficiently.
• 
Everyone from Democratic presidential candidates to radical Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., skewered the paper.
• 
Even its own staff.  ... Yashar Ali tweeted that Times staffers "feel like their hard work is being sullied by a horrible headline."
• 
Wag the dog
• 
Few incidents show the collapse of journalism ethics more than ABC's attempt to hype Turkey's attack on the Kurds in Syria.
• 
The goal appeared to be to embarrass President Trump – who had pulled U.S.  troops from the Kurdish-controlled portion Syria – and possibly draw the U.S.  into war.
• 
... that Trump was "effectively abandoning America's allies in the fight against ISIS."
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... broadcast a video that ... appeared to show "Turkey's military bombing Kurdish civilians in a Syrian border town."
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Only it wasn't.  It was from a nighttime machine gun shoot held by a Kentucky gun range.
• 
ABC apologized.  But it ran the apology on its website and viewers never knew how badly the network fed them false information.
• 
Teens are off-limits?
• 
The same media pros who freak out when anyone dares criticize teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg were quick to slam an entire high school.
• 
... student was confronted by Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who began to beat a drum right in front of the teen's face.
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Several journalists and news outlets blamed Sandmann, even though he did nothing wrong.
• 
He was accused of the grand crime of smirking!
• 
The journalistic witch hunt was based on a selectively edited video and the fact that Sandmann was wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.
• 
The Resistance
• 
Journalists have elevated anyone who represents The Resistance against Trump.
• 
Avenatti appeared on TV news a whopping 254 times in a year including 121 times on CNN and 108 on MSNBC.
• 
Russia collusion
• 
The Russia collusion narrative ran smack dab into reality this year.
• 
Journalists who spent at least 2,284 minutes on TV claiming the president was working with or for an American enemy failed to deliver any proof of their ridiculous claims.
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"This was the single biggest story the US media fixated on for 3 years & got the crux of it totally & completely wrong in a very damaging way."
• 
Unfortunately, journalists haven't learned a darn thing.
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See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
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See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
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See related Mueller Report and CNN (Sean Delonas, 03/24/2019) cartoon from Media picture album
      Radical plans by Democratic presidential candidates would destroy our economy and freedom  (Fox 12/28/2019)
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In the last century, the Democratic Party was known as the party of liberals – but a staunch opponent of socialists and communists.
• 
No more.  Radicals have taken over the party and called for policies that would make Karl Marx smile.
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Socialists are clever marketers.  They pitch their proposals as necessary to advance justice, equality, prosperity and the very survival of life on Earth in the face of impending environmental disaster.
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None of these things are true, but they sound good and have a certain appeal.
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The following are the three most potentially destructive proposals promoted by many of the leading Democrats – as well as important information you need to know about the dangers of these policies.
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The Green New Deal
• 
The Green New Deal is the most dangerous and socialistic policy ever embraced by a major political party in American history.
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The Green New Deal would also impose a long list of socialist programs that have nothing to do with the alleged purpose of the plan – stopping climate change.  These include creating a "free" college program, a federal jobs guarantee, a program providing universal access to "healthy foods," and a whole new system of publicly-owned banks, among many other provisions.
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The American Action Forum estimates these policies could cost more than $90 trillion over their first 10 years – about four times the current national debt.
• 
If you asked our foreign enemies to come up with a plan to destroy the American economy and plunge our country into another Great Depression, they couldn't come up with anything that would do the job as well as the Green New Deal.
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In addition, the Green New Deal would directly or indirectly put the federal government in charge of virtually every aspect of our lives.
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... even if you believe humans are entirely responsible for climate change – and there are many scientists who say we aren't – nothing we do in the United States will stop global carbon dioxide emissions from rising in the coming decades.
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If Americans were to do exactly what Green New Deal supporters have called for – committing economic suicide in the process – increased carbon dioxide emissions in growing countries like China and India will push total emissions well beyond their current levels.
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This is because less than 5 percent of the world's population lives in the United States. 
• 
A Just Society
• 
The Just Society is a package of radical bills that have been endorsed by many of the leaders of the Democratic Party.
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Among other things, it would prevent government agencies from denying access to any federal program on the basis of a prior criminal conviction or immigration status.
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This means that millions of people now in America illegally would be eligible for countless social welfare programs and government aid – costing untold billions of dollars every year.
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"Medicare-for-all"
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There's no denying that the current health insurance system is a mess.
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But putting government in charge of Americans' health care would be catastrophic.
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... Democrats have absolutely no plans for expanding the supply of doctors, hospitals and other health care professionals – all while calling for providing tens of millions of additional Americans with access to specialty health care services.
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Of course, Democrats have absolutely no way to pay for "Medicare-for-all" – at least not without huge tax increases on the middle class and far more rationing.
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And they have no way to pay for their Just Society or Green New Deal proposals, either.
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This is an especially important point considering the United States is already running trillion-dollar deficits.
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If socialists and progressives have it their way, the 2020 elections will force America down the road to economic and societal ruin.
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Our children and grandchildren would be saddled with tens of trillions of dollars of debt they won't be able to pay back.
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And our highly dysfunctional federal government would be granted the authority to control our lives, from the womb to the tomb.
• 
The stakes couldn't be higher.
• 
See related Green New Deal (Gary Varvel, 03/16/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Senator Bernie Sanders (Sean Delonas, 04/25/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Socialism Time! (Mike Shelton, 03/15/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Jim Breslo: We’re dying sooner instead of living longer – Here’s why  (Fox 12/28/2019)
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"Our country is falling apart ....  Our kids are addicted to smartphones or drugs.  We are seeing record high levels of depression, suicide and overdoses.  Our corporations are recording record profits while our people are literally dying younger."
• 
... thank you, Andrew Yang, for raising this important issue.  But no thank you to the Democratic Party's progressive wealth redistribution solutions.
      Are You Ready for 2020?  (JWR 12/27/2019)
      Topics We Aren't Allowed to Talk About  (JWR 12/27/2019)
• 
Throughout the impeachment drama, the press repeatedly told you that the president was a liar.
• 
They said his lies are why he had to be impeached.
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Donald Trump is a salesman; he is a talker, a booster, a compulsive self-promoter.
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If Trump hadn't gotten rich in real estate, then he could've made a fortune selling cars.
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So is lying really the reason the left despises Trump?
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Or could the problem be, as is so often the case, the exact opposite of what they claim?
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What drives them completely crazy are those moments when Trump dares to tell the truth.
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What infuriates them is when Trump tells the truth.  Truth is the real threat to their power.
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There is an unspoken agreement among the people in charge of our country not to talk about what has happened to it.
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They are personally implicated in its decline.  Often they are profiting from it.
• 
The last thing they want is a national conversation about what went wrong.
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Everything is fine, they shout.  Voices rising in hysteria.  Shut up or we will hurt you.
• 
Trump won't shut up.  That is his crime; that is why they hate him.
• 
It started with his very first speech as a presidential candidate: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.  ... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.  They're bringing drugs.  They're bringing crime.  They're rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people."
• 
Trump could have worded his statement more clearly, but he never claimed that everyone coming over the border is a criminal.
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... Washington, for decades, has let millions of foreigners with no screening come across the border to use our services, often lower wages and in some cases, commit crimes.
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That is all true, which by definition made it unacceptable to say. 
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Our system is rotten and corrupt, and the news media are a major reason for why that is.
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That is what Trump pointed out, and, not surprisingly, they despised him for doing it.
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For example, after the killing of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump said that while he disapproved of the murder, Saudi Arabia remained a U.S.  ally.
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If we broke our alliance with them, he said, the U.S.  economy would suffer and China and Russia would benefit instead.
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Now, whatever you think of the Saudis, what he said is true.
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This is the arrangement we have had with the Saudi kingdom for generations.  Everyone in Washington knows that because a lot of them are on the Saudi payroll.
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Trump's crime was saying it out loud.
• 
The same is true with his comments on Baltimore.  Baltimore may be the most depressing big city on the eastern seaboard.
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This summer, the president told the rest of the world what it's like.  Baltimore, he said, is "rodent infested, not to mention a corrupt mess."
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Baltimore remained dangerous, the kind of place where a kid gets shot riding his bike.
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That is what life is like for the poor people stuck in Baltimore, a place where MSNBC contributors don't dare to tread.
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They also don't want any debate about the war in Afghanistan, immigration or declining middle-class life expectancy.
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Whatever we do, we can't bring that up because it is embarrassing.
• 
So instead, let's just agree that Trump is a racist liar and move on.
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My gosh, what a bad person he is.  Unlike us.
      Armstrong Williams: Forget guaranteed incomes – here's what America needs to thrive  (Fox 12/26/2019)
• 
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is on to something: Americans could use a big "freedom dividend" – that is, a guaranteed source of income on which they can rely month after month, free from the uncertainties of the job market and employment.
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But like many Democrats' ideas, Yang's otherwise brilliant insight is corrupted by an ideology that strangely sees the government as the engine of wealth creation and distribution.
• 
Yang's plan to provide a universal basic income of $1,000 per month to every American over age 18 sounds pretty good.
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All that money could go toward education, health care, job retraining or even housing assistance for everyday Americans.
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It also could be wasted with mindless consumer spending on things like clothing, electronics or even drugs.
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Yes, average American families need more money.
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But what they do not need is yet another government bureaucracy that will tax and administer this so-called dividend, which would really be a loan.
• 
America is sinking under the weight of financial obligations that have burgeoned over the years from a commonsense approach to helping aging citizens — Social Security and Medicaid — into a gargantuan system of bureaucracy and debt our nation no longer can afford.
• 
Once someone believes the government "owes" them something, it creates a sense of ownership and entitlement — and, ultimately, dependency — that prevents them from making rational choices about how to work, how to save and how to make healthier choices that ultimately could reduce the need for catastrophic health care.
• 
A better idea would be for Americans to create their own dividend by working hard, saving and ultimately investing their money in a way that provides them with a constant income.
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For example, about $240,000 invested at a relatively "safe" rate of 5 percent per year – achievable without incurring undue investment risk – would provide a dividend of about $12,000 per year.
• 
But more importantly, the work and discipline it would require for the average person to save that amount would provide far more personal security than a government handout.
• 
Furthermore, the productive capacity that it would take to earn over $200,000 would greatly aid our nation in terms of overall economic growth.
• 
Contrary to popular belief, and even current Federal Reserve policy, government money does not grow on printing presses.
• 
It comes from taxes paid by workers and businesses on their earned income.
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If people are disincentivized to work because of a guaranteed handout from the government, there will be fewer people available to actually pay the tens of billions of dollars in new taxes it would take to fund this new entitlement Yang envisions.
• 
Proponents claim that guaranteeing basic income would create an economic multiplier that could grow GDP.
• 
It's obvious that Lee's argument rests on a sleight of hand.
• 
What proponents of universal basic income claim is that when the government actually gives people money, it saves what it would have to spend down the line curing the ills of poverty — bad health, incarceration and government assistance in other forms.  But this rests on a major assumption: that the government should be in the business of providing expensive social services in the first place.
• 
Government health care, for example, has proven to be a major fiasco in this country.
• 
Despite spending more on health care than any other country – more than $1 trillion in 2018 – American health outcomes, including life expectancy, have declined in recent years.
• 
More importantly, our "health span," or the amount of time people can maintain healthy, productive lives, has declined in the age of massive health care bureaucracies fed by government spending.
• 
A real American freedom dividend would involve putting in place pro-business policies, such as deregulation and lowering taxes, and labor market policies, such as reducing illegal immigrant labor competition.
• 
These policies do not require the government to spend a thing – or require it to spend less – while at the same time removing barriers to employment and economic growth.
• 
Investing in business and job growth produces actual dividends, not, like Yang's proposal, tens of billions of dollars of new government debt.
• 
See related The Death of Ambition (Mike Lester, 01/19/2012) cartoon from General picture album
      Tucker Carlson: The real reason so many Christians are willing to support Trump  (Fox 12/24/2019)
• 
The people who are are overwhelmingly white and have credentials from the Ivy League.  Where are they?
• 
Well, they're not just irreligious.  Many of them are aggressively anti-Christian and that may be why they want to force Catholic Charities, for example, to fund birth control and Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.  Can you imagine?
• 
It's why they spent a decade crusading, hassling, Chick-fil-A because it donated to a handful of traditional Christian charities.  They thought they were immoral.
• 
Why not just leave them alone?  Because they couldn't help themselves.  Because they truly hate — truly hate — traditional Christianity.
• 
It's why some of their lawmakers openly speculate that judges like Amy Coney Barrett may be ineligible for the Supreme Court because she might actually believe in God.
• 
So, if you're wondering why so many Christians have been willing to support this president despite his personal life, this is why: It's because whatever his flaws, he's made it clear that he's not the enemy of Christians.  In fact, under certain circumstances, he will protect Christians.
• 
For people whose values are under assault every day by powerful forces in America — and that's not overstating it, and if you're one of them you know that means everything.
• 
It's bad enough to be lectured about Christianity by cable news morons who don't know anything about it.
• 
But what's happening in the broader country is much worse than that, much more threatening.
• 
The left presumes the right to lecture the people it despises for the sin of not voting for them.
• 
Now this may shock some Democrats, but most Christians don't actually think they have a religious duty to be destroyed by people who hate them.  They don't.
      The Non-War on Non-Terror  (JWR 12/23/2019)
• 
Is the Ground Zero Mosque back?
• 
According to Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (who helped get it nixed almost a decade ago), a Muslim "cultural center" is once again in the works just a few feet from where their coreligionists killed 3,000 people and left a smoking crater.
• 
The mosque will rise because what started on September 12th 2001 as a politic euphemism - "the war on terror" - has become a form of self-castration: unless you're flying a plane into a skyscraper or riding your rental vehicle up onto the sidewalk, almost any other Islamic provocation is not only unobjectionable but has to be actively encouraged.
• 
That, after all, is how it went last time round.
• 
Recall that both the President of the United States and the Mayor of New York City were all in favor of the Ground Zero Mosque.
• 
How do you think he'll be this time round?  Or his successor Bill De Blasio?
• 
And the Islamophilia has gotten a lot worse over the last eight years - and those who stand against it are under far greater pressure to shut up.
• 
Historically, Islam has always understood the power of symbolism - which is why it builds mosques on the sites of Islamic conquest, from Istanbul to Samarkand.
• 
A mosque at Ground Zero is an absurdity, but, as Osama bin Laden would put it (at least when being channeled by would-be President Bloomberg), our eagerness to build a mosque on the burial pit of victims of Islamic terror attacks is exactly the spirit of openness that prompted Osama to give us such a big burial pit to build it on in the first place.
• 
And so the Ground Zero Mosque goes quiet, but it never quite goes away.
• 
9/11 was "the day that everything changed" mainly in the sense that the urge to self-prostrate became pathological: precisely because America was attacked in the name of Islamic supremacism, it is no longer acceptable to object to Islamic supremacism.
• 
See related Great Spot for a Mosque... (Mike Lester, 07/29/2010) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related To Us... (Robert Ariail, 07/28/2010) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Obama and Ground Zero Mosque (Dave Granlund, 08/16/2010) cartoon from USA picture album
      Liz Peek: Queen Pelosi wants to rule the Senate and nation but voters will revolt  (Fox 12/23/2019)
• 
Pelosi scolded the pesky press for wanting to know why, for the first time in the nation's history, she did not follow the accustomed path of handing the articles of impeachment over to the Senate for an expected trial.
• 
Having to explain her bizarre decision was apparently beneath her; she cut off inquiries abruptly saying, "Any other questions because I'm not going to answer any more questions on this...  I'm not going to go there anymore."
• 
She stopped short of demanding "Off with their heads!" but from the look in her eye, it was only the cameras that restrained her.
• 
It's no wonder Queen Nancy didn't want to answer questions about her refusal to forward the articles of impeachment.
• 
There are no good explanations except one: she wants to extend her rule to the Senate as well as the House.
• 
She wants, she says, to determine how the GOP-led Senate will conduct the trial, ostensibly to make sure it's "fair."
• 
Never mind that she has no constitutional authority for influencing the Senate's procedures.
• 
Never mind that her insistence violates the very nature of a bicameral legislature.
• 
The Founding Fathers, who have been much quoted in recent days by Democrats attempting to justify their impeachment push, respected the separate duties and responsibilities – the checks and balances – of the House and the Senate.
• 
They created our system explicitly to prevent mob rule.  In short, they envisioned exactly what is transpiring today.
• 
To be clear: the House speaker does not rule the Senate; she rules the House.  Tyrannically, in this case.
• 
Responding to critics from across the aisle who questioned her motives, Her Royal Highness answered imperiously, "Frankly, I don't care what the Republicans say."
• 
Pelosi and court jesters Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler have botched impeachment by making the process so unfair, so non-transparent and dishonest that they failed to enlist American voters.
• 
She can hold court all she wants, railing about the terrible things the president has done to the country – like delivering record low unemployment, raising middle-class incomes, confronting China on their abusive trade practices, lifting millions off food stamps, creating hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, rewriting NAFTA and so much more – but she cannot sway Republicans in the Senate who know she is simply kowtowing to the radical Left who are dividing her party.
• 
Queen Nancy seems to be under stress.  She and her jesters made a reckless bet.
• 
They impeached President Trump on such flimsy charges that the country has soured on the undertaking.
• 
Moreover, they lied about the process and the investigation in so many ways that it offended reasonable people.
• 
Most importantly, they claim that President Trump presents an immediate threat to our country and that the need to eject him from office is urgent.
• 
That was why, after all, they could not afford to wait until November, when voters will have the chance to decide the fate of the president.
• 
...  they are political hacks bent on undermining a president whom they don't like, whose manners they consider rough, who has taken aim at the swamp they inhabit, and who is fighting back by fulfilling the promises he made on the campaign trail.
• 
They are utterly terrified that he will be reelected.
• 
In the 48 hours following the partisan vote, the Trump campaign raked in more than $10 million...
• 
At the most recent Democrat debate, candidate and Sen.  Amy Klobuchar declared, "The president is not king in America."
• 
She is right, of course.  #But neither is Nancy Pelosi our queen.
      Trump is impeached – period.  Speaker Pelosi, let Senate do its work  (Fox 12/23/2019)
• 
One of the Constitution's clearest provisions is also one of its least-used: the process for removing the president for serious misconduct.
• 
Some politicians and lawyers, however, are trying to complicate this straightforward constitutional process, inventing things that simply aren't there.
• 
The Constitution's impeachment process has two steps: Article 1 section 2, gives the House of Representatives the "sole power of impeachment" and section 3 gives the Senate the "sole power to try all impeachments."
• 
The House did its part on Dec.  18, adopting two articles of impeachment.
• 
All that's left is for the House to appoint a few members to act as the prosecutors and, as the Senate's trial rules put it, notify the Senate that these impeachment "managers" are "directed to carry articles of impeachment to the Senate."
• 
If this sounds a little familiar, it's not really different from the indictment and trial... 
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., however, appears to be making up a process of her own.
• 
She says she won't appoint impeachment managers or send the articles to the Senate until the Senate agrees to conduct its trial the way she dictates.
• 
In other words, Pelosi is holding the impeachment for ransom, keeping the county in impeachment limbo.
• 
Now that the impeachment is finished, trying to manipulate how the Senate conducts its trial would only taint this whole drama even more and further distort the Constitution's impeachment framework.
• 
The House has done its part by impeaching Trump.
• 
The House must appoint managers and notify the Senate not because doing so is necessary to complete the impeachment, but because it's the House's clear obligation under the Constitution.
      Pelosi’s impeachment cloud is the “Clear and Present Danger” to the US  (INN 12/22/2019)
• 
... the House Democrats officiously ranted and raved that they were in an urgent race to "Impeach" President Trump because he was "a clear and present danger" to the country. 
• 
However, with House Speaker Pelosi failing to promptly deliver the alleged Articles of Impeachment to the US Senate for an impeachment trial, the Democrats have, in fact, proven that House Democrats themselves are the real "clear and present danger" to the United States of America. 
• 
... the Democrats have created an uncharted constitutional crisis that the responsible members of the Senate need to end by immediately bringing the issue to the Supreme Court for resolution.
• 
I repeatedly add the word "alleged" before the word "impeachment" because the Democrats are trying to tar the President with the word "impeached," when actually the House has only achieved "alleged" impeachment.
• 
Only a Senate trial can actual find a President guilty"of impeachment
• 
The Democrats are trying to inflate the word "impeach" to mean that he is already found guilty of something, when he is actually found guilty of nothing.
• 
"The House of Representatives ... shall have the sole Power of Impeachment."
• 
"The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.  When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.  When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present."
• 
If impeachment jurisdiction has not left the House for the Senate, then the House's impeachment has not actually occurred.
• 
It is a situation that seriously degrades the core effectiveness of the President in his constitutional role as Commander in Chief of our armed forces and the delay could be seen by our foreign adversaries, such as Iran or North Korea, as a military weakness that they can exploit.
• 
Given the clear and present danger such a prolonged Impeachment cloud represents for the constitutional functioning of the American Republic, it is incumbent on the Senate leadership to force the House Democrats into Federal Court to clarify the legal question of the exact jurisdictional ownership of the House's alleged impeachment.
• 
The Supreme Court has to quickly determine exactly where impeachment stands.
• 
Otherwise, the House Democrats have taken the entire country hostage to their unconstitutional coup d'etat.
      Donald Trump’s ‘they’re after you’ tweet says it all  (NYP 12/23/2019)
• 
On its face, a tweet President Trump sent last week is fairly benign.
• 
It doesn't mock anyone, isn't personally nasty and hasn't caused any hair-on-fire controversy.
• 
Yet it is powerful in its own way, for it artfully sums up the Trump era from the perspective of the president and his supporters.
• 
With a likeness to the Uncle Sam "I want you" poster, the disrupter-in-chief reaffirms in 14 words the belief of Trump Nation that the political establishment, the media, the permanent bureaucracy and yes, the deep state are trying to crush him and them.
• 
• 
The president tweeted the image the day House Democrats voted to impeach him...
• 
The tweet included no added comment because none was needed.
• 
The message is clear: I am all that stands between you and the barbarians at the gate.
• 
If I fall, you are next.
• 
... Trump's oblique reference to a weaponized and powerful adversary is hardly ­unfounded, with a partisan, flimsy impeachment the latest example.
• 
The tweet's siren call to believers is a shorthand way of saying that impeachment is just a continuation of the endless attacks against us.
• 
Indeed, his presidency effectively begins with a prophecy of those attacks, one that came 17 days before Trump took the oath.
• 
"Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," Sen.  Chuck Schumer said...
• 
It was an incredible thing to say in a nation where the people are supposedly sovereign, but soon it would become clear that Schumer knew what he was talking about, which still raises questions.
• 
... it was quickly obvious that law enforcement and intelligence officials in the Obama administration were leaking secrets designed to embarrass the new president — and kill his administration in its infancy.
• 
The effort never stopped, with impeachment launched when a man identified by the media as CIA officer Eric Ciaramella filed a complaint about Trump's July 25 call with the president of Ukraine.
• 
Most of the period between Schumer's warning and the Ukraine complaint was dominated by the two-year slog of special counsel Robert Mueller.
• 
It, too, made lots of noise and the Democrat/media frenzy created the clear implication that Trump would be formally charged with helping Russia tip the 2016 election.
• 
Of course, Mueller found no such evidence, but he still hurt the president.
• 
The probe was a black cloud hanging over the White House during the 2018 midterm campaign, and thus likely played a role in Dems winning the House majority — the majority they would use to impeach the president.
• 
Thus, Mueller's team struck out legally, but helped Dems score big politically.
• 
So much for its integrity.
• 
More recently, added confirmation that Schumer was right has come in spades.
• 
Thanks to reports from the Justice Department's inspector general, we know there was rampant misconduct and political bias at Jim Comey's FBI.
• 
We learned through texts that top agent Peter Strzok, who said he could "smell" Trump voters in a Walmart, had exchanges with his office paramour about stopping Trump, including references to an "insurance policy" in case Trump won.
• 
Thankfully and finally, the fallout from those findings is picking up speed, with the top FISA judge questioning the FBI's "candor" and saying the flawed submissions "calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable."
• 
Even bigger fish could be on the grill in a separate probe.
• 
Other top officials in the Obama administration, CIA head John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are reportedly under scrutiny by US Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a criminal investigation of the spying effort against Trump.
• 
To understand the import of the investigation, it pays to recall that Brennan, Clapper, Comey and his former top deputy, Andrew McCabe, have for years appeared on hate-Trump TV to accuse him of treason and other crimes, as has Clinton.
• 
None of those charges was true, but the endless attacks on Trump from former insiders are unprecedented, and reflect badly on the institutions they led and the government as a whole.
• 
All these false charges were amplified by a media that ignored basic fairness.
• 
Attorney General Bill Barr offers the best overview of this unholy alliance, saying, "Our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press."
• 
So Schumer's warning hit the bull's-eye — but uncharacteristically, he's been shy about taking credit.
• 
Is he afraid of the intelligence agencies, or is he OK with the officials playing politics because Trump was the target?
• 
If the latter, he joins a crowd who fancy themselves liberals of integrity, but who are comfortable with abuses of power and double standards against Trump.
• 
Even impeachment was not the grand, noble process the Founders envisioned, despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi's efforts to dress up a dirty trick.
• 
Under her, impeachment proved that the House, like the FBI, CIA and the media, has corrupted itself in a bid to destroy Trump and delegitimize his presidency.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Democrats are working to weaponize government power against their adversaries – It must stop  (Fox 12/21/2019)
      Do it, Dems — but be prepared  (JWR 12/20/2019)
• 
House Democrats finally impeached President Donald J.  Trump.  Senate Republicans now need to make the Democrats' victory as Pyrrhic as possible.
• 
To add insult to impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ... is sitting on the paperwork that would trigger a Senate trial.
• 
This basically would leave President Trump indicted but unable to defend himself.
• 
Regardless, Senate Republicans inexplicably could turn the other cheek.
• 
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ... and Judiciary Chairman Lindsay Graham ... have signaled that they want a brief trial, with few if any witnesses or perhaps just a motion to dismiss, which could conclude this matter in mere hours.
• 
Big mistake.
• 
Hurried Senate action will lower the price of Democrats' divisive, 100-percent hyper-partisan charade to that of a game of ding-dong-dash
• 
If the Senate GOP does not make Democrats pay, big time, for their impeachment outrage, they will inflict this on the next Republican who dares to defeat their nominee.
• 
Democrats need to suffer serious consequences for what they frivolously imposed on America.
• 
It's time for them to endure the unmasking of their sordid, corrupt, international effort to torpedo Trump, since his candidacy.
• 
... witnesses likely will confirm that President Trump had legitimate reasons to suspect Ukrainian corruption, including intervention in 2016.
• 
Such testimony would justify his asking President Zelensky to investigate these shenanigans.
• 
If impeachment is all benefit and no cost for Democrats, why shouldn't they impeach every Republican president — including impeaching Trump again, as some Democrat zealots have suggested.
• 
If Republicans expect any credit for finishing this swiftly, "to spare America more grief and move on," they are sadly mistaken.
• 
Here is the sheet music from which Democrats and their liberal-media bootblacks will sing, should GOP senators adopt a quick motion to dismiss:
• 
"Republicans perpetrated the ultimate cover up!  The GOP-led jury acquitted Trump even before the trial started.  Servile Republican Senators reflexively do whatever Trump wants.  How sad that the thoughtful party of Ronald Reagan has become Trump's brain-dead slave ship."
• 
Since Republicans will get kicked in the teeth, no matter what, they might as well wipe the stupid grins from Democrats' faces.
• 
Senator Graham has argued that the Judiciary Committee will get to the bottom of this and hold the guilty to account.
• 
Yeah, right.
• 
Just like Judiciary did with those who falsely accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual harassment and gang rape.  How is that probe going?
• 
Instead, Republicans should follow the advice of Senator John Kennedy ... As he said ... "If they want a trial, by G od, we're going to have a trial."
      Why are so many Jews doing the dirty work of their mortal enemies for them?  (JWR 12/20/2019)
      Trump impeachment hinges on whether he had 'corrupt intent' in taking lawful actions  (Fox 12/19/2019)
• 
House Resolution 755, which was adopted Wednesday night largely along party lines, contains two articles of impeachment against President Trump – one labeled "abuse of power" and the other "obstruction of Congress."
• 
It's important to understand that this is not the first impeachment resolution filed against President Trump by House Democrats.
• 
HR 438, introduced in July 2017, proposed impeaching Trump for hindering the investigation into Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election.
• 
HR 621, introduced a few months later, had five impeachment articles alleging: violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause; "lack of respect for the federal judiciary," such as by tweeting and criticizing judges; and speaking negatively about the media.
• 
HR 705, introduced in January 2018, said Trump should be removed from office for "sowing discord among the American people."
• 
In short, the impeachment of Trump appears to be a punishment in search of a crime.
• 
The impeachment process is, next to declaring war, the most consequential thing Congress can do.
• 
It would not only nullify the last election – it would prevent a president from running for reelection if he is in his first term.
• 
That means a simple majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate could neutralize the electoral votes of 30 states.
• 
That is, it would take no more than 218 House members and 67 senators to wipe out the votes of 63 million Americans who cast ballots to put Donald Trump in the White House.
• 
While the Constitution does not require a particular standard of proof, such as "beyond a reasonable doubt," the gravity of impeachment and its consequences demands something at that end of the scale.
• 
The House did not impeach Trump for pushing Ukraine to investigate corruption, or for delaying security assistance for Ukraine and refusing to hold a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• 
Nor did the House impeach Trump for conducting some aspects of foreign policy in an "irregular" manner.  By themselves, there was nothing wrong with those actions.
• 
The House impeached Trump for what the impeachment resolution called his "corrupt purposes" behind those actions.
• 
The thing that turned permissible presidential choices into impeachable offenses, the House said, is that Trump took those actions to "solicit the interference of a foreign government" – Ukraine – in the 2020 U.S.  presidential election.
• 
Trump's alleged offense was not his "urging and soliciting Ukraine to undertake investigations," but the allegation that he "corruptly" did so "for his personal political benefit."
• 
This is the single most important issue in the entire impeachment drama.
• 
The House impeached Trump for his intent – his motive and purpose behind otherwise legitimate actions.
• 
The Senate must now conduct a trial for Trump, serving as both judge and jury.
• 
According to the American Bar Association, the jury "listens to the evidence during a trial, decides what facts the evidence has established, and draws inferences from those facts to form the basis for their decision."
• 
Specifically, senators must decide whether the evidence has established Trump's intent to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election.
• 
If a criminal defendant is charged with a specific-intent crime, the prosecutor must prove, separately and by the same standard, both the underlying action and the intent behind that action.
• 
The same should be true during the Senate impeachment trial.
• 
The prosecutor's role will be played by designated House members.
• 
Senators should not let them off the hook in terms of proving the central element of the charges they have leveled against the president.
• 
As the American Bar Association put it, does the evidence clearly establish the fact of Trump's intent – the alleged "corrupt purpose" – that House Democrats say should take from the American people the decision about whether Trump should remain in office?
• 
This is the question that every senator must answer.
• 
See related Guilty and Sentenced (Gary Varvel, 09/24/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Victor Davis Hanson: Former intelligence chiefs fit perfectly into media advocacy culture  (Fox 12/19/2019)
• 
... all four of these former intelligence chiefs detest the president of the United States.
• 
Comey has compared Trump to a Mafia don and stated that he is morally unfit to be president.
• 
McCabe, who was likewise fired from the FBI, has called Trump's behavior "disgusting."
• 
Clapper said that Trump may be working with Putin as a Russian "asset."
• 
Brennan called Trump a "disgraced demagogue" as well as venal, corrupt and amoral.
• 
... all in their post-Obama administration careers are either paid cable news analysts or frequent guest commentators.
• 
In the most controversial stories, Brennan, Clapper and McCabe are being paid to analyze theories, facts and findings in which they themselves are often central players.
• 
As a guest commentator, Comey has weighed in on these controversies even as he distorts his past role in them.
• 
Yet such abject conflicts of interest are not the only ethical problems posed by these four.
• 
Until recently, all four held federal security clearances.
• 
Comey recently gave his up, apparently so he would not have to give testimony about classified information in the Horowitz investigation.
• 
The former intelligence officials sometimes gave us wink-and-nod suggestions that their television expertise was based on information not available to the general public.
• 
In sum, we are witnessing a surreal collusion between the nation's former top intelligence officials and the progressive media — beyond even the nightmares of so-called conspiracy theorists.
• 
The most powerful intelligence chiefs of the Obama administration — Brennan, Clapper, Comey and McCabe — have routinely offered the nation their own warped theories about wrongdoing in high places that are as self-serving as they are contradicted by facts.
• 
The conclusions of both the Mueller investigation and the Horowitz report are damning to the past analyses of all four.
• 
In the advocacy culture of our new media, ex-government officials such as Brennan, Clapper and McCabe can be paid to appear on news programs to analyze (or vindicate) their own unethical behavior.
• 
As employees of the media, they sell their checkered government service to exonerate themselves while confirming the anti-Trump biases of their paying hosts.
      Tom Del Beccaro: Trump impeachment a symptom of decades of deepening divisions  (Fox 12/18/2019)
      Letter from President Trump  (12/17/2019)
• 
I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives.
• 
This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.
• 
The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence.
• 
They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever.
• 
You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!
• 
By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy.
• 
You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nullification scheme — yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America's founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build.
• 
Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying "I pray for the President," when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense.
• 
It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!
• 
Your first claim, "Abuse of Power," is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination.
• 
You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense — it is no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power.
• 
You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars of U.S.  aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars.
• 
You know this because Biden bragged about it on video.  Biden openly stated: "I said, "I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars'...I looked at them and said: "I'm leaving in six hours.  If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a bitch.  He got fired."
• 
Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did.
• 
The second claim, so-called "Obstruction of Congress," is preposterous and dangerous.
• 
House Democrats are trying to impeach the duly elected President of the United States for asserting Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our Nation's history.
• 
Under that standard, every American president would have been impeached many times over.
• 
As liberal law professor Jonathan Turley warned when addressing Congressional Democrats: "I can't emphasize this enough...if you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power.  It's your abuse of power.  You're doing precisely what you're criticizing the President for doing."
• 
You are unwilling and unable to accept the verdict issued at the ballot box during the great Election of 2016.
• 
So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes.
• 
You view democracy as your enemy!
• 
Nineteen minutes after I took the oath of office, the Washington Post published a story headlined, "The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun."
• 
Less than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, "I'm going to fight every day until he's impeached."
• 
House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our country's best decisions, the firing of James Comey (see Inspector General Reports) — who the world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops our Nation has ever seen.
• 
... you and your allies said, and did, all of these things long before you ever heard of President Zelensky or anything related to Ukraine.
• 
Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me.
• 
His shameless lies and deceptions, dating all the way back to the Russia Hoax, is one of the main reasons we are here today.
• 
You and your party are desperate to distract from America's extraordinary economy, incredible jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens.
• 
You cannot defend your extreme policies — open borders, mass migration, high crime, crippling taxes, socialized healthcare, destruction of American energy, late-term taxpayer-funded abortion, elimination of the Second Amendment, radical far-left theories of law and justice, and constant partisan obstruction of both common sense and common good.
• 
After three years of unfair and unwarranted investigations, 45 million dollars spent, 18 angry Democrat prosecutors, the entire force of the FBI, headed by leadership now proven to be totally incompetent and corrupt, you have found NOTHING!
• 
Few people in high position could have endured or passed this test. 
• 
You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family.
• 
You conducted a fake investigation upon the democratically elected President of the United States, and you are doing it yet again.
• 
There are not many people who could have taken the punishment inflicted during this period of time, and yet done so much for the success of America and its citizens.
• 
But instead of putting our country first, you have decided to disgrace our country still further.
• 
You are the ones interfering in America's elections.
• 
You are the ones subverting America's Democracy.
• 
You are the ones Obstructing Justice.
• 
You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.
• 
Against all evidence, and regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the Russians — a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other.
• 
You forced our Nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy.
• 
Yet, when the monstrous lie was debunked and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not apologize.
• 
You did not recant.  You did not ask to be forgiven.  You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection.
• 
Instead, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade-you engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person.
• 
All of this was motivated by personal political calculation.  Your Speakership and your party are held hostage by your most deranged and radical representatives of the far left.
• 
Each one of your members lives in fear of a socialist primary challenger — this is what is driving impeachment.
• 
If you truly cared about freedom and liberty for our Nation, then you would be devoting your vast investigative resources to exposing the full truth concerning the FBI's horrifying abuses of power before, during, and after the 2016 election — including the use of spies against my campaign, the submission of false evidence to a FISA court, and the concealment of exculpatory evidence in order to frame the innocent.
• 
Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment — against every shred of truth, fact, evidence, and legal principle — is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America's Constitutional order.
• 
Our Founders feared the tribalization of partisan politics, and you are bringing their worst fears to life.
• 
Worse still, I have been deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this impeachment scam right up until the present.
• 
... once the phone call was made public, your whole plot blew up, but that didn't stop you from continuing.
• 
More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.
• 
You and others on your committees have long said impeachment must be bipartisan — it is not.
• 
You said it was very divisive — it certainly is, even far more than you ever thought possible — and it will only get worse!
• 
This is nothing more than an illegal, partisan attempted coup that will, based on recent sentiment, badly fail at the voting booth.
• 
Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution.
• 
Perhaps most insulting of all is your false display of solemnity.
• 
You apparently have so little respect for the American People that you expect them to believe that you are approaching this impeachment somberly, reservedly, and reluctantly.
• 
No intelligent person believes what you are saying.
• 
Since the moment I won the election, the Democrat Party has been possessed by Impeachment Fever.
• 
There is no reticence.  This is not a somber affair.
• 
You are making a mockery of impeachment and you are scarcely concealing your hatred of me, of the Republican Party, and tens of millions of patriotic Americans.
• 
The voters are wise, and they are seeing straight through this empty, hollow, and dangerous game you are playing.
• 
I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election.
• 
They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power.
• 
... I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.
• 
One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Democrats' impeachment mission ironically proves American democracy is 'just fine'  (Fox 12/17/2019)
      Tucker Carlson: Can we trust that the FBI is no longer being used as the left's political tool?  (Fox 12/17/2019)
      Democrats know Trump impeachment is a bust – But they should pay a price for what they've done  (Fox 12/16/2019)
• 
Rep.  Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., House Judiciary Committee chairman: "President Trump asked for a favor.  He wanted Ukraine to announce two bogus investigations: One into former Vice President Biden, his leading opponent in the 2020 election and another to advance a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked our elections in 2016."
• 
No, they just keep making it up.  No one's saying Ukraine and not Russia interfered in 2016.
• 
The question is did Ukraine meddle as well as Russia?
• 
Don't you love how the Democrats are obsessed about "getting to the bottom" of election meddling except when it's done on their behalf?
• 
The IG report literally just confirmed that Hillary Clinton didn't just invite foreign meddling in the 2016 elections; she paid for it.
• 
Then her team pushed Russian lies to the FBI.
• 
And stand by for the Democrats to totally blow off the anti-Trump meddling by China in 2020 — there is no doubt that's in the works right now.
• 
As for the Biden thing, the Democrats talk as if the only possible description of Joe Biden is "Donald Trump's political rival."
• 
How about this description: Former vice president who controlled U.S.- Ukraine policy while billions of taxpayer dollars went to the Ukraine energy industry, which was paying his son at the time?_
• 
Yeah, I think most Americans would agree that's worth investigating.
• 
But according to nincompoop Nadler: "The evidence proves that these requests were not related to any real interest in rooting out corruption.  President Trump eagerly does business with corrupt governments every day."
• 
Pardon me while I laugh.  Doing business with corrupt governments is now grounds for impeachment?
• 
So why didn't you impeach Obama, who did business with Russia?
• 
What about Nancy Pelosi, who did business with Ukraine, for Christ's sake?
• 
Or Hakeem Jeffries, who did business with China?
• 
Or Nadler himself?  He did business with Somalia.  He's such a preposterous figure.
• 
Nadler: "There can be no serious debate about what President Trump did."
• 
Have you noticed that they keep talking like this?  "It's uncontested.  There can be no serious debate."
• 
Even the Democrats' own witnesses couldn't agree about the president's phone call.
• 
Republicans totally disagree with the Democrats' interpretation of it.
• 
Who writes this stuff for Nadler and Pelosi and Schiff and all the rest of them?
• 
Do they even realize how arrogant it makes them sound?
• 
Bribery — gone.  Extortion — gone.  Obstruction of justice — gone.  This whole impeachment is a bust.
• 
The country is turning against them, and they know it. 
• 
Make them pay for what they've done to this president and this country.
• 
Make it hurt by making it last.  So once this gets to the Senate, let's get their dirty secrets out there.
• 
Call Joe Biden, call Hunter Biden, call the whistleblower.
• 
And while we're at it, call ex-Secretary of State John Kerry and the Democratic senators who are up to their necks in the Ukraine cash-for-gas corruption scandal, too.
• 
"Get to the bottom of it," as the Democrats constantly say.
• 
For the last three years in England, the establishment tried to overturn the 2016 Brexit vote.
• 
And last week the people told them to get lost.  They meant it the first time and they voted for it a second time.
• 
... in this country, unbelievably, while all this has been going on — the obstruction, the resistance, the impeachment, Russia, Ukraine, whatever — through it all, President Trump has managed to deliver not just his promises, but a record which on policy substance surely adds up to one of the most successful presidencies in history.
• 
Over the last three years, you have unemployment falling, earnings rising, criminal justice reform, the heartland revived.
• 
Energy independence; manufacturing resilience; illegal immigration coming down, the wall going up; China confronted; the caliphate defeated; NAFTA renegotiated; our military rebuilt.
• 
NATO paying more; regulations and costing less; conservative judges appointed; campus free speech defended; drug prices down; family leave up; training places for 14 million; child tax credits for 40 million; tax cuts for 100 million; a booming economy for everyone.
• 
In the end, this is why they're impeaching him.  They hate the president.  They hate his supporters.*
• 
They hate how they think, they hate what they do.  They hate their faith, they even hate their food.
• 
But above all, they hate the fact that this president is delivering concrete and substantial policy results for the working Americans who put him in the White House.
• 
And they're terrified that they can't beat him in a fair fight next year.
      Democrats beware — British election is final nail in the coffin of the globalist experiment  (Fox 12/13/2019)
• 
Hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying individuals don't like being told what to do or how they should live.
• 
They don't like being dismissed as uninformed or too simple to understand the complexities of government.
• 
They resent having their voices ignored and having words put in their mouths about what they think and believe.
• 
Their priorities are not always in alignment with the loudest voices who wield the most power and ultimately they will refuse to give in to intimidation but will quietly go to the polls and make their silent voices heard in the arena of equality – the ballot box.
• 
... democracy cannot – and should not – be dismissed by those who think they know better than the electorate.
• 
#The people should ultimately tell their government what to do, not the other way around.
• 
Here in the U.S.  we see coastal elites, the media and even members of Congress in opposition to much of the rest of America – an American electorate which I believe will go overwhelmingly to the ballot box and make their distaste for what is happening in Washington known.
• 
Will pundits once again offer that a Trump victory is 2020 is "shocking," "stunning," and "unexpected"?
• 
Yet those who are following what the Brexit voters of 2016 and 2019 have done will not be the least bit surprised at the outcome.
      Corbyn's bloodbath defeat in UK election sends 'catastrophic warning' to 2020 Dems  (Fox 12/13/2019)
• 
"One lesson from the UK: if the Democrats don't stop their hard-left slide, they'll suffer the same fate as Labour."
• 
"If they don't move off their support for mass immigration, they're toast.  Ditto the wokeness.  Left Twitter is not reality."
• 
"Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both share Jeremy Corbyn's socialist agenda and both appear to be as popular as him on Twitter.  But Twitter's not the real world."
• 
"Those who voted for Brexit and Trump don't take kindly to their democratic vote being abused in this way and their retribution comes at the ballot box."
• 
"If people think Boris Johnson's earthquake was big, just wait until the Senate acquits President Trump and he uses that victory to storm to re-election."
• 
"One thing you can't say about the Corbyn campaign was that he was ‘Tory lite' or too neoliberal or too establishment.  He ran unabashedly from the left in a way many leftists want Democrats to run here in the U.S."
• 
Trump suggested that just as the 2016 Brexit referendum foreshadowed his own presidential win a few months later, the 2019 U.K.  election forecasts a win for him in 2020.
• 
"I want to congratulate Boris Johnson on a terrific victory.  I think that might be a harbinger of what's to come in our country.  It was last time."
      Cal Thomas: Democrats can’t stand Trump’s successes – So it’s time to impeach  (Fox 12/13/2019)
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by reporter James Rosen if she hates President Trump.  She responded with an "if looks could kill" fire in her eyes and denounced Rosen for his question while claiming she doesn't hate Trump.
• 
The man asked about Biden's son and how he managed to get a lucrative job with a Ukraine gas company while lacking any experience in the field.  Biden called him a "damn liar."
• 
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley testified before the House Judiciary Committee that although he didn't vote for President Trump and is not a Trump supporter, he doesn't believe the president has committed impeachable offenses.
• 
For his honesty, "My home and office were inundated with threatening messages and demands that I be fired from George Washington University."
• 
While some blame President Trump for the rhetorical escalation, that is too simple an explanation.
• 
I think the real problem for Democrats in general and the far left, which dominates the party, in particular, is that the president is winning.
• 
He has stolen success from failed Democratic policies, and the only response Democrats have is impeachment.
• 
They must destroy his presidency or risk their own destruction.
• 
If the hatred seems bad now — and it is — imagine what it will be like should President Trump have the opportunity to name another justice to the Supreme Court.
• 
It will make the hatred directed at Brett Kavanaugh seem tame.
• 
Government has become a god to the left.
• 
If they aren't controlling it, they become out of control.
• 
If they aren't addicting more people to government, they are losing them, as those who have been dependent on government become more independent and self-reliant.
      Why Would Anyone Vote for a Dem for President?  (JWR 12/12/2019)
      Democrats addicted to attacking Trump – Even if impeachment drive hurts them  (Fox 12/12/2019)
      IG Horowitz confirms shameful and deliberate FBI misconduct in investigating Trump campaign  (Fox 12/11/2019)
      Morality of Free Markets  (JWR 12/11/2019)
• 
"The hallmark of a truly free market is that all associations and relationships are based on voluntary agreement and mutual consent.  Another way of saying this is that in the free market society, people are morally and legally viewed as sovereign individuals possessing rights to their life, liberty, and honestly acquired property, who may not be coerced into any transaction that they do not consider being to their personal betterment and advantage."
• 
"You don't kill, you don't steal, and you don't cheat through fraud or misrepresentation.  You can only improve your own position by improving the circumstances of others.  Your talents, abilities, and efforts must all be focused on one thing: what will others take in trade from you for the revenues you want to earn as the source of your own income and profits?"
• 
In a free market society, income is neither taken nor distributed.  Income is earned by serving one's fellow man.
• 
Free markets are morally superior to other economic systems.  To have a claim on what my fellow man produces, I'm forced to serve him.
• 
In a word or so, our protest should not be against capitalism.
• 
People should protest crony capitalism, where people use the political arena to buy government favors.
• 
If millennials and others want to wage war against government favors and crony capitalism, I'm with them 100%.
• 
But I'm all too afraid that anti-capitalists just want their share of the government loot.
• 
See related Bad to the Bone (Antonio Branco, 03/12/2019) cartoon from General picture album
      Gutfeld on the terrorist attack nobody is talking about  (Fox 12/11/2019)
• 
Somewhere in a parallel universe, there's a huge news story going on.
• 
It's about a terror attack on a Florida naval base, where a Saudi national killed three sailors.
• 
The terrorist embraced radical Islamic ideology years before he came here to train.
• 
He also expressed extremist thoughts on social media.
• 
According to reports, the night before, he and pals allegedly watched mass shooting videos.
• 
Two of the other Saudis investigated in connection to the attack filmed it.
• 
Why are we training so many Saudis?
• 
Have we ever reconciled the fact that the large majority of 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals?
• 
And where was armed security in this attack?
• 
This would matter in a parallel universe.
• 
But not this one, because we're too busy filling space with a sham impeachment.
• 
Not only does impeachment add false outrage to exhaust your brain, it also replaces information that you need to know.  So you know less about reality, and you carry more media-generated garbage in your brain.
• 
But in the Trump era, all stories must be about how evil he is.
• 
Perhaps if we could blame this shooting on Trump, the media would pay more attention to it.
• 
You see that word, "pay"?
• 
Attention is currency.  When you pay it to one thing, you don't pay it to another.  You only have so much.
• 
And the media, every day, robs you blind.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Democrats' Trump impeachment focus sends voters clear message: We don't care what you think  (Fox 12/11/2019)
• 
At 11:59 a.m.  on January 20th, 2017, Donald Trump took the oath of office and became the president of the United States.
• 
By 12:05 that same day, Democrats were calling for his impeachment.
• 
Literally, for years, the left has been howling that Trump must be removed immediately from office, without the consent of voters.  — Every day!
• 
Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: "The first article is for abuse of power.  It is an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit."
• 
"That is exactly what President Trump did when he solicited and pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 presidential election.  This gives rise to this second article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress."
• 
"We must be clear: No one, not even the president, is above the law.  "
• 
You got that?  "No one is above the law," explain the very same people who spent all day making excuses for illegitimate government spying on American citizens.
• 
But never mind.  Literally, no one is above the law.  Democrats say that over and over and over again.
• 
Nobody is above the law.  Nobody — except for the more than 20 million illegal aliens whom the left tell us have every right to be here, ignoring our laws.  And shut up, racist, if you disagree.
• 
Also, the so-called homeless shooting up and defecating and living full-time on our sidewalks.
• 
The law does not apply to them or to subway jumpers in New York or to Hunter Biden.
• 
But other than that, absolutely nobody is above the law, meaning Trump.  And that's why they're impeaching him.
• 
But they're not celebrating that fact.  No, they're not.  You might think they're excited, but they're not.  Democrats want to be completely clear on this question.
• 
Reps.  Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff and a number of other people who've never had a single authentic impulse in their entire lives would like you to know that they feel extremely — what's the word for this — "solemn" about what's happening.  Seriously solemn. 
• 
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House: "Good morning, everyone, on this solemn day, I recall that the first order of business for members of Congress is this solemn act to take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
• 
Nadler: "That is why we must take this solemn step today."
• 
Rep.  Adam Schiff, D-Calif., House Intelligence Committee chairman: "The president's oath of office appears to mean very little to him.  But the articles put forward today will give us a chance to show that we will defend the Constitution and that our oath means something to us."
• 
Yeah.  And if that wasn't entertaining enough — and it was — there was still more because this is Washington.  There's always more.
• 
Sen.  Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Minority Leader: "The president conjures fictions, buys into baseless conspiracy theories told by known liars on Fox News or somewhere else.
• 
"Here in the Senate, certain members of the Grand Old Party are forming their own conspiracy caucus.  Any crazy conspiracy whether the launched by Putin or some wild, wild-eyed, crazy conspiracy theorist who manages, of course, all the time to get on Fox News and have his story or her story repeated..."
• 
But here it is distilled to its essence.  Write this down, put it on your fridge.
• 
It is the best guide to politics — ever: What the left accuses you of doing is precisely what they're doing themselves.
• 
They accuse you of fostering racism, pushing conspiracy theories, lying to the American people — I can't finish the sentence.
• 
Of course, those are the three main things they're doing, and impeachment proves the point once more.
• 
So, just so you understand — House Democrats are arguing here that there was no meddling in American politics when a Ukrainian energy company hired the otherwise unemployable son — of a sitting vice president — at an exorbitant rate for no work.
• 
At the very moment, his father was policing " anti-corruption" efforts in their country.
• 
There's nothing political about that.  And if you think otherwise, you believe in a conspiracy theory — a debunked conspiracy theory.
• 
A theory so debunked, in fact, that the president committed a literally impeachable offense simply by asking about it.  That's right.
• 
Democrats, at least their troops on Twitter, still haven't accepted the defeat of 2016.  They think impeachment would nullify that shocking loss — like it never happened — and allow them to ignore every lesson that came with that election.
• 
... the other reason is looking to the future.  Some Democrats — and they're not all dumb, that's for sure — sincerely believe that impeachment will help their case in the 2020 elections.
• 
So, every day the Democrats continue to focus all of their energy — and all of our attention here in the media — on impeachment, they're also sending a signal to voters that's pretty clear.
• 
It's we don't care what you think.
      And that's not a winning message over  ()
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The Democrats’ impeachment announcement was sad, pathetic and weird: Goodwin  (NYP 12/10/2019)
      Trump was legally obligated to ask Ukraine about Biden  (INN 12/10/2019)
      James Comey, ex-FBI Director, is still spewing lies – with no fear of punishment  (Fox 12/10/2019)
      Pelosi guarantees Trump reelection – impeachment, the resistance anger Americans  (Fox 12/09/2019)
• 
Across the United States, tens of millions of Americans are furious that Donald Trump, a man they respect, has been bullied and bloodied by hate-filled, crazed political antagonists who mock him, lie shamelessly about his policies, obstruct his every move and, most disgusting of all, savagely demean his wife and children.
• 
Those same Americans are also furious that we have wasted three years pursuing fake accusations of collusion with Russia and now Ukrainian skullduggery; they wonder what might have been accomplished over these past three years if not for the constant undermining of Mr.  Trump and his administration.
• 
Pelosi has opened a door that may never close.
• 
For all the pious posturing, Democrats have drummed up at best a flimsy and half-baked prosecution of this president.
• 
The proceedings mean that their next leader will likely face similar trials.
• 
Once impeachment becomes a political cure-all, our long-stable government will be vulnerable to ongoing partisan attacks like the one we are witnessing today, and presidents may fall like dominoes.?
• 
I imagine that even the most cursory investigation of past presidents would yield, by the standards of today's Democrats, grounds for impeachment.
• 
Did not President Obama back the investigation into Trump's campaign, as Lisa Page and Peter Strzok's text exchanges seem to indicate?
• 
... Page wrote Strzok that "potus wants to know everything we're doing," referring to President Obama.
• 
Did Obama not endorse the pursuit of the Russia dossier, which was funded by the Clinton camp to undercut Donald Trump's run for the White House?
• 
Obama may not have been on the ticket personally, but he certainly knew that his legacy was at stake. 
• 
That could be viewed as "personal gain" – the same motivation that Pelosi says drove Trump's demand that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden.
• 
The push to impeach is driven by the sore losers of 2016, by a party and their media enablers who are terrified that the humiliation of 2016 will be visited upon them again in 2020.
• 
Pelosi's party has no answer, and no candidate with a plausible alternative, to a booming economy that has brought jobs, higher incomes and hope to millions of Americans.
• 
The most recent employment report, showing that we added an extraordinary 266,000 new jobs, reinforces their enthusiasm.
• 
How can Elizabeth Warren win when she wants to blow up an economy benefiting so many?
• 
And, make no mistake, Americans credit Donald Trump for the better times.
• 
They remember Obama gurus like Larry Summers telling them about "secular stagnation," that America's future was bleak and that manufacturing was dead in our country.
• 
They remember Paul Krugman forecasting a "global recession with no end in sight" and a stock market collapse if Trump were elected president.
• 
Democrats have spent the past three years "resisting" the Trump presidency.
• 
They have blocked legislation to secure our borders and to cut through the bureaucratic red tape that even Obama swore to dissolve.
• 
They have smeared fine men like Brett Kavanaugh, because they didn't like his opinions, have engaged a compliant press to print lies about the president and his inner circle and have offered up plenty of their own.?
• 
... wonder what might have been accomplished during the past three years if Trump had enjoyed bipartisan cooperation on matters of national interest.
• 
Even with the constant bad faith maneuvering of Democrats, Trump has managed to appoint 170 new judges, including two justices on the Supreme Court.
• 
He has undone significant suffocating legislation...
      $Trump also withdrew the U.S.  from the Paris Accord, which allowed China to continue fouling the atmosphere while hobbling U.S.  ()
• 
More important, he has taken on China's unacceptable trade practices and has forced the world to confront Beijing's criminal undertakings.?
• 
He has prioritized rebuilding our military, which was long overdue.
• 
He has browbeaten NATO into upping their financial commitments, something American presidents have tried and failed to do for 40 years.
• 
He has stood up for American interests around the world, and for that, the elites cannot forgive him.
• 
Is Trump without flaws?  No.
• 
He is thin-skinned and unpredictable, and sometimes picks fights that would be better ignored.
• 
But he has spent the past three years fending off the most vitriolic and hateful attacks and – perhaps most maddening – getting zero credit for any of his accomplishments.
• 
I have some sympathy for his frustration, and I imagine those who supported him in 2016 do as well.
• 
They will support him in 2020; count on it.
• 
See related The Adam Schiff Family (Michael Ramirez, 10/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      FISA abuse — Obama's FBI turned into arm of Hillary Clinton campaign  (Fox 12/09/2019)
• 
Soliciting foreigners to dig up dirt to open investigations into a political rival?
• 
That's not what happened on President Trump's innocent congratulatory phone call with the president of Ukraine.
• 
But it is what President Obama did in the summer of 2016 when he turned the Federal Bureau of Investigation into an arm of the Hillary Clinton campaign.
• 
"POTUS wants to know everything we're doing," Peter Strzok, referring to then-president Obama, texted his mistress Lisa Page in early September 2016.
• 
By then the politically obsessed lovers were no longer giving Hillary a pass in the email investigation.
• 
They were feverishly trying to prove unverifiable smears against Donald Trump that Hillary, the Democratic National Committee and the FBI, paid for.
• 
"Damn this feels momentous," Strzok said when the FBI began probing Hillary Clinton's political rival.
• 
"Because this matters.  The other one did, too, but that was to ensure that we didn't F something up.  This matters because this MATTERS."
• 
The "other one" would be an investigation into misuse of classified information on an unsecure private server that experts assumed had been hacked by Russia and China.
• 
They didn't want to "F something up" for their favorite candidate who they believed should win "100 million to zero."
• 
What mattered to Obama's FBI?  Investigating "collusion," a conspiracy theory spread by an opposition research firm and a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected."
• 
Sounds like something Strzok, the FBI's lead Russia investigator, would say.  He certainly agreed.
• 
A Trump presidency?  "We'll stop it," Strzok assured Page.
• 
A good way to stop it?  Finding out what's going on from the inside.
• 
Which brings us to the long-awaited inspector general report on FISA abuse, set for release Monday.
• 
What we already know: Obama's FBI tried to hide how it was using political dirt paid for by the Hillary campaign to justify its spying.
• 
The FBI told the FISA court that Steele was "credible," even though they knew of Steele's political bias and blatant errors in his dossier before applying for the warrant.
• 
The FBI also hid the fact that Glen Simpson's Fusion GPS, the firm behind the "Steele Dossier," was being paid by Hillary and the DNC to dig up dirt on their political rival, Donald Trump.
• 
At the same time, the FBI was also paying Steele as a confidential source.
• 
The symmetry between Obama's FBI and the Clinton campaign didn't end there.
• 
They both trafficked in news reports that kicked off the Russia collusion conspiracy theory, which took $32 million and nearly two years to debunk with the Mueller report that found no collusion by the Trump campaign or a single American.
• 
The FBI didn't verify the absurd allegations in Steele's dossier before relying on it to spy on the Trump campaign.
• 
What did they use to attest to the dossier's so-called credibility?
• 
A Yahoo "news" story that was itself based on the dossier, shopped to reporter Michael Isikoff by Fusion GPS and "conveyed to the outlet by Steele."
• 
The FBI was using the same Yahoo story on Carter Page that Hillary's campaign called "chilling."
• 
How "chilling" it could be given it was placed by Clinton's own political operatives, remains to be seen.
• 
That "coziness," or "collusion," never existed.  It was a figment of the Hillary smear machine's imagination that the media happily peddled through intelligence community leaks for years to come.
• 
Page, George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, and others would become collateral damage in the swamp's never-ending war against President Trump.
• 
Democrats don't want to acknowledge any of this.  Instead, they are holding yet another sham impeachment hearing the same day the inspector general will release its findings.
• 
If Democrats were serious about getting to the bottom of election interference, foreign dirt, and abuse of power they wouldn't be holding another hearing on President Trump.
• 
They'd be holding one on President Obama.
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Some Democrats channeling Soviet minister's 'Show me the man, I'll show you the crime' maxim  (Fox 12/08/2019)
• 
Dershowitz claimed some Democrats appear to be trying to find a crime to accuse Trump of, rather than going through the impeachment process after evidence of a specific high crime has been established.
• 
He recalled the mantra of a former Soviet Union official who would customarily dismiss any presumption of innocence against the accused.
• 
"What they're trying to do is what the KGB under Lavrentiy Beria said to Stalin, the dictator — I'm not comparing our country to the Soviet Union — I just want to make sure it never becomes anything like that."
• 
Beria, once the Soviet deputy premier and interior minister, famously would reassure Stalin, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
• 
"And that's what some of the Democrats are doing.  They have Trump in their sights.  They want to figure out a way of impeaching him and they're searching for a crime."
• 
"First, they came up with abuse of power — not a crime — it's not in the Constitution.  So now they're saying 'bribery,' but they're making it up."
• 
"There is no case for bribery based on, even if all the allegations against the president were to be proved, which they haven't been."
• 
"Alexander Hamilton said in Federalist Paper Number 65: The greatest danger would be if impeachment turned on the number of people each party had."
      Opposition to Pledge of Allegiance by ‘social justice warriors’ signals alarming trend  (Fox 12/07/2019)
• 
... stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings because the pledge isn't "inclusive" enough.
• 
... maintained that offering an oath of loyalty to a nation that "oppresses" its own people is unacceptable.
• 
While these college students sitting in taxpayer-funded classrooms wallowed in their "oppression," students at Hong Kong's Polytechnic University were under siege from the Chinese military for daring to stand up for human rights.
• 
The juxtaposition between real and imagined oppression w`ent unnoticed — or was intentionally ignored — as Grand Valley's students claimed anyone failing to see mass oppression in America is blinded by privilege.
• 
Ironically, the same students accusing others of being blinded by privilege fail to observe the glaringly obvious privilege they themselves enjoy: American Privilege.
• 
That is, the unique privilege of living in a country that actively protects the rights of its people to criticize their government without fear of repercussions.
• 
The growing idea that America is a land of oppression rather than freedom is the symptom of a culture that incentivizes victimhood by bowing down to anyone claiming to be disadvantaged.
• 
Most college freshmen arrive on campus as 18-year-olds, eager to fit in.
• 
They observe the social hierarchy and quickly note that those at the top are the individuals who can lay claim to being the most oppressed.
• 
That victim status offers immunity from foes, praise from peers, and garners special treatment from those in authority, namely school administrators.
• 
Oppression is the currency in today's social economy, and business is booming.
• 
However, the ultimate praise on campus is reserved for those who can claim oppression while simultaneously combating it themselves.
• 
... for these self-identified warriors, the actual presence of oppression and injustice isn't necessary to receive validation — all that's needed is the claim that it exists.
• 
Every superhero needs a villain, and upon hearing each day in class that the United States is a genocidal country with a predominant legacy of racism and bigotry, it's easy for these young, passionate minds to settle on America itself as their foe of choice.
• 
Soon the idea of being proud of such a country, let alone pledging allegiance to it, becomes unconscionable.
• 
While the problems these students claim to face are often fictitious, their proposed solutions are very real, and pose a serious threat to our society as a whole.
• 
Freedoms we assume to be unassailable – like freedom of speech, assembly, and religion – are now under attack.
• 
This year alone, we've seen students demand their freedoms be taken away, all in the name of inclusivity and social justice.
• 
... students increasingly view freedom not as a privilege, but as a burden to carry.
• 
These students are OK sacrificing their rights in exchange for the perceived feeling of emotional safety this offers.
• 
We cannot stand idly by while the next generation carves away at our freedoms in the name of social justice.
      Members of the next generation won’t preserve our freedom for the future and carry on our aspirational creed if they don’t think it’s anything worth  ()
      California Democrats pursue wrong policies to reduce fires – They should do THIS  (Fox 12/06/2019)
• 
California has a major wildfire problem.  The Democratic Party's response has been to push for tougher restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, as though California could unilaterally and quickly change its weather to make the state cooler, wetter and less windy.
• 
Blaming the recent fires on climate change is right out of an activist playbook.
• 
No matter the climate event, activists will assert that it is further evidence of manmade global warming.
• 
(To them, of course, the reverse is never true; if the country experiences a cold snap, no one is permitted to suggest it calls into question the extent of global warming.)
• 
The problem is that these policies have virtually no impact on California's climate, and are likely to exacerbate the wildfire problem.
• 
Climate change is a global problem.  California can reduce emissions all it wants, but it will not change the fact that countries such as China and India emit such gasses in greater and greater amounts.
• 
The U.S.  has been producing less air pollution, but smog levels are still rising in the West due to pollution from Asian countries drifting over the Pacific Ocean.
• 
The obvious flaw in California's strategy is in unilaterally implementing drastic and costly green initiatives without seeking or obtaining similar reductions from its Asian neighbors.
• 
California defends its policies by stating it is "leading by example."
• 
Has California Gov.  Gavin Newsom never read "The Art of the Deal"?
• 
How well do you think President Trump's trade negotiations would be going with China if his strategy was to eliminate all tariffs on products from China in hopes that China would "follow our example"?
• 
In the meantime, California consumers gobble up Chinese-made products by the billions.
• 
Yep, the same products made with electricity generated by coal, which is polluting California's air.
• 
The other problem is that the state's push for green energy is putting a huge economic and logistical strain on state electrical providers.  It should be no surprise that they are now the biggest concern as the cause of wildfires
• 
But for California's expensive green energy mandates, these companies could have afforded to move power lines underground, or at least insulate them, and take efforts to keep trees and branches as far away from them as possible.
• 
California's mandates for electric vehicles, and preference for electricity over gas, also put a greater strain on electrical infrastructure.
• 
To reduce wildfires, California should immediately improve its electric infrastructure, clear the brush, remove homeless encampments (the cause of 2,500 fires in Los Angeles alone last year), add firefighters, and improve the state's antiquated response system.
• 
These are real solutions for a deadly, real-world problem facing Californians.
• 
But they have not been implemented because state leadership would prefer to use wildfires to further a progressive, green energy agenda.
      Dem impeachment report on Trump is a political attack with no factual basis, no GOP support  (Fox 12/03/2019)
• 
Impeachment is a grave step of last resort to remove a duly elected president.
• 
The act of wrongdoing must be sufficiently egregious, and the evidence so clear and convincing, that the constitutional remedy of impeachment merits support from both political parties represented in Congress.
• 
However, unlike previous presidential impeachments, not a single member of the president's own party has yielded on the matter.
• 
It also reflects the sentiment of most Americans who are split along party lines.
• 
This alone should give Democrats pause to reconsider the dangerous path they have undertaken.
• 
"The impeachment inquiry uncovered overwhelming and uncontested evidence that president Trump abused the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference in our election for his own personal, political gain."
• 
Schiff's claim is brazenly untrue on many levels.
• 
First, if the evidence was "overwhelming," surely Republicans in Congress and Americans at large would be so persuaded.
• 
They are not.  The evidence was conspicuously underwhelming.
• 
... Schiff's witnesses offered a stream of hearsay, opinion and speculation that Trump demanded a "quid pro quo" from Ukraine...
• 
If the evidence was, as Schiff claims, "overwhelming," there would be a phrase or sentence somewhere in the transcript of the call establishing proof.  It is nowhere.
• 
Second, Schiff's contention that the evidence is "uncontested" is demonstrably false.
• 
The Republican report itself consumes 110 pages contesting the alleged evidence.
• 
Perhaps Schiff didn't bother to read the Republican report, since he is convinced of his own certitude or teased by hope out of ignorance.
• 
Maybe he didn't listen as Republicans spent hours during cross-examination casting doubt on the knowledge and credibility of the purported "fact witnesses" who trafficked in rumor, innuendo, and rank conjecture.
• 
Third, Schiff's assertion that Trump "solicited foreign interference in our election for his own personal, political gain" is nothing more than an assumption or supposition.
• 
There is no mention whatsoever of an election in the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky conversation.  Trump asked Zelensky to look into Biden's recorded "quid pro quo" boast saying that as vice president Biden stated he would withhold $1 billion in U.S.  aid from Ukraine if the chief prosecutor in Kiev was not immediately fired.  In doing so, how was Trump requesting political interference for personal gain?
• 
Trump has stated repeatedly that he wanted to determine whether Biden committed a corrupt act by extorting taxpayer dollars to force the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating the Ukrainian natural gas company that was paying his son Hunter anywhere from $50,000 to $83,000 a month to serve on its board.
• 
Was Biden's demand intended to protect his son?
• 
If a president has reason to believe that a public officeholder may have engaged in corrupt behavior involving a foreign government, he has every right and duty to request that nation's leader to investigate.
• 
The president is entitled to do so under the terms of a 20-year old treaty with Ukraine.
• 
Biden does not enjoy immunity or amnesty simply because he is now a candidate for office as he pursues the Democratic presidential nomination.
• 
Predictably, Nadler stacked the deck against the president, selecting three law professors who have either prejudged Trump or expressed animus toward him.  Only one professor from the Republican side is permitted.
• 
Most scholars agree that our Founding Fathers did not want an opposing party to remove a president for political reasons – simply because lawmakers of the other party dislike the president or his policies.
• 
Yet, that is exactly what Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, and most Democrats are doing.
• 
See related The Hearsay Impeachment (Gary Varvel, 11/17/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Impeachment (Bob Gorrell, 11/12/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      'Poor Lisa' Page.  She wants to go from villain to victim — and Trump is to blame [naturally]  (Fox 12/02/2019)
• 
Four months before the FBI would even interview Clinton, Page predicted that she would become president.
• 
Of course, that would have been impossible if the FBI had recommended a criminal indictment.
• 
In another text, Page warned her paramour that any aggressive tactics in their investigation would backfire on the bureau once they absolved Clinton and she became president.
• 
... "God, Hillary should win 100,000,000-0." Pause for a moment to consider what that message meant.
• 
Two key FBI officials were prophesizing a Clinton presidency that could happen only if they first ensured that she would escape criminal charges.  The process was corrupted.
• 
Once Clinton was absolved, Strzok and Page turned their attention to the political opponent who was the only remaining obstacle to her path to the White House: Donald Trump.
• 
The FBI launched an investigation on the unfounded accusation that Trump was "colluding" with Russia to win the presidential election.
• 
Page: And maybe you're meant to stay where you are because you're meant to protect the country from that menace.
• 
Strzok: Thanks.  And of course I'll try and approach it that way.  I just know it will be tough at times.  I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps.
• 
Page: He's not ever going to become president right?  Right?!
• 
Strzok: No.  No he's not.  We'll stop it.
• 
When confronted with dozens of other messages extolling Clinton and disparaging Trump, Strzok had the temerity to tell Congress, "I do not have bias."
• 
He insisted, "Those text messages are not indicative of bias."
• 
In those texts, we see the mindset that led to the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
• 
Without any factual basis, without anything more than a perverted kind of wishful thinking, two people who should have known better believed that only a vast international criminal conspiracy could lead to President Trump's election.
• 
Strzok: I want to believe the path you through out for consideration in Andy's office that there's no way he gets elected –but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.  It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40. 
• 
Page later confirmed that the "insurance policy" was the FBI's then-secret Russia "collusion" investigation of Trump.
• 
Under their plan, it would be quietly investigated by the bureau but held in abeyance unless and until the "unlikely" event occurred – the election of Trump.
• 
If he defied all expectations and prevailed on election day, the investigation would then be kicked into overdrive. 
• 
In their minds, Trump was a threat only if he became president.
• 
The chimera of "collusion" might then be used against him to undo his presidency and drive him from office.
• 
It was the FBI's version of an "insurance policy" against the risk of Trump.
• 
When, indeed, it happened, Strzok wrote that his investigation of the new president could be used to impeach him.
• 
Numerous other texts between Page and Strzok show a stunning hostility toward the man they were investigating.
• 
They called him "awful," "loathsome," a "disaster," a "f***ing idiot," an "enormous do*che," and other disparaging names that were laced with incandescent profanity.
• 
Republican supporters were smugly branded as "retarded," "the crazies," and "ignorant hillbillies" who "SMELL."
• 
Their toxic rants underscored an abiding enmity toward Trump that poisoned any chance that the FBI's investigation would be neutral, objective, and fair.
• 
It was fatuous for either Page or Strzok to deny bias in the face of such graphic and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
• 
As insipid as their pro-Clinton and anti-Trump text messages were, they illustrate how pervasive bias contaminated both the Clinton and Trump investigations.
• 
Strzok, Page, and others considered themselves above the law because they were the law.
• 
When a top official at the FBI learned of the affair, he did nothing.  Instead of removing Page and Strzok from the Trump case, they were promoted to Robert Mueller's special counsel team.
• 
Yet, Lisa Page is determined to re-write history in order to play a starring role as "the victim."
• 
At no time has she accepted a scintilla of personal responsibility for her actions.
• 
Instead, she seeks to portray Trump as the villain because he dared to speak publicly about her conspicuous bias against him.
      How Trump will be remembered in history [and what the 2020 election will be really about]  (Fox 12/02/2019)
• 
Trump wanted to actually change the direction of the country.  ... Very few presidents actually do that.
• 
But on the defining issue of our time, President Trump has done it already.
• 
Not with the economy, vital though that is, where, as promised, the Trump pro-enterprise agenda of deregulation and tax cuts has delivered historically low unemployment.
• 
Not with immigration, vital though that is, where, as promised, the border wall is going up and the numbers of illegal crossings are coming down.
• 
But the big one, is the truly historic shift on China and the associated issues of trade and manufacturing.
• 
For 50 years, China was barreling towards its stated goal of toppling America as the world's economic and military superpower by 2049, not least by cheating on trade rules and stealing technology.
• 
President Trump, almost literally single-handed, challenged the conventional wisdom that China's rise was inevitable.
• 
As a direct result of the Trump tariffs, manufacturers are moving out of China, and many more have signaled they'll be looking to do the same soon.
• 
And the foundation of China's power is crumbling before our eyes.
• 
They're desperate for a trade deal.  And they're even saying they'll finally act on intellectual property theft.
• 
For 50 years, we lived under an elitist ideology that was pro-China and pro-globalism, regardless of the impact on manufacturing, on agriculture, on rural areas.
• 
President Trump has turned that around.  That's what they'll be talking about 100 years from now, not his tweets or TV habits.
• 
And that's why people who care about substance, about results — about the real world — should support him.
• 
His enemies — insufferable, pompous, sanctimonious, superficial — couldn't care less about substance.  It's all just infantile insults.
• 
Worse still, Trump's critics are completely oblivious, not just to Trump's substantive record, but to the damage they themselves did to this country with their elitist policy agenda.
• 
They crashed the economy and crushed the working class.
• 
They enriched the coasts and impoverished the heartland — and not a word of apology for any of it.
• 
So, of course, Trump supporters are not going to sit there meekly as the ruling class tries to cut short his term with this partisan farce of an impeachment which, let me remind you, has been in the works since practically the day he was inaugurated.
• 
If anything, Trump supporters think that far from being removed a year early, he should get an extra couple of years to make up for all the time that's been wasted on these endless investigations and obstructions simply because Trump's decadent enemies can't face the fact that they lost in 2016.
• 
Well, the election next year is an opportunity for the populist revolution to be reaffirmed.  And my God, it needs to be after what we're seeing with this impeachment.
• 
It's precisely because President Trump is delivering historic change that the ruling class is so violently, dementedly, against him.
• 
The Democrats, and the civil service, and MSNBC, and CNN have become an anti-Trump cult.
• 
Here's what they're saying to you, the American people: You can vote for a different China policy to the one the establishment wants, but you can't get it.  You can vote for a different trade policy to the one that Wall Street wants, but you can't get it.  You can vote for a different immigration policy to the one that global corporations want, but you can't get that.
• 
In 2016, you told them you wanted a change from establishment policies.  Trump has delivered, and they can't stand it.
• 
So, in 2020, tell them again.
      Goodwin: The New York Times’ long descent from credibility  (NYP 12/02/2019)
      Newt Gingrich: Plot against president is real – And bigger than many think  (Fox 12/01/2019)
• 
Since the day Trump was elected president, Democrats have been formulating and executing the plot we have been watching unfold.
• 
After Trump won a massive electoral majority, Democrats started digging.
• 
They have been determined to find something – anything – they can use to attack him.
• 
The central focus of all of this is to describe and define Trump as a corrupt president so often that people begin to accept the narrative.
• 
Much of the intelligence community has been equally determined to "uncover" something on President Trump from the beginning.
• 
... the liberal national news media is mindlessly repeating this narrative.
• 
Many in the media are implicitly biased against President Trump – but even those who are not are helping the Democrats by giving their message airtime, print real estate and attention.
• 
As this plot against Trump has continued, the American system has been bypassed, ignored, or misused to the point where it has been put it in jeopardy.
• 
Democrats, political operatives, American intelligence officials and the media have been forcing a manufactured narrative on the American people.
• 
Specifically, a group of these intelligence officials are breaking the law by leaking secrets to the media (whose members gladly overlook these crimes so long as it lets them accuse the president of something new).
• 
Make no mistake: This is not politics as usual.
• 
It's a concerted effort by one political party, the Washington bureaucracy, and the media to overrule the American people.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      What George Washington was thankful for might shock you  (Fox 11/28/2019)
• 
In October 1789, long before Americans made it a national holiday, President George Washington issued a proclamation calling for a National Day of Thanksgiving.
• 
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor....  For the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed..."
• 
Just weeks after the Bill of Rights was sent to the states for ratification and during a time when their adoption was still very much in question, Washington recognized and called on Americans to thank God for rights that too many Americans today don't understand – and are even willing to sacrifice – like religious liberty.
• 
"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions ... to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed ... and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord, to promote the knowledge and practice of the true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best."
• 
... the greatest value to the modern reader might just be the stark contrast it provides between our founding generation's vision for their infant nation and the wandering prodigal son into which we have grown.
• 
Indeed, Washington repeatedly referenced the Divine as the source of our rights, peace, and prosperity.
• 
Perhaps most shocking to many Americans today is Washington's specific admonition that that "good government" would promote "the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."
• 
For Washington, religious liberty didn't mean government neutrality toward religion.
• 
To him and his fellow founders, religion, virtue, and liberty were inexorably linked.
• 
Consider some of the other fundamental realities in Washington's call to gratitude: there is a God; that God is not neutral in the affairs of men and nations; unity through gratitude to our Creator; Americans as individuals and collectively have duties to perform; that government should be a blessing to the people through wise, just, and constitutional laws.
• 
Despite our nation's shortcomings there is much for which to be thankful.
• 
We still enjoy more freedom, peace, and prosperity than any people in the world.  If we are to maintain these for ourselves and our posterity we could start by reclaiming our national identity through renewed respect for our founding principles, like religious liberty, and yes, even the imperfect men like George Washington who imparted them to us.
• 
"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be – That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation."
      Tucker Carlson: Trump's opponents despise him the most when he tells the truth  (Fox 11/28/2019)
• 
"At times, he's [Trump's] a full-blown B.S.  artist.  If Trump hadn't gotten rich in real estate, he could've made a fortune selling cars.  Most people know this.  It's obvious, transparent, really."
• 
"So he's lying.  Really?  The reason the left despises Donald Trump?  Or could the problem be, as is so often the case, the exact opposite of what they claim it is?"
• 
"What infuriates official Washington is not when Trump lies.  It's when he tells the truth.  Truth is the real threat to their power."
• 
"There's an unspoken agreement among the people in charge of our country not to talk about what has happened to it.  They are personally implicated in its decline."
• 
"But Trump won't shut up.  He keeps talking.  That's his crime.  That's why they hate him."
• 
"If the people in charge actually cared about us, they would protect our borders."
• 
"The gatekeepers in our national media, the people who should have been sounding the alarm about all of this, but instead made common cause with the ruling class they were supposed to be covering and keeping honest."
• 
... government officials and the media don't want you thinking about important issues to avoid their role in the problem, while others deflect the issue by calling Trump "racist."
• 
"Any of that might point up their own egregious failures and selfishness, which are profound.  And whatever we do, we can't bring that up because it's embarrassing."
• 
"So instead, let's just agree that Donald Trump is a racist liar and move on."
      Military men who got Trump clemency – Lorance, Golsteyn & Gallagher – are heroes, NOT...  (Fox 11/26/2019)
• 
Not a single war criminal prosecuted either in the Nuremberg trials or the Tokyo war crimes tribunal after World War II – or the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia – faced charges for snap-judgment decisions on a battlefield like Lorance and Golsteyn faced.
• 
War crimes are planned and calculated to kill mass populations.  A split-second decision on the battlefield to save American lives is not a war crime.
• 
Lorance and Golsteyn made battlefield decisions to open fire against perceived enemy combatants – not against civilians.
• 
If they had not done so, they and their men might have been killed years ago and the enemy combatants could have lived another day to kill more Americans.
• 
How can any American prefer to see more American troops brought home in coffins so more terrorist killers of Americans can live?
• 
Lorance's men fired on motorcycle riders who turned out to be enemy combatants threatening his platoon.
• 
Golsteyn killed a Taliban bomb-maker who killed Americans.
• 
Lorance was found guilty of second-degree murder and spent the past six years in a military prison.
• 
He was sentenced to 19 years in prison, but was released after President Trump pardoned him Nov.  15.  Golsteyn was awaiting trial on a murder charge before Trump pardoned him the same day.
• 
Both Lorance and Golsteyn operated in hotly contested battle zones where American lives were at risk.
• 
And what kind of message do we send to U.S.  troops in harm's way today and in the future by making them fear military prosecution and potentially years of prison time from defending themselves and their fellow soldiers, sailors airmen and Marines?
• 
Will they hesitate to defend themselves – and die as a result?  Is this what we really want?
• 
Neither Lorance, Gallagher nor Golsteyn was ever accused of participating in the mass extermination of populations – the common characteristic of real war criminals.
• 
Instead, these three heroic service members targeted the enemies of the United States – the type of savages who burn men in cages, decapitate Christians on the beaches or Libya, or fly planes into the World Trade Center.
• 
We sent these three military men to far-off lands to defeat our armed enemies in war.  This put these Americans in kill-or-be-killed situations where their job was to eliminate enemy forces.
• 
The media bantering about "war crimes" and "war criminals" manifests an intellectual laziness and dishonest manipulation by journalists sitting safely at their computers, writing about members of our military who know that one wrong decision in combat can be fatal.
• 
Categorizing Lorance, Gallagher and Golsteyn alongside real war criminals like the Nazis convicted in the Nuremberg trials underscores a deep-seated anti-Americanism and hostility to our military by the left.
• 
If the media so critical of Trump for his actions on Lorance, Gallagher and Golsteyn want to do the country a service, they should examine the inexcusable prosecutorial overreach that occurred in all three of their cases.
• 
Just like civilians, members of the military are entitled to a presumption of innocence and a fair trial when accused of crimes.
• 
They don't give up their right to justice when they put on the uniform.
• 
Americans owe a debt of gratitude to President Trump for standing up for these fine men and standing up for justice.  Thank you, Mr.  President.
      Carol Roth: The American Dream is alive and well — Let's be thankful for it  (Fox 11/26/2019)
• 
From virtue-signaling billionaires to power-hungry politicians, we keep hearing how the American Dream is dead.
• 
That is a bald-faced lie and I, for one, am sick and tired of people dumping on America and capitalism, while enjoying everything both have to offer, without as much as an iota of thankfulness.
• 
The American Dream is not dead — not even close.
• 
What is dead, or at least dying, is people understanding and accepting that to achieve the American Dream, they need to make sacrifices, tough choices and prioritize, as they don't get everything all at once or just for living under the red, white and blue.
• 
For those who don't want to chase financially-oriented goals, the freedom of choice is also the American Dream.
• 
You can choose a job you love, to live in the moment and/or reside in the big city and perhaps not have much in savings, knowing it is your freedom to make those choices that align with your priorities.  If your goals are different, you can't lament that you aren't living the dream based on your own choices and actions.
• 
The opportunity to pursue freedom of choice and enjoy your own standard of success is why people from every pocket of the world clamor to come to America and participate in this American Dream.
• 
Can we get better?  Of course, we can — and we should always aspire to improve — but how about starting from a place of gratitude?  We are all privileged to be American.
• 
The American Dream is alive and well.
• 
However, it's not a fairy tale ... it's not a guarantee either.
• 
But, it does present the best damn opportunity in the world for those who embrace it.  Let's remember to be thankful for that privilege.
      Daniel Turner: Harvard-Yale game climate protests – Here's what was really accomplished  (Fox 11/25/2019)
• 
Climate change protests continue to hit new levels of stupidity.  And annoyance.
• 
A growing number of seemingly incongruous stunts are interrupting our lives.
• 
This past weekend hundreds of students, alumni and faculty, stormed the field at the Harvard-Yale football game demanding action on climate change.
• 
The privileged communities at Harvard and Yale, just like the privileged elite of Hollywood, live in the great American bubble.
• 
Electricity works.  Water flows.  Planes, trains, and automobiles whisk us away to work and vacation.
• 
We buy wine from France and olive oil from Italy and without hesitation.
• 
There are meat and fish at the market, and even our vegan friends have alternatives all made possible because of abundant, inexpensive, domestic, reliable fossil fuels.
• 
Whereas that should spark a sense of gratitude (after all, it is almost Thanksgiving) in the mind of the climate warrior it sparks guilt, and guilt demands action.
• 
Climate change is the preferred issue of privileged protestors.  It's perfect: nameless, faceless, easy to incorporate hatred for "capitalism" or "the corporations."
• 
For the privileged, first-world American elites who have all the convenience, comfort, and prosperity of our powerful, fossil-fuel-rich economy, climate change is the perfect, hollow, cause.
• 
At Yale, 75 percent of the faculty identify as liberal while only 7 percent identify as Conservative.  At Harvard, the split is even more egregious: 80 percent to 1 percent.
• 
By the way, both universities praise "diversity" in their mission statements.  But you already knew that...
• 
The virtue-signaling disruption at the football game will accomplish nothing.
• 
I think it's safe to assume both Ivy League universities' dorms will be toasty warm this winter and properly cooled come summer.
• 
Their students' laptops will be fully charged and WiFi connected.
• 
Their cafeterias will be fully stocked and their campuses will be fully lit.
• 
And many protesters will "study abroad" overseas unaware or indifferent to the men and women in the energy industry who make it all possible.
• 
Whose jobs they think should be eliminated.
• 
The silliness of the Harvard-Yale football protest did succeed in raising some awareness.
• 
It made most of America aware that elites think they get to interrupt your life with their social justice posturing.
      Alito pens fiery dissent after court declines to hear dispute between climate professor...  (Fox 11/25/2019)
• 
"If the speech in all these cases had been held to be unprotected, our Nation's system of self-government would not have been seriously threatened."
• 
"But ... the protection of even speech as trivial as a naughty trademark for jeans can serve an important purpose: It can demonstrate that this Court is deadly serious about protecting freedom of speech."
• 
"[R]equiring a free speech claimant to undergo a trial after a ruling that may be constitutionally flawed is no small burden."
• 
"A journalist who prevails after trial in a defamation case will still have been required to shoulder all the burdens of difficult litigation and may be faced with hefty attorney's fees.  Those prospects may deter the uninhibited expression of views that would contribute to a healthy public debate."
• 
"If citizens cannot speak freely and without fear about the most important issues of the day, real self-government is not possible."
• 
"To ensure that our democracy is preserved and is permitted to flourish, this Court must closely scrutinize any restrictions on statements that can be made on important public policy issues.  Otherwise, such restrictions can easily be used to silence the expression of unpopular views."
      Rob Schneider stands up for free speech against 'totalitarian' social media users  (Fox 11/25/2019)
• 
"Sorry to have to repeat this again: Free Speech is ALL speech.  Even the speech that you find repugnant."
• 
"You are either for ALL of it or... you are for none of it.  We don't need people deciding FOR us what to think, see or hear.  That's a load of totalitarian crap."
• 
"Amazon is already banning books that dare question medical orthodoxy.  Facebook, Google, YouTube bury information as well.  The push within democratic societies to further restrict their own freedoms is a road we mustn't take."
• 
"I know Free Speech and Democracy create a mess out of society, people being able to express and spew whatever they want."
• 
"But I can't think of a better one.  And I surely don't want to live in a society where people decide for me what to think or watch or how I should interpret it."
• 
"I worry more that the suppression of Free Speech will lead to more horrors than the continued free flow of ideas; good AND bad."
• 
"People can decide for themselves what ideas belong in the dustbin of history."
• 
"Silencing those we disagree with denies us the chance to question our preconceived notions.  Either to reaffirm them or reassess them."
• 
"Our ideas need and should always be consistently challenged and reconsidered so we don't merely end up as consensus group think."
      Trump impeachment and Watergate – As a Nixon defense attorney I can compare them  (Fox 11/23/2019)
      Once the House impeaches, it cannot retract its decision  (INN 11/22/2019)
• 
In conclusion, if the House votes to impeach President Trump, since such impeachment is irreversible, they will have effectively voted him into office for a second term.
• 
If President Trump has one skill from his business career, it's how to litigate the other party into the ground.
• 
President Trump's relative passivity during the House Impeachment phase is lulling the House Democrats into a false state of security, but once the Impeachment vote is cast, the House Democrats will have committed themselves to a position from which there can be no retreat.
• 
Trump is giving Schiff the Impeachment rope with which Schiff and the Democrats will hang themselves.
• 
Because once the House impeaches, the House can't un-impeach. 
      Making a sham of impeachment  (JWR 11/22/2019)
      The State of our Union ...  is eff-ed up  (JWR 11/22/2019)
• 
In all of American history has there ever been more extreme changes in daily society than the ones over the past six decades?  I doubt it.
• 
When true science is discarded in favor of liberal nonsense such as there are more than just two sexes of human beings you know things have changed pretty drastically.
• 
It wasn't so long ago that most people would laugh at the notion of legal marriage between two men or two women.  Now it is accepted as absolutely normal.
• 
Today's children grow up believing that unless severe liberal "green new deal" programs are instituted immediately, the world will come to an end in ten years or so.
• 
Too many now believe that Western civilization, the American experiment, and especially capitalism are bad things; things created by evil white men to keep down "people of color."
• 
Time to shift the balance, time to redistribute the wealth, time to give big government more power over all of our lives.
• 
Yes, realizing that this is the direction our world is heading (and actually has been headed for some time now) can be quite depressing for many of us who grew up in the other world; the world of logic, freedom, self-reliance, fairness, truth, family strength, and a belief in our founding fathers and a strong faith in G od.
• 
The scariest thing of all is in the knowledge that there are millions and millions of people living amongst us who are NOT depressed by the social changes in our culture, but actually are joyous over them.
• 
These are the people that label any speech they don't agree with as "hate speech."
• 
These are the people who institute sanctuary cities, which do not protect the citizens, they protect the criminals.  These are the people who want open borders, decriminalization of drugs, a lessening of law enforcement while at the same time giving government more control over all aspects of life.
      Trump did nothing impeachable, day-by-day review of all impeachment hearing testimony shows  (Fox 11/22/2019)
      Adriana Cohen: Questions Democratic debate moderators should've asked but didn't  (Fox 11/22/2019)
      Political theater: Time to level the playing field  (INN 11/21/2019)
      Victor Davis Hanson: Fear of a deep state coup is not just right-wing paranoia  (Fox 11/21/2019)
• 
For most of the last three years, Donald Trump's critics have scoffed at supposed "conspiracy theories" that claimed a "deep state" of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency.
• 
We have been told the word "coup" is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.
• 
Yet oddly, many people brag that they are proud members of a deep state and occasionally boast about the idea of a coup.
• 
Recently, former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin proclaimed in a public forum, "Thank God for the deep state."
• 
Former CIA Director John Brennan agreed and praised the "deep state people" for their opposition to Trump.
• 
Far from denying the danger of an unelected careerist bureaucracy that seeks to overturn presidential policies, New York Times columnists have praised its efforts to nullify the Trump agenda.
• 
Far from providing damning evidence of criminal presidential behavior, Taylor and Kent mostly confined themselves to three topics: their own sterling resumes, their lack of any firsthand knowledge of incriminating Trump action, and their poorly hidden disgust with the manner and substance of Trump's foreign policy.
• 
Oddly, both had little clue that their demeanor and thinly disguised self-importance were a perfect example of why Trump got elected — to come up with new ideas antithetical to the conventional wisdom of unelected career bureaucrats.
• 
... by nature, the huge federal bureaucracy counts on bigger government and more taxes to feed it.
• 
So naturally, the bureaucracy is usually more sympathetic to big-government progressives than to small-government conservatives.
• 
Taylor and Kent cited their anguish with Trump's foreign policy toward Ukraine — namely that it did not go through official channels and was too unsympathetic to Ukraine and too friendly to Russia.
• 
If so, one might have thought the anguished bureaucrats would have similarly gone public during the Obama administration.
• 
... Trump's policies have been more anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian than those of the Obama administration.
• 
... Obama was the architect of "reset" with Russia that reached its nadir in a hot mic exchange in which Obama offered a quid pro quo, vowing more flexibility on issues such as U.S.-sponsored missile defense in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia giving Obama "space" to concentrate on his reelection.
• 
Trump's critics have also radically changed their spin on "coups." ... it has been normalized as a possibly legitimate means of aborting the Trump presidency.
• 
"#coup has started.  First of many steps.  #rebellion.  #impeachment will follow." ... "#coup has started.  As one falls, two more will take their place."
• 
Retired Admiral William H.  McRaven recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times all but calling for Trump's ouster — "the sooner the better."
• 
No sooner had Trump been elected than Rosa Brooks, a former Defense Department official during the Obama administration, wrote an essay for Foreign Policy magazine discussing theoretical ways to remove Trump before the 2020 election, among them a scenario involving a military coup.
• 
In September 2018, The New York Times published an op-ed from an anonymous White House official who boasted of supposedly widescale efforts inside the Trump administration to nullify its operations and subvert presidential directives.
• 
Such efforts to oppose Trump are often self-described as "The Resistance."
• 
Trump's opponents often have praised the deep state precisely because unelected career officials are seen as the most effective way to sabotage and stymie his agenda.
• 
In these upside-down times, patriotism is being redefined as removing a president before a constitutionally mandated election.
      Schiff games Trump impeachment show – In legitimate proceedings, you can't have it both ways  (Fox 11/20/2019)
      At impeachment hearing, irrelevant opinions by Trump critics masquerade as facts  (Fox 11/20/2019)
• 
There is a stark difference between truth and opinion.
• 
Truth derives sustenance from facts, whereas opinion is a judgment influenced by prejudices.
• 
Leonardo da Vinci recognized the fallible nature of opinions when he observed: "The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."
• 
Deception was on full display Tuesday during the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment hearing, where opinions masqueraded as facts.
• 
Diplomatic witnesses offered their interpretations and judgments of a telephone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• 
Democrats yearn to impeach Trump over a purported "quid pro quo" that is found nowhere in the transcript of the phone call. 
• 
Bereft of facts, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is determined to remove Trump from office based purely on the opinions of others who surmised or imagined that Trump demanded that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden or the U.S.  would withhold $391 million in military aid to Kiev.
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Ukraine never launched such an investigation, and the financial support was delivered.
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Anyone can read the transcript, as it is available online.
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It speaks for itself and is the best evidence that there is no evidence at all of a "quid pro quo."
• 
This was corroborated by the statements of Zelensky, who confirmed that there was no demand, threat, condition or pressure applied by Trump.
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Indeed, the Ukrainian government never knew that U.S.  aid had been temporarily frozen until almost five weeks after the July 25 Trump-Zelensky call.
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This renders a "quid pro quo" a legal impossibility.
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The recipient of the "quid" must, at the very least, be aware of the "quo."
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Moreover, two of the testifying witnesses readily conceded that the frozen aid was "consistent with administration policy."
• 
The unvarnished truth is that Vindman did not like what Trump said on the phone call because the president did not strictly follow the notes Vindman had prepared for the discussion.
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How dare Trump deviate from Vindman's carefully crafted diplomatic script!  So Vindman complained.
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Instead of registering his complaint with his direct supervisor, Tim Morrison, Vindman conveyed his feelings to others.
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Among them was an individual in the intelligence community that Vindman won't identify, who may be the faux "whistleblower" or source for the "whistleblower."
• 
By his acts, it appears that Vindman was instrumental in initiating the current impeachment insanity.
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An unelected subordinate employee disagreed with the policy judgment of the president of the United States and sought to create havoc by disseminating (or, if you prefer, leaking) his discordant opinion.
• 
To make matters worse, Vindman contorted the president's use of the words "do me a favor" by asserting that Trump had made an "inappropriate demand" of Zelensky.
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... Vindman elected to impute a demand by arguing that for those who serve in the military, a request or favor for something is always considered a demand.
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In other words, Vindman applied a military standard to a president who has never served in the military and has stated unequivocally that he made no demands of Zelensky.
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The Ukrainian president, who also did not serve in the military, is on record stating that no demand was made of him, as noted earlier.
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But Vindman, armed with uncommon clairvoyance, somehow knows better.
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Perhaps Vindman thought that he was above the president or a super-special expert to which all individuals, including Trump, should defer.
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In his deposition Vindman stated: "I'm the director for Ukraine.  I'm responsible for Ukraine.  I'm the most knowledgeable.  I'm the authority for Ukraine, for the National Security Council and the White House."
• 
The self-puffery was unbecoming, but it spoke volumes about what may have motivated Vindman when President Trump had the audacity to conduct foreign policy in a way that his NSC staffer did not pre-approve.
• 
In reality, just how important was Vindman in the White House hierarchy?  He conceded that he has never so much as met the president.
• 
Vindman's bias and coziness with Ukraine was underscored when he admitted that the foreign government had offered on three separate occasions to make him its defense minister.
• 
Throughout the hearing, Schiff turned himself into a pretzel as he tried to rewrite the law.
• 
He shut down any questions to Vindman that might unmask the fake "whistleblower" by asserting erroneously that the unidentified undercover informant "has a statutory right to anonymity."
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Schiff neglected, of course, to cite the specific statute because it does not exist.  ... There is no right, guarantee or privilege to anonymity anywhere in any statute.
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During the hearing, Schiff adopted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent pivot from the term "quid pro quo" to "bribery" ... But the chairman unwittingly destroyed the bribery argument when he confessed that "bribery does involve a quid pro quo."
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If the Ukrainians had no knowledge of the "quid pro quo," there can be no bribery.
• 
This obvious point seemed lost on Schiff, a former prosecutor.
• 
Members of the unelected bureaucracy in our nation's diplomatic corps are entitled to their moral, ethical and policy differences.
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But they are not allowed to substitute their own judgments for those of the president and seek to undermine his authority on foreign policy.
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A president should only be removed based on an impeachable offense supported by facts, not opinions.
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Why?  Because, as the Athenian philosopher Plato recognized: "Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."
      Tom Del Beccaro: Impeachment hearings Day 3 – Top 7 takeaways  (Fox 11/20/2019)
      Media, federal government tougher on Roger Stone than child molester Jeffrey Epstein.  Why?  (Fox 11/19/2019)
• 
For lying about something that is now officially irrelevant, they argued that Roger Stone should spend up to 50 years in prison, effectively the rest of his natural life.
• 
Now, at the very moment prosecutors were making that case, that Stone's misstatements ought to be a death penalty offense, Congressman Adam Schiff was busy lying to the rest of us about new things, some of which actually mattered.
• 
Schiff didn't seem worried about his lying.  He knew he would never be prosecuted for it.  In Washington dishonestly is strictly a one-way offense.
• 
Yet despite the obvious irony of all of this, Roger Stone was convicted anyway.
• 
And official Washington cheered.  "Rot in hell!" they screamed on Twitter, oblivious to karma, which, by the way, is real.
• 
What's interesting about the response to Stone's case, both from federal prosecutors and from the conventional opinion-makers on television, is how much harsher and more outraged it was than anything that greeted convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein. 
• 
The authorities don't like Roger Stone.  He did something worse than molesting children.
• 
He mocked the people in charge and then helped get Donald Trump elected president.
• 
For that Roger Stone is likely to die in prison.  — Just so that you know the rules in this country.
      Trump impeachment inquiry, 'bribery' and the laughable hypocrisy of Democrats' desperate gambit  (Fox 11/18/2019)
• 
Apparently, it's about bribery, now.  Nancy Pelosi said so, and they all fell in line like sheep, replacing "quid pro quo" as the leading impeachment talking point against President Trump.
• 
"The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections.  That's bribery."
• 
Bribery?  Are they kidding?  In the swamp, bribery is their business model.
• 
What do you think a political donation from a business or a lobbyist or a corporate PAC is?
• 
It's money in exchange for a political favor.  It's a bribe.
• 
Oh, look, Adam Schiff.  He took over $350,000 in bribes from the defense sector and — surprise, surprise — pushed for military action overseas.
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Schiff took over $100,000 from AT&T.  When it was reported that President Trump wanted to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, guess who piped up on AT&T's behalf?  "Shifty Schiff," of course.
• 
How about Jerry Nadler?  He was bribed by lobbyists for Somalia and a motley assortment of other foreign governments.
• 
He took over $80,000 from teachers' unions and, in exchange, voted against charter schools and a voucher program.
• 
And then, the queen of bribery, Nancy Pelosi.  She boasts about her fundraising prowess.
• 
Raising money is the way she clings to power.  Her office proudly told The New York Times earlier this year that she's raised over $700 million since 2002.
• 
Does anyone think that money is anything other than bribes?
• 
And then there's the foreign bribes, including, unbelievably, the fact that Pelosi has taken money from lobbyists representing shady companies in Ukraine.
• 
It actually hurt the ruling class and the establishment, who have declared war on President Trump, because it exposed, for all to see, their snooty arrogance and contempt for democracy.
• 
This is not about Republican versus Democrat; this is insiders versus the outsider.
• 
That's why they're so obsessed with whether things are "irregular."
• 
Trump wants a State Department that stands up for America in the world.  The system wants to keep it standing up for the world in America.
• 
Trump thinks promises made before an election should be implemented after an election.  They want to ignore those promises as if the election never happened.
• 
Trump wanted to govern; they chose to obstruct.  Trump wants reelection; they won't take the risk.
• 
But does the Trump-hating ruling class even understand how much long-term damage it's doing to America's fabric with its reckless, demented drive to remove Donald Trump by non-democratic means because they're worried he'll win an actual election?
• 
They destroyed trust in the media long ago.  But now they've destroyed trust in the civil service, too; in the foreign service, in the FBI, the CIA, the whole system.
• 
They've made sure future presidents can't have confidential conversations with foreign leaders.
• 
They've distracted and divided the country, and they've guaranteed that the next Democratic president will also be impeached.
• 
I hear people all the time saying, "How can you support Trump?  Look at his behavior; look at his tweets." I say, "Look at his results."
• 
America's No.  1 enemy, China, finally confronted after decades of sucking up by the same establishment geniuses now plotting to kick Trump out.
• 
And then look at Trump's enemies.  However bad some people think Trump may be, his enemies are worse.
• 
They are completely insufferable, pompous, sanctimonious, self-righteous.  They're decadent, doing just fine in their coastal enclaves, so screw everyone else.
• 
They're superficial, always putting style over substance.  And they are oblivious to the damage they themselves did to this country with their elitist policy agenda and the damage they're doing now with their divisive impeachment agenda.
• 
The Democrats talk about justice.  I'll tell you what justice looks like: These crazed, partisan Democrats sent to the political wilderness, their candidates defeated at every level — the White House, Congress, state and local government — until they return, finally, to their senses.
      Young People Ignorant of History  (JWR 11/13/2019)
• 
"Where people are free to pursue their own opportunities and make their own choices, they lead more prosperous, happier and healthier lives."
• 
During the Cold War, leftists made a moral equivalency between communist totalitarianism and democracy.
• 
Leftists exempted communist leaders from the harsh criticism directed toward Adolf Hitler, even though communist crimes against humanity made Hitler's slaughter of 11 million noncombatants appear almost amateurish.
• 
According to Professor R.J.  Rummel's research in "Death by Government," from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens.  From 1949 to 1976, Mao's Communist regime was responsible for the death of as many as 76 million Chinese citizens.
• 
Today's leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from that of past tyrants.
• 
They should keep in mind that the origins of the unspeakable horrors of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism did not begin in the '20s, '30s and '40s.
• 
Those horrors were simply the result of a long evolution of ideas leading to a consolidation of power in the central government in the quest for "social justice."
      The end of free speech – What kind of place will US be when today's campus liberals take over?  (Fox 11/13/2019)
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It's hard to think of an ideal more American than the freedom of speech.
• 
When people say our soldiers fight and die for our values, what they mean is our freedom to say what we think is true.  That's our birthright.
• 
It's the most important thing we have, that we have ever had.
• 
And so for generations, there was a bipartisan consensus about this.
• 
In fact, liberals were among the most stalwart defenders of the First Amendment and good for them.
• 
But then the left took control of this country's institutions.
• 
Liberals became the establishment they had one opposed, and suddenly free speech seemed like a challenge to the highly profitable existing order, the one they were getting so rich from.
• 
So our schools began to teach our children that freedom of speech is a threat.  In fact, it's immoral.
• 
And over time the kids started to believe it.  Why wouldn't they?
• 
At this point, nearly 60 percent of young people believe we should change the First Amendment to ban speech they don't like.
• 
Now changing amendments is hard.  Two-thirds of Congress would have to approve a change like that.
• 
But on campuses, many students aren't waiting for Congress to act.
• 
They've decided to impose censorship right now.
• 
Recently, kids at the purportedly impressive Northwestern University try to ban Jeff Sessions from speaking out loud.
• 
Meanwhile, over at Harvard, the student government association on campus ... passed a statement condemning the student newspaper on campus because — listen to this — it had dared to ask the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to comment on a story.
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They didn't endorse ICE.  Someone just called up and said, "Hey ICE, can we get a comment?"
• 
Now, ICE didn't respond and didn't provide a comment, but it didn't matter.
• 
More than 650 students at Harvard — Harvard — signed a petition condemning the paper for contacting ICE.
• 
The young Democrats at Harvard's campus issued a statement claiming the paper had "deliberately chosen to put our students in jeopardy."
• 
One campus activist group is now urging a boycott of the newspaper because calling ICE was just that scary.
• 
... it's really kind of ominous because our meritocracy is essentially fraudulent, and our system is completely rigged for the benefit of a few.
• 
A lot of these shallow neurotic narcissists we're making fun of will, in the end, wind up running this country.
• 
Those people writhing on the floor about how they're so "threatened" — they're going to be in charge.
• 
They shouldn't be.  But because the system is rigged, they will be.
• 
They'll be making the decisions that affect your life and the lives of your children and grandchildren.
• 
And these are the people who literally couldn't care less about the First Amendment or any amendment, or in fact, any document that might limit their power in any way.
• 
They consider themselves gods, and they'd like you to shut up and obey.
• 
And they'll use force if they have to.
• 
So what kind of place will America be when those people take over?
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Trump impeachment hearings are desperate Democratic attack on him – No reason to impeach  (Fox 11/13/2019)
• 
The U.S.  Constitution says this about impeachment: "The President ... shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
• 
While the exact meaning of these words can be contested, there can be no doubt that they are real limitations on unchecked congressional power.
• 
They make clear our founders did not provide the awesome impeachment power as a tool to remove a duly elected president because of a political disagreement.
• 
President Trump has not been accused of anything for which he can be credibly impeached, but the dangerous ideology of the far left does not recognize legal limits or fundamental fairness.
• 
The president's opponents are determined to win at all costs to undo the results of the last election and to manipulate the results of the next one.
• 
The old Soviet Union was famous for show trials – fake trials where the result was already understood, where everything was just for show, and where the accused was already certain to be found guilty before the case was even presented.
• 
Ask yourself this: Regardless of the case the Democrats layout against the president, is there any chance at all that the Democratic House will not vote to impeach him?  Any chance at all?
• 
The conclusion of the Democratic majority in the House is predetermined and does not rely on – or have any connection to – evidence.
• 
Impeachment in this circumstance is a very dangerous action.
• 
It is founded on passion, hysteria, and yellow journalism – the very things that concerned our wise founders.
• 
An impeachment by the House on such shoddy grounds would be a dark day indeed.
• 
It would create a precedent that opens the door for the political removal of a president, undermining the validity of our elections and subverting the will of the American people.
• 
This is political theater, a desperate attempt to weaken a president who has deeply offended the powers that be in Washington.
• 
He refuses to play their games, and they will stop at nothing to ensure that he is defeated.
• 
Every day, President Trump is achieving things that make life better for the American people and fighting hard for them.
• 
It is time for responsible Democrats to stand up for law, reason and history by stopping this reckless excess.
• 
Sadly, restraint and calm judgment seem lost on Democrats as they hurtle forward, heedless of the damage they are doing to our republic.
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See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gutfeld on the impeachment circus  (Fox 11/13/2019)
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A witness who witnesses nothing.  Hearsay based on hearsay.
• 
A bloated spectacle designed to turn a phone call into a crime.
• 
I guess they all got the same email from CNN President Jeff Zucker.
• 
So the guilty verdict comes first, which brings us to this lame show trial.
• 
It's aimed at ginning up public fears about the next "worst thing ever" that never happens, because this is never about what Trump has done.  It's about what he "could" do.
• 
This whole thing is a crappy horror movie scripted by Democrats for the media, with Schiff and his bunch playing the bug-eyed zombies.
• 
Actually, this is worse than a horror film.  It's porn for Democrats.  Remember their safe words?
• 
"This sounds like a quid pro quo directed by the president," said CNN's Wolf Blitzer.  "Very clear quid pro quo," said MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell.  Many other television hosts and guests said the same thing.
• 
No, you dopes.  That's called leverage.
• 
Using it on behalf of your country is Trump's job, especially when he couldn't trust anyone else to do it.
• 
Every day we heard of people trying to stop him, so what do you expect?
• 
And how could we have a presidential candidate whose son is beholden to Ukraine and China?
• 
If Trump hadn't investigated, that would have been impeachable.
• 
Trump broke no laws.  He may bend the rules a bit, but only because he has to do it, since the media and Democrats write the rulebook.
• 
That's why this impeachment spectacle is just a repeat of the collusion spectacle.
• 
A mysterious source triggers a massive investigation that goes nowhere.
• 
We've seen it.  We've done it.  We've paid for it.
• 
Skip it and show up next November.  Give these clowns a hearing they'll never forget.
      Gutfeld on Northwestern paper’s pathetic apology  (Fox 11/12/2019)
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You want to know how bad college has become?
• 
... published a hilariously pathetic apology to activists after covering a speech on campus by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
• 
Activists felt the event shouldn't be covered, because they prefer that only their opinions be heard.
• 
The cowardly paper caved like a cheap tent, apologizing for sending a reporter to cover the event, and pathetically saying that from now on, they'll only cover stuff that doesn't hurt any feelings.
• 
Think about that.  A newspaper apologizing for reporting the news.
• 
It's another example of how the lunatic fringe has silenced dialogue by smearing it as hateful or harmful.
• 
Mind you, the loudest, worst kinds of "expression" – sometimes even violent – comes from these wimpy twerps.
• 
Yet, they don't see their psychic violence as harming other people.  Why is that?
• 
It's college, a corpse rotting from within.
• 
So while the paper pretends to cover news, it will be the "news" that activists approve.
• 
Which may be why real journalism is dying.
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See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Can American billionaires cover the cost of Warren's health plan?  (INN 11/11/2019)
• 
... adding up the total net worth of the top 400 American billionaires only reaches about $3 Trillion.
• 
Even if you render every US billionaire penniless, the total only covers about 8 months of Warren's plan.
• 
Sen.  Warren (like the entire Democrat party) is a fraud.
• 
A bigger fraud is being perpetrated by the American news media which has decided to ignore that reality.
• 
More important, Sen.  Warren's "wealth-tax" on assets is actually unconstitutional.
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The United States had to pass a constitutional amendment to allow the Federal government to tax its citizens' incomes in the first place. 
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... on July 2, 1909 Congress passed the 16th Amendment which authorized the Federal government to tax income.
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It was ultimately ratified, after 4 years by the states, on February 2, 1913.
• 
The actual amendment reads: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. 
• 
The key operative words are "Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes." Nowhere does the Amendment authorize taxes on "assets." Hence, any tax on "assets" will likely be constitutionally challenged and rejected.
• 
The greatest danger is not the fraudulent Democrat Party spewing "divide and conquer" politics.
• 
The greatest danger is the American media that is hiding the truth of the Democrat's fraud from the American people.
• 
What we are witnessing is an evil conspiracy with the Democrat Party to cause America'grave harm.
• 
In conclusion, Sen.  Warren is a fraud, and the Democrat Party is a bigger one.
• 
Unless we Americans start to educate ourselves, and dig ourselves out from under the American Legacy Media's Big Lies, we will soon find ourselves enslaved to malevolent forces beyond our imagination.
      Gutfeld on gender reveal mishaps  (Fox 11/11/2019)
• 
The need to belong leads us to adopt behaviors we see in other people as a way not to stand out.
• 
... today, idiotic behavior seems to get the most attention.
• 
We see more people doing dumb things, subconsciously in order to belong, and knowingly in order to be noticed.  Idiocy is a virus.
• 
The media don't help, spreading dumb trends far and wide.
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All you're left with is a giant mess that other people have to clean up.
      THIS is the impeachment question every Trump supporter should be prepared to answer  (Fox 11/11/2019)
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As Hamilton put it in "Federalist 65," high crimes and misdemeanors are offenses that: "...  proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from abuse or violation of some public trust.  They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they chiefly relate to injuries done immediately to the society itself."
• 
Legally, then, impeachable offenses need not be courtroom-prosecutable crimes.
• 
They are in the nature, instead, of abuses of power, derelictions of the office holder's fiduciary duties.
• 
Sounds straightforward enough.  Except it's not.
• 
The Framers, you see, did not leave impeachment to judges.  They left it to Congress, i.e., to a political branch.*
• 
And because they feared that this could give the legislature too much power over the executive, or that a politicized faction in Congress could exploit the impeachment power frivolously against a rival president, they made impeachment-and-removal very difficult to do.
• 
A simple House majority may vote articles of impeachment, but it takes a two-thirds' supermajority of the Senate to convict – i.e., to oust the president from office.
• 
That is not the way things work with straight legal questions.  In those, an impartial factfinder reaches the legal conclusion under the guidance of an impartial judge.
• 
In theory, it's a simple application of legal definitions to the facts of the case.
• 
Impeachment, to the contrary, is left to the politicians.
• 
Moreover, the supermajority requirement in the Senate assures that no misconduct will be found impeachable unless the public strongly and broadly believes the president should be removed.
• 
Only that intense political pressure would spur two-thirds of the Senate to convict, regardless of partisan loyalties.
• 
Even if we have misconduct that is abusive enough to meet Hamilton's definition, is it so egregious that the nation is convinced it warrants the president's removal from office?_
• 
That depends on the circumstances.
• 
Let's say you believe the president abused his power by asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens for violations of Ukrainian law in order to help his 2020 campaign – something that has not been established, but that people could reasonably conclude happened.
• 
You might conclude that this misconduct would meet Hamilton's definition of an impeachable offense.
• 
But you might also quite reasonably conclude that it is not impeachable under the circumstances.
• 
Remember, the Ukrainians got their defense aid – which was in addition to defense aid President Trump was already providing to them, aid that President Obama denied for years, with no objection from Democrats, despite Russian aggression.
• 
The Ukrainians did not have to agree to investigate the Bidens to get the aid.
• 
Plus, there would have been nothing wrong with Trump's conditioning aid to a notoriously corrupt country on its commitment to combat corruption generally; nor would there be any impropriety in the president's asking Ukraine to assist the Justice Department's ongoing probe of the origins of the Obama administration's 2016 Trump-Russia investigation – which appears to have had a Ukrainian component (Ukrainian investigative agencies being pressed by American agencies and Democrats to investigate Paul Manafort, Trump's one-time campaign chairman; Ukrainian officials colluding with the Clinton campaign).
• 
It implies the fraught political calculation: Is what happened so serious that the president should be removed from office.
• 
As the Framers' formula instructs, and as President Bill Clinton's impeachment confirms, the answer to that question is: It depends.
• 
On the facts of the Ukraine episode, the answer is no.
      Socialism guarantees failure and suffering – So why do so many Americans support it?  (Fox 11/07/2019)
      Where Are the High Crimes and Misdemeanors?  (11/07/2019)
      Sen.  Ted Cruz: Trump has achieved historic impact with THIS action  (Fox 11/06/2019)
• 
Few legacies will be longer lasting than this judicial one.
• 
These new judges are principled constitutionalists who have demonstrated excellence and professionalism throughout their legal careers.
• 
These are judges we can rightly expect will remain faithful to the law.
• 
This is good news for all of us who care about the Constitution, individual liberty, and democracy.
• 
Over the last several years, the far-left has failed time and time again to convince their fellow Americans of the rightness of their radical positions.
• 
Instead, they have turned to the courts to advance their out-of-touch agenda.
• 
From upholding illegal executive amnesty to undermining religious liberty, the courts have rarely disappointed the left.
• 
Sadly, the left's abuse of the courts doesn't end there.
• 
A growing number of Senate Democrats and 2020 presidential hopefuls support the notion of packing the Supreme Court.
• 
Contrary to the foundations of our legal system, Democrats are openly calling for judges to enforce and mandate their own political preferences from the bench, foregoing the notion of independence and impartiality.
• 
In their view, it is now the job of judges to take the blindfold off Lady Justice and to legislate.
• 
Democrats in Congress are eagerly relinquishing their responsibility to pass laws, and instead are relying on the courts to deliver their preferred policy outcomes.
• 
Democrats have stopped trying to persuade the public; they only seek to persuade unelected judges.
• 
... the 2016 election was not only a referendum on our Supreme Court; it was a referendum on the direction of our entire judicial system.
• 
The American people had the option between a faithful originalist vision of the Constitution and a progressive liberal activist vision, and they rightly chose faithful originalism.
• 
See related Who Are You Voting for? (Glenn McCoy, 08/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Trump impeachment vote is Democratic declaration of war – Republicans must declare war on Dems  (Fox 11/01/2019)
• 
With House passage Thursday of a resolution formalizing their blatantly partisan impeachment witch hunt against President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow crazed radical Democrats have declared war on the duly elected president of the United States.
• 
Now it's time for Republicans to draw up their own declaration of war against Democrats.
• 
The Democrats – who didn't pick up a single Republican vote for their baseless resolution to move forward with a kangaroo court masquerading as public impeachment hearings – are choosing to tear apart the country we all love because they are consumed by their burning hatred for President Trump.
• 
This charade isn't about anything President Trump has done wrong, because he hasn't done anything to warrant impeachment.
• 
Instead, the Democrats are improperly using the impeachment process to weaken public support for the president in an effort to defeat him in the 2020 presidential election.
• 
The American people must hold the Democrats accountable for their abuse of power.
• 
The lack of judgment on display by the desperate Democrats – who fear that Trump's enormous achievements in office will ensure his reelection – is stunning.
• 
... driven by Trump Derangement Syndrome, Democrats are determined to pursue impeachment regardless of the harm it causes to our nation and to their own party.
• 
Pelosi, ... Schiff and their Democratic co-conspirators in their attempted coup are going to do whatever they want, however they want, because they think the rules don't apply to them.
• 
After all, who's going to call them out for their misdeeds – their partisan allies at the fake and corrupt New York Times and Washington Post?  Come on.
• 
Let's face it: unhinged radical Democratic Reps.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are calling the shots on behalf of a mob of anti-Trump socialists who have seized control of the Democratic Party.
• 
Sadly, the biased mainstream media are willing accomplices in this anti-Trump hysteria.
• 
The Fourth Estate will never recover from this epic failure of duty.
• 
Rants about President Trump abusing his power and jeopardizing national security are a clever cover story for what this charade truly is – an attempt to substitute the judgment of Democratic politicians for the votes of the American people.
• 
The reason Schiff's fake whistleblower hasn't testified yet is because he doesn't pass the smell test.
• 
This individual is an anti-Trump political operative, not a whistleblower.
• 
If Schiff won't call the whistleblower and the other deep state co-conspirators in to testify, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., must.
• 
If Democrats want to investigate phone calls, President Trump should release transcripts of calls by former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Biden with world leaders from countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Iran.
• 
The American people should get to read the transcript of the call just before Obama sent pallets of cash totaling $400 million to the America-hating mullahs in Iran.
• 
Now Senate Republicans need to lock arms and push back against this madness.
• 
These are not normal times.  The Democratic Party is throwing historical precedent, due process and congressional decorum out the window.
• 
This is not the Nixon impeachment of 1974 or the Clinton impeachment of 1998, where there was actual criminal wrongdoing.
• 
This is a political coup attempt against President Trump and his 63 million voters because Democrats fear they can't defeat him at the ballot box.
• 
The Democrats are making a mockery of our system of government and the Constitution and they must be confronted head-on.
• 
The Democrats are at war with President Trump.
• 
Every single Republican at every level of government must now unite and put their battle gear on.
• 
It's time to put this coup attempt down.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Goodwin: A tragedy for the nation – and democracy  (NYP 11/01/2019)
• 
Another day, another ­giant step on the road to ruin.
• 
Either Nancy Pelosi has lost her mind or she really wants to dig America's grave.
• 
The vote to formalize the impeachment jihad is a great day for Trump haters and a tragedy for democracy and common sense.
• 
Coming a year before an election and without a compelling claim that the president committed anything remotely resembling "high crimes and misdemeanors," the action is an abuse of power for purely partisan purposes.
• 
The fact that no Republicans joined the hit squad exposes the lie that there is a "bipartisan" push against President Trump.
• 
After months of pushing back against impeachment, Pelosi has abandoned any pretense of being a leader.
• 
She has jumped on the bandwagon led by such kooks as Texas Rep.  Al Green.
• 
He has been demanding impeachment since 2017 — on what grounds, he didn't know and didn't care.
• 
The failure of special counsel Robert Mueller to deliver the goods only added to Green's zeal.
• 
"I'm concerned that if we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected."
• 
There's probably truth to that, but Green missed a larger truth.
• 
The only thing that could be worse for Dems would be impeaching Trump with no evidence of a crime or a serious abuse of office.
• 
That's what they're doing — and four more years just got more likely.
• 
The effort to overturn the 2016 results is such a radical event that it raises the question of whether polarization has become fatal to our republic.
• 
If so, then elections will never settle anything again.
• 
Each loser will simply look for a way to erase the outcome as if it never happened.
• 
But then how do we settle our differences if elections don't have consequences?
• 
There are no good answers to that question, yet that's the dynamic Pelosi is creating.
• 
Why wouldn't the next GOP House do the same thing to the next Dem president?
• 
... it remains a fact that his greatest sin was defeating Hillary Clinton and smashing the legacy of Barack Obama.
• 
For that, he must be destroyed.
• 
And if America goes down with him, that's fine with the far-left crazies.
• 
They never liked the country anyway.
      Remembering — and Talking About — Lynching in America  (JWR 10/31/2019)
• 
One of the most important lessons from lynchings is that there is nothing special about Americans as human beings, per se.
• 
We are subject to the same whims and caprices; the same capacity for rationalization and retaliation; the same biases; the same capability for violence; and the same thirst for vengeance as those of any other people.
• 
The only things standing between us and a complete breakdown into the anarchy, chaos and bloodshed we've seen elsewhere are the moral underpinnings of our society and the principles of justice set forth in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
• 
As our own history shows, the procedural protections created by the founders and put into the Constitution have admittedly not been consistently applied.
• 
But the instances where they have not been — like lynching — serve to demonstrate the importance of those principles and protections.
• 
Even with them, we can descend into barbarism.  Without them, we surely would.
      Trump-hating Democrats doing whatever it takes to impeach, ignoring precedents  (Fox 10/31/2019)
• 
... the partisan Democrats held Soviet-style secret hearings in the basement of the Capitol led by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
• 
Rather than holding a House vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made a unilateral declaration that the House was commencing a formal impeachment inquiry led by extreme partisan Schiff and the Intelligence Committee – long after House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told the nation that such an effort was underway in his committee.
• 
The House Judiciary Committee, which historically has handled impeachment proceedings, is one of the committees being shut out.
• 
What is particularly crazy about this Democratic attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election is the failure to hold a vote by the full House to open an impeachment inquiry against the president.
• 
Everyone knows the Democrats decided before this whole charade began that they were determined to conclude President Trump should be impeached.
• 
They're improvising whatever process they can patch together to reach that preconceived conclusion and make it look legitimate.
• 
The rules for an impeachment inquiry are encased in the motion that opens the process itself.
• 
It assigns the committee that will preside over the investigation, usually the Judiciary Committee, and sets the rules to make sure the proceedings are fair.
• 
I am surprised that people who dislike President Trump do so with so much venom.
• 
They are willing to set aside the norms and precedents designed to grant due process rights to the president and allow the American people to witness the process that is going to determine whether the 2016 presidential election will be overturned.
• 
You may not like President Trump and you may be content with overturning the will of over 60 million American voters.
• 
But take a moment to appreciate the new and enduring precedent that is being set here.
• 
We may never again see Congress act according to rules designed to protect minority rights and due process.
• 
At some point in the future, America will have a Democratic president again.
• 
Democrats will no doubt object if Republicans treat a Democrat in the White House the way they are treating President Trump in their impeachment effort.
• 
Anyone who believes railroading a Democrat toward an unjustified impeachment would be wrong should also oppose the improper effort now underway by Democrats to impeach President Trump.
      Obama would have been impeached under standards Democrats are applying to Trump  (Fox 10/31/2019)
• 
Did Obama withhold documents?  Daily.  Did he hold back witnesses?  Regularly.  Did he unnecessarily delay congressional inquiries?  Yes.
• 
Did Obama encourage foreign governments to help him politically?  Absolutely.  Did his vice president – Joe Biden – engage in manipulation of a foreign prosecutor?  Sure did.
• 
Did a Republican-controlled House ever seriously consider impeaching President Obama?  Of course not.
• 
It would have been absurd – just as absurd as the effort now underway by the Democratic majority in today's House to impeach Trump.
• 
The natural tensions found between the legislative and executive branches of government when two different parties share power is not a new phenomenon.
• 
The United States has lived through these political differences for more than 200 years.
• 
Yet this election cycle is different.  The Democrats have been hyperventilating about Trump's mere presence since he descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy.
• 
The establishment doesn't like Trump and the media want to get him out of Washington.
• 
But the economy is doing great, foreign policy is succeeding, and the prospect of Trump winning a second term is high.
• 
On.  January 20, 2017 The Washington Post published a story headlined "The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun."
• 
This was the first day of the Trump presidency – but his opponents already wanted him out office.
• 
By contrast, when I was a Republican in the House of Representatives when President Obama was in office we sought accountability and followed the facts, but never seriously suggested impeaching the president.
• 
Based on the loose, make-it-up-as-we-go secretive "impeachment" proceedings by Speaker Pelosi, she should have sought to impeach President Obama.
• 
He would have never had a chance.
      Democrats holding Soviet-style show trial to overthrow Trump – not an impeachment inquiry  (Fox 10/31/2019)
• 
Democrats, Pelosi said, are voting to affirm "the ongoing, existing investigation." In other words, the idea is to give a stamp of approval to Schiff's Commissariat for Justice, which has been marked by no transparency and no due process, where elected Republican House members must be chaperoned by unelected Democratic staff members if they want to look at the evidence.
• 
Last week Republicans rightfully stormed these Soviet-style secret proceedings, where exonerating evidence benefitting the president is kept hidden behind secure doors reserved for classified briefings, even though the depositions of witnesses were not classified.
• 
Who will be running the show (trial)?  Bucking precedent, the reins will remain in Adam Schiff's hands.
• 
The same Adam Schiff who lied about evidence of Trump-Russia collusion for more than two years, lied about what President Trump said on the phone call with the president of Ukraine, and lied about his committee meeting with the "whistleblower."
• 
This resolution proves Democrats are making up the rules as they go along.
• 
First step: manufacture a scandal, collude with a registered Democrat in the CIA, and leak to allies in the media to whip up hysteria around a phone call.
• 
What happens when President Trump called their bluff and released the transcript of the phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, proving nothing was improper?
• 
The Democrats changed the rules again, and retreated behind closed doors.
• 
It is easier to strongarm witnesses in the basement of the Capitol than in a public hearing.  Schiff has been doing his best impersonation of a mob boss lately – not just when he made up his own fake dialogue of the Trump-Zelensky phone call.
• 
"Ambassador, you're making this much more complicated than it has to be," Schiff said, as he leaned on former U.S.  special representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, when Volker did not give Schiff what he wanted to hear and repeatedly denied that Ukraine felt any pressure to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
• 
Lacking substance, the Democrats tried to generate some through a rigged process.
• 
Over the course of their impeachment in name only, they have selectively leaked bits of information that – surprise, surprise – only fits the Democrats' false narrative.
• 
By not releasing full transcripts of testimony, Democrats have controlled the flow of information to allow them to pretend fourth-hand hearsay about a phone call that is already public is a "smoking gun."
• 
Now the Democrats are trying to dress up their impeachment charade with a resolution on an inquiry that was never officially opened, all while ceding complete control of the process to Schiff.
• 
While Democrats promised more transparency, they instead restricted the members who are allowed to participate.
• 
As long as Schiff is in charge, we know this will be the same partisan game: all smoke and mirrors with no "there."
• 
The goal was never fairness.  The mission was to overthrow a duly elected president and it remains unchanged.
• 
Democrats are making a mockery of the Constitution.
• 
An endeavor as monumental as overturning the will of the American people deserves deference to longstanding rules and procedures.
• 
But Democrats have long since thrown out the rulebook.
• 
They abide by only one rule: Get Trump.
• 
Unfortunately for them, their partisan tricks will ensure they will get him – for four more years in the White House.
      Gun Grabbers Misleading Us  (JWR 10/30/2019)
      Gutfeld on Obama calling out cancel culture  (Fox 10/30/2019)
• 
On Wednesday we woke up to breaking news.  President Barack Obama isn't woke.  At all.
• 
"This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke, and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly," Obama said.
• 
"The world is messy.  There are ambiguities.  People who do really good stuff have flaws.  People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you."
• 
You're telling me that ruining people because they're not as politically pure as you is wrong?
• 
Hurray!  How is Don Lemon taking this?  Is Chris Cuomo still conscious?
• 
What is The New York Times editorial board going to do?
• 
I hope BuzzFeed, Vox, Jezebel, and Media Matters have taken all their meds.
• 
It's good to hear this guy bash leftist "cancel culture," but I wish he'd done it when it mattered.  That is, when he was president.
• 
My theory is that he didn't realize how bad it was until his kids came home from college and said, "Holy crap, dad!  Avocados are tools of the patriarchy!"
• 
They say you never grow up until your kids come home from college.
• 
The problem with woke culture is that the moment you criticize it, you become the enemy.
• 
So will this "red-pilled" Obama be canceled?
• 
Who knows, but I give him a year before he's listening to Rush Limbaugh in his "MAGA" hat.
      Hey, AOC, California wildfires look like government dereliction of duty not climate change  (Fox 10/30/2019)
• 
"This is what climate change looks like" tweeted liberal Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sharing images of a burning state and showing support for her Green New Deal, the vegan-mandating, airplane-eliminating, hundred trillion dollar regressive proposal.
• 
Climate change is the cause, and legislation, putting government in charge of everything, is the answer.
• 
Climate change is the perfect villain.  It is nameless, faceless, and most of all, it is everywhere.
• 
At first the evils of climate change were relegated to the climate meaning blistering heat.
• 
But then, so too is the polar vortex blamed on climate change.  As is too much snow or a lack of snow.
• 
Over time every phenomena in nature from hurricanes to tornados to typhoons to earthquakes were caused or exacerbated by climate change.
• 
But why stop at nature?  What if we can show that climate change is the "real" cause of illegal immigration and also the need for greater government-run health care?
• 
What if climate change contributes to racism, and misogyny?
• 
Want more?
• 
Climate change, according to President Obama, was our greatest national security threat and was responsible for much of America's crumbling infrastructure. 
• 
Add to that ever-growing list California's fires.  Because this is certain: climate change is the cause, and government is the solution.
• 
And that is very, very convenient for elected officials.
• 
If a mayor or a governor, or even the president, can blame everything on the ethereal and yet omnipotent "climate change" he can quite literally wash his hands of responsibility and justify both lethargy and incompetence.
• 
In the months where California was fire-free (roughly mid-December 2018 and mid-May 2019) what did the state do to prevent fires?
• 
Nothing.  Why?  Climate change.
• 
There are a few man-made reasons why California seems to be constantly burning.
• 
First off: it is dry.  Not from climate change but from poor water management.
• 
California's forest are ignored, a claim President Trump made with which even Californians agree on.
• 
Decades of "green" policies protecting trees and wildlife, good intentions aside, created a tinder box of dead wood and overgrown brush.
• 
In some areas, locals are hoping the timber industry can prevent further fires.  The private sector to the rescue, yet again.
• 
Prevention goes a long way, and California does have resources.
• 
Since 2001 it has given over $100 billion in green technology subsidies.  Nothing for fire preventing or mitigation strategies.
• 
Could climate change be the reason for excessive winds and dry weather?  Of course.
• 
But when does a governor start governing?  When does a leader start leading?
• 
It matters little that the governor is "committed to addressing climate change" when he's not committed to preventing forest fires. 
• 
"This is what climate change looks like" Ms.  Ocasio-Cortez tweeted with the hashtag "#GreenNewDeal".
• 
But she is wrong on both counts.
• 
What's happening in California is what government incompetence and dereliction of duty looks like.
• 
And big government is not the solution.
• 
See related The End IS Near... (Michael Ramirez, 01/24/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Green New Deal (Gary Varvel, 03/16/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Impeachment insanity – It's not clear exactly what 'high crime' Trump committed  (Fox 10/30/2019)
• 
... when he ran three years ago, President Trump didn't hide how he felt about U.S.  foreign policy.
• 
He told voters that America was involved in too many pointless wars.
• 
He criticized then-President Obama for having bad relations with Russia.
• 
The Trump administration, he promised, would pursue better relations with Vladimir Putin.
• 
Now, that may sound shocking, but in fact, it was not an unprecedented idea.
• 
Obama ran on something close to this in 2012, and the public supported it then, too.  He won.
• 
But now that same idea isn't simply unpopular in Washington; our ruling class considers it illegal.
• 
"As in previous times of national peril, we rely on our military, diplomats, intelligence officials, law enforcement officers and other courageous patriots to protect our liberties, freedom and democracy.  May they stay resolute and strong despite corrupt political headwinds they face."
• 
Got that?  Unelected bureaucrats uphold — wait for it — "democracy." Elected officials subvert democracy.
• 
In John Brennan's Orwellian world, the most pressing and imminent threat to this republic is voters.
      Left incapable of celebrating Trump for any reason – Call it al-Baghdadi derangement syndrome  (Fox 10/29/2019)
• 
It was a moment that should have united this fractious country — we could use it.
• 
Instead, it became more fodder for those who profit from our division.
• 
President Trump: "He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way."
• 
"He was a sick and depraved man."
• 
"And he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward running and crying."
• 
"He died like a dog.  He died like a coward.  The world is now a much safer place."
• 
"Sick and depraved," it turns out, is not an overstatement.
• 
As the head of the ISIS caliphate, Baghdadi ran one of the most gruesome death cults in human history.
• 
In Syria and Iraq, his followers murdered untold thousands, beheaded them, and drowned them, and set them on fire, often on camera.
• 
In the U.S.  and in Europe, terrorists pledging alliance to Baghdadi killed hundreds in mass shootings, bombings and vehicle attacks.
• 
So Baghdadi's death is really nothing less than a victory for civilization itself.
• 
And yet, here in Washington, many complain that Trump had dared to kill him.
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi whined that she hadn't been given appropriate notice of the operation — as if it were all about her.
• 
Former Obama National Intelligence Director James Clapper, meanwhile, told television viewers that, somehow, the killing of the ISIS leader would make ISIS stronger.
• 
And then on CNN, some compared the president to ISIS.  ... "Some of which sort of echoed, frankly, the crudeness you would often expect to hear maybe from ISIS about the whimpering, screaming Baghdadi pinned down in a sealed tunnel."
• 
Philip Mudd, CNN counterterrorism analyst: "You do not celebrate death.  I don't care if it's a terrorist.  I don't care if it's someone you hate.  A human being has died.  We don't celebrate that.  I would not use that and I find it — it's embarrassing."
• 
"I would not use that language," says the guy who is making a career out of screaming and foaming on television.
• 
... one of the reporters compiled a listicle called "The 41 Most Shocking Lines from Donald Trump's Baghdadi Announcement." — CNN really reaching new lows every day.
• 
Boot complained that Trump wasn't respectful enough of Baghdadi: "Trump could not have heard whimpering and crying because there was no audio.  The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up."
• 
In other words, says Max Boot, Baghdadi was a hero of sorts and shame on Trump for calling him a coward!
• 
... MSNBC devoted significant coverage to the question of whether Baghdadi actually "whimpered" before he died.
• 
... award goes to the Washington Post.  Here's how that paper chose to announce Baghdadi's death: "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at the helm of Islamic State, dies at 48."
• 
That's one for the scrapbook.  You can find it with other memorable headlines from history.
• 
"Goal-oriented German leader with distinctive mustache found dead in bunker."
• 
"Joseph Stalin, former seminarian and movie buff, dies peacefully at 74."
• 
"Usama bin Laden, husband to five, killed in home invasion."
• 
So what is this about?  Well, ultimately, you're watching the flailing of a leadership class that despises the country it governs.
• 
They loathe the elected president so much, they're incapable of acknowledging any accomplishment, no matter what it is.
• 
Trump is bad.  Trump killed Baghdadi.  Therefore killing Baghdadi was bad.  That's how these purported geniuses actually think.
• 
They are purely reactive about everything, not just the death of terrorists.
• 
These are the very people who sat by idly as our entire middle class died.
• 
And then China rose to take America's place as leader of the world, and virtually alone among political figures, Trump noted these things.
• 
"Hey, what's going on?" he said.  He ran on those issues and he won.
• 
And in response to that, rather than learn something, our leadership class took the opposite side.
• 
They took the side of the fentanyl smugglers from Mexico.
• 
They took the side of our mortal enemies and the fascist government of China.
• 
Those are not positions you would take if you cared about your people.
• 
But at this point, it is pretty obvious, they hate Trump far more than they love America.
      Al-Baghdadi's death is a big deal.  Democrats ought to ditch the partisanship and laud his demise  (Fox 10/29/2019)
• 
Only extreme partisans intent on denying President Trump any credit for any success would be critical of the operation he ordered that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• 
These extreme partisans include Speaker Nancy Pelosi who, while praising the "heroism" of the special unit that conducted the raid on al-Baghdadi's location in Northern Syria, could not bring herself to say anything nice about the president.
• 
Instead, she said the House should have been notified in advance.
• 
Why?  Does the House command troops?
• 
Pelosi lamented that Russia was informed, but that was because Russian weapons and troops were in areas over which American helicopters flew in order to reach their target.
• 
... the president reminded forgetful Americans of the type of organization al-Baghdadi led.
• 
He recalled prisoners dressed in orange jumpsuits, who were shown on videos with knives at their throats and later beheaded.
• 
He also said, "Baghdadi was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way — as a coward, running and crying."
• 
Some commentators on various TV networks kept referring to al-Baghdadi's "ideology."
• 
His was more than an ideology.  Communism is an ideology.  Fascism is an ideology.
• 
What motivated al-Baghdadi and other ISIS fighters was religion.
• 
When one believes he is on "a mission from God" ... there is little to stop him, other than death.
• 
Radical Islamists believe their death in fighting us "infidels" is a guaranteed ticket to Heaven.
• 
How does one deter that, other than by helping them punch their ticket?
• 
Radical Islam is a virus.  It is not contained within borders.  It does not have a capital that can be bombed.
• 
That is why its evil nature must always be exposed and its goals thwarted.
• 
Yes, others will sign up and those currently ISIS members will likely be even more motivated by revenge.
• 
Still, others may see the cowardly behavior of al-Baghdadi and be motivated to either quit the organization, or not join it in the first place.
• 
Americans have a short attention span and need to have their memories jogged from time to time about the multiple threats that confront all free people who wish to maintain their freedom, which is never cheap.
• 
Our troops deserve praise, as does the president for making this happen.
• 
There will be more terrorist leaders, but at least this one has bitten the dust.
      Goodwin: Why are Democrats acting like they have something to hide?  (NYP 10/28/2019)
• 
With no end in sight to the madness gripping Washington, it is wise to seize on any possible sign of humor to brighten the day.
• 
Responding to reports that Attorney General William Barr's investigation into the 2016 spying on Donald Trump's campaign is now a criminal probe, Schiff and Nad­ler laid down their thumbscrews and emerged from their impeachment dungeon to express outrage.
• 
In unison, the twin Trump tormentors declared that partisanship has infected the Justice Department and "the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage."
• 
Despite stiff competition from two centuries of congressional hypocrisy, that is a first-rate howler.
• 
If you can't laugh at Schiff and Nadler accusing anyone else of damaging the rule of law for partisan purposes, you don't have a sense of humor.
• 
They have violated every historic precedent, not to mention simple decency, by conducting their impeachment probe in a secret star chamber.
• 
They leak juicy fragments to the media echo chamber, which would be a federal crime for real prosecutors.
• 
Then they squeal and gnash their teeth when the worm starts to turn.  Come on, people, this is hilarious!
• 
It is true, of course, that some in Washington will see nothing amusing about Barr's monumental decision.
• 
Still, if they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide, right?
• 
After all, that's the standard Schiff, Nadler, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and every two-bit prosecutor in America has applied to the Trump White House.
• 
Their approach from Day One has been merciless: Guilty first, a trial later.
• 
Give us everything we want, or we'll accuse you of ­obstruction of justice and treason, too.
• 
Oh, and when you come to testify behind closed doors, bring your toothbrush because if you don't tell us what we want to hear, you're not going home.
• 
Finally and thankfully, the other side of the story is about to be ­revealed.
• 
"It's all the stuff that scares the crap out of people.  ... We may find out that the people entrusted with our most sacred powers are criminals themselves."
• 
Although there is no certainty, logic suggests that Barr authorized the switch to a criminal probe because there are, in fact, prosecution referrals in the IG report.
• 
In addition to the review of the wiretapping issue, Barr and Durham also interviewed foreign intelligence officials who may have been recruited by the Obama administration to meddle in the campaign and help spy on Trump.
• 
... The New York Times, CNN and the rest of the Democratic propaganda outlets are furious that the public may finally learn the whole sordid story about one of the most disgraceful episodes in presidential history.
• 
And so they have joined forces with Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi in attacking Barr for daring to hunt for the truth.
• 
In effect, the left-wing media, instead of leading the search for truth, has become the errand boys of those trying to hide it.
• 
This is the ultimate irrationality of the anti-Trump zealots, in and out of the media.
• 
Their hatred for him has distorted their judgment so much that they are willing to help cover up potential crimes and turn Barr into a villain for seeking to enforce the law against corrupt officials.
• 
What if it's all a head fake?
• 
What if the Russia-collusion narrative was created by the FBI and CIA to steal the election?
• 
What if Ukraine is the same thing by another name with a separate group of rogue agents?
• 
The mere possibility that "yes" is the answer to any of those questions should shake every American to the core.
• 
Remember, too, that none of this would have come to light if Hillary Clinton had been elected.
• 
Indeed, the assumption that she was a sure thing for the Oval ­Office helps explain the arrogance of the plotters.
• 
They thought they were immune from suspicion and, ultimately, above the law.
• 
... it is worth repeating again Sen.  Chuck Schumer's infamous warning to Trump: "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."
• 
      Celebrate what’s right about America and our great history – Don’t focus only on our failings  (Fox 10/24/2019)
• 
We Americans are on the verge of some important anniversaries – and not just the centennial of the Roaring Twenties.
• 
Next year we mark the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims.
• 
In 2021, it's the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving.
• 
We're four years away from the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
• 
A little more than five years away from the 250th anniversary of those first shots heard 'round the world at Lexington and Concord.
• 
And about six years away from the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
• 
Those of us around in 1976 remember the Bicentennial of the Declaration.
• 
It was a grand celebration of parades, flags, fireworks and tall ships.
• 
Given the mood of the country today, we have to wonder: What kind of celebrations are we now headed for?
• 
We got a good hint from The New York Times this year with the publication of its 1619 Project, which aims to "reframe U.S.  history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation's foundational date."
• 
It is full of assertions such as "a re-education is necessary" and "if you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation."
• 
For decades now, this has been a problem with many textbooks and social studies lessons.
• 
They tend to highlight the bad – obsessing on blemishes, failings, and atrocities – and go light on the good.  The goal, it seems, is to teach that there is nothing exceptional about our country.
• 
In fact, the message is that American turns out to be a pretty lousy place.
• 
So it's not hard to imagine comments from elites in the media and academia during the coming anniversaries.
• 
The Boston Tea Party patriots who disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians were appropriating a culture they ravaged.
• 
The authors of the Declaration of Independence were rich white men who were greedy for their own liberty but intent on oppressing everyone else.
• 
Here's an old-fashioned but much-needed proposal: Let's not be shy about actually celebrating this country's history and its greatness.
• 
Yes, study and understand the times we've failed, sometimes badly.
• 
But enough of this running down the country again and again.  It's tearing us apart.
• 
How about if, in teaching American history, we start with President Abraham Lincoln's great assertion that this country is the "last best hope of Earth"?
• 
How about if we explain that ours was the first nation in history created out of the belief that people should govern themselves?
• 
That twice in the 20th century, the U.S.  led the way in saving the world from tyranny – first from the Axis powers, then from Soviet totalitarianism?
• 
That over the decades, American capitalism has lifted millions from poverty?
• 
Yes, teach about the history of racism and oppression.
• 
But that is not the beginning or the center of the American story.  To try to make it so is dishonest and an injustice to our students.
• 
American history is the story of a great people who time and again have managed to save themselves and others, to correct wrongs, and to preserve what is still the world's last best hope.
      Cal Thomas: Should billionaires be taxed out of existence, as Bernie Sanders wants?  (Fox 10/24/2019)
• 
He was the Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., of his day.
• 
Charlie Chaplin, the iconic actor and at the time a well-known political leftist (some said communist), delivered a speech in San Francisco in 1941 prior to America's entry into World War II.
• 
"(Chaplin) plunged into a speech extolling the Russians – their ideology (by saying that if communism produces men of such heroic stature, he'll take communism, etc.).  He resented the organized efforts for the last 20 years to present Russians as ogres both here and in England – and by God, if any man can't get along on $25,000 a year, he is a cockeyed liar and a traitor to his country."
• 
According to some estimates, Chaplin had a net worth equal to $400 million when he died in 1977.  Never mind.
• 
At the latest Democratic presidential debate, the millionaire Sanders and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer had an exchange that came from a question about Sanders saying billionaires should be taxed out of existence to help close the "wealth gap."
• 
Sanders responded by ticking off his familiar litany of misery – half a million people living on the streets (he didn't mention that many are in cities and states run by Democrats), the cost of education and student debt (he didn't mention the many options for receiving an education that would substantially reduce student debt), 87 million uninsured, or underinsured (wasn't ObamaCare supposed to fix that?), adding, "you also have three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society."
• 
Sanders called that a "moral outrage," though on his moral scale, abortion on demand is not a problem.
• 
For his part, Steyer sought some moral cover for his wealth, agreeing with Sanders and adding that corporations have "bought this government for the last 40 years."
• 
Don't those four decades include the Clinton and Obama administrations?
• 
We've heard it all before.  The left would take from the prosperous and do what?
• 
Past welfare and redistribution programs haven't liberated the poor.
• 
If they had, there should be fewer poor people.  Wasn't that the stated goal?
• 
Why didn't it happen?  The reason is the government is a bad charity.
• 
What astounds is that younger people who buy into the "wealth gap" nonsense (because that is what they have had drummed into them by teachers and Democratic politicians) have little understanding of economics.
• 
There is no fixed amount of money from which all must draw.
• 
If there were it would be unfair for some to take (earn?) more than others.
• 
Wealth is a bottomless well.  No one is destined to live permanently in the lower class.
• 
The reason envy, greed and entitlement continue to surface in most election cycles is that it appeals to human emotions.
• 
Charging the rich with not paying their "fair share" in taxes is a distraction from the real issue: government spends too much. 
• 
"The Charlie (Chaplin) you once knew has been buried with honors — and a new one has been born.  Let's hope the new one has everlasting life — for he will cling to it as long as that political philosophy remains popular."
• 
Sanders and Steyer seem to believe the Chaplin philosophy remains popular among some voters.
• 
Don't include them, though, because they're rich and you won't see them sending a check to the Treasury.
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      US in Moral Decline  (JWR 10/23/2019)
• 
"Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values."
• 
The attorney general is absolutely correct.  Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality.  The left's attack on religion is just the tiny tip of the iceberg in our nation's moral decline
• 
Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another?
• 
And, if that person does not peaceably submit to such use, do you believe that there should be the initiation of force against him?
• 
Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no.
• 
For me the answer is no to both questions.
• 
I bet that nearly every college professor, politician or even minister could not give a simple yes or no response.
• 
A no answer, translated to public policy, would slash the federal budget by no less than two-thirds to three-quarters.
• 
After all most federal spending consist of taking the earnings of one American to give to another American in the form of farm subsidies, business bailouts, aid to higher education, welfare and food stamps.
• 
Keep in mind that Congress has no resources of its own.
• 
Plus there's no Santa Claus or tooth fairy that gives Congress resources.
• 
Thus, the only way that Congress can give one American a dollar is to first, through intimidation and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.
• 
Such actions by the U.S.  Congress should offend any sense of moral decency.
• 
If you're a Christian or a Jew, you should be against the notion of one American living at the expense of some other American.
• 
When God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment — "Thou shalt not steal" — I am sure that He did not mean thou shalt not steal unless there is a majority vote in the U.S.  Congress.
• 
By the way, I do not take this position because I don't believe in helping our fellow man.
• 
I believe that helping those in need by reaching into one's own pocket to do is praiseworthy and laudable.
• 
But helping one's fellow man in need by reaching into somebody else's pockets to do so is worthy of condemnation.
• 
We must own up to the fact that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society.
• 
Morality is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.
• 
Religious teachings, one way of inculcating morality, have been under siege in our country for well over a half a century.
• 
In the name of not being judgmental and the vision that one lifestyle or set of values is just as good as another, traditional moral absolutes have been abandoned as guiding principles.
• 
We no longer hold people accountable for their behavior and we accept excuses.
• 
In 1798, John Adams, a leading Founding Father and our second president said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
• 
I am all too afraid that a historian, writing a few hundred years from now, will note that the liberty American enjoyed was simply a historical curiosity.
• 
Then it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs — arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.
      Dennis Prager: 'No Safe Spaces' shows the left as 'a purely destructive force'  (Fox 10/22/2019)
• 
The left-wing of the American political spectrum is a "purely destructive force" that has taken over elements of academic life, including free speech on college campuses
• 
"There is an enormous distinction between liberal and left.  Liberals and conservatives have far more in common than either have with the left.  The left is a purely destructive force.
• 
"Whether it's America or Europe or anywhere else.  Liberals and conservatives may differ but they have similar values."
• 
... a "wake-up call" to the American people and claimed free speech is being trampled on to satisfy a political agenda.
• 
... most professors are biased against conservative students, ridiculing the way liberal students are shielded from ideas from conservatives.
• 
"The difference between kindergarten and college is the age of the 'kinder,'"
• 
"They're...  not protecting [people with safe spaces].  They're simply censoring.
• 
"They don't protect conservative students from 90 percent of the professors who teach them the following — this is the message, really in America today, to American young people.  Your past was terrible and your future is terrible."
• 
"It is a tough time to be a young person in the greatest country in the world."
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Democrats' impeachment push on Trump is about undoing a populist revolution, not principle  (Fox 10/21/2019)
• 
"What's more serious is that he [President Trump] can't win," Pelosi said.
• 
But last week, another aspect was revealed, and it shows us what the stakes are in this fight.
• 
Day after day on Capitol Hill, we saw a parade of bureaucrats stepping out of the shadows to attack President Trump.
• 
The establishment state media, of course, couldn't stop fawning over these saintly servants of the people.
• 
"I mean, what we're seeing here is — you're seeing career civil servants whose loyalty is to the institution, to democracy."
• 
No, it's not.  Their loyalty is to their bureaucratic establishment agenda.
• 
The idea that career civil servants are high-minded, politically neutral oracles of wisdom is a joke.
• 
They think Trump is deplorable.  They think you're deplorable, and they think any challenge to their globalist establishment ideology is deplorable.
• 
From day one, the career civil servants have knocked, blocked and plotted against this president.
• 
Mike Pompeo's former aide bleated about "the utilization of ambassadors overseas to advance a domestic political objective."
• 
Yes, that's how it's supposed to work.  The elected politicians are supposed to be in charge, not the unaccountable bureaucrats.
• 
And of course, the swamp is defending its own, in this case, Swamp King Joe Biden, by arguing that overseas corruption by Democrats shouldn't be investigated.
• 
"We've never had a president in the whole history of the United States going back to 1789, who invited one of our strongest adversaries, in this case, China, to intervene and interfere in our election."
• 
"He [Trump] should be impeached by the House.  There should be an inquiry by the Democrats and the Republicans.  I don't think he's fit for office, based on what he said on China and also on Ukraine."
• 
Oh, for goodness sake.  I don't recall him and the rest of the arrogant ruling class giving a monkey's — about foreign interference when its establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton doing it or when they themselves do it...
• 
... boasts about shipping American manufacturing overseas and selling American defense companies to the highest foreign bidder.
• 
So yes, after this week, we can now see the full picture on impeachment for the Democrats — partisan politics for the ruling class and overturning the populist revolution.
• 
They must not win.
      Trump's abandonment of the Kurds is a recipe for endless war, not a strategy to end one  (Fox 10/11/2019)
• 
President Trump has defended his shameful abandonment of our Kurdish allies in Syria, declaring that "I was elected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars" that have left America "bogged down, watching over a quagmire."
• 
Listening to the president, Americans might think that we still have large numbers of U.S.  troops fighting on fronts across the Middle East.  We do not.
• 
The days when we deployed hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle East are long gone.
• 
Today, we have 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, about 5,000 in Iraq and just 1,000 in Syria.
• 
That is a grand total of about 20,000 troops in all three countries.
• 
By contrast, we have about 37,950 U.S.  troops in Germany, 12,750 in Italy, 53,900 in Japan, and 28,500 in South Korea — a total of over 133,000.
• 
In fact, we now have three times more troops deployed in Spain (3,200) than we do in Syria.
• 
Moreover, the vast majority of these U.S.  forces are engaged in a noncombat mission known as "train, advise and assist."
• 
U.S.  allies do most of the fighting, while American troops provide intelligence, operational planning, fire support and airstrike coordination from behind the front lines.
• 
We have helped train and equip about 174,000 Afghan troops, 64,000 Iraqi troops and 60,000 Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops, made up predominantly of Kurdish fighters.
• 
They are the ones engaged in ground combat with America's enemies.
• 
Trump likes to say he "defeated" the Islamic State.  Actually, the bulk of the fighting was done by our Kurdish allies, trained and supported by U.S.  Special Operations forces.
• 
"Over four years, the SDF freed tens of thousands of square miles and millions of people from the grip of ISIS.  Throughout the fight, it sustained nearly 11,000 casualties.  By comparison, six U.S.  service members, as well as two civilians, have been killed in the anti-ISIS campaign."
• 
The Kurds bore the burden of the fight and the brunt of the casualties, and they drove the Islamic State from its physical caliphate.
• 
But the terrorists are far from defeated.
• 
They still have tens of thousands of fighters and vast financial resources.
• 
If we take our boot off their necks, they will come roaring back — just like they did in Iraq on President Obama's watch.
• 
Who is going to stop them?  Since Trump has reduced the U.S.  military presence in Syria to just 1,000 troops, that means we are depending on the Kurds to keep the Islamic State down.
• 
But if we allow Turkey to wipe out our Kurdish allies, who will be left on the ground in Syria to fight the Islamic State?  Answer: No one.
• 
Is Trump ready to deploy American ground forces to do the job?
• 
His abandonment of the Kurds is a recipe for endless war, not a strategy to end one.
• 
It gets worse.  Without U.S.  support, the Kurds will have no choice but to turn to Russia, Iran and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for protection.
• 
The cry that America is fighting "endless wars" is a canard.
• 
Our force levels in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are a shadow of their former selves, and U.S.  forces are not doing the fighting but rather arming and training allies who are doing the fighting for us.
• 
That is the right strategy.
• 
But after watching Trump abandon our allies in Syria to be slaughtered, why would anyone step forward to help America in the fight against Islamist radicalism?
      The president can't have it both  ()
• 
If you don't want American forces fighting "endless wars," then you can't betray your allies.
      I lived through 'socialism' in China – Don't fall for lies told by today's American socialists  (Fox 10/11/2019)
• 
Immigrants like me came to the U.S.  to escape socialism, not to encounter another round of a so-called socialist experiment.
• 
We know all too well where it will lead us.
• 
Socialism has been tried too many times in different places, by different people of different cultures and languages – Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela just to name a few.
• 
No matter where it is implemented, the result will be the same – individual freedom will be destroyed and ultimately there will be death, starvation and misery.
• 
Don't believe the lies told by today's American socialists, who claim that they can implement the system on a fresh slate and have different results.
• 
If you truly value your freedom and your right to self-determination, say no to socialism.
      Members of previous generations now seem like giants — When did we become so small?  (Fox 10/10/2019)
• 
Many of the stories about the gods and heroes of Greek mythology were compiled during Greek Dark Ages.
• 
Dark Age Greeks tried to make sense of the massive ruins of their forgotten forbearers' monumental palaces that were still standing around.
• 
We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants who left behind monuments that we cannot replicate, but instead merely use or even mock.
• 
Does anyone believe that contemporary Americans could build another transcontinental railroad in six years?
• 
Who were those giants of the 1960s responsible for building our interstate highway system?
• 
America went to the moon in 1969 with supposedly primitive computers and backward engineering.  Does anyone believe we could launch a similar moonshot today?
• 
No American has set foot on the moon in the last 47 years, and it may not happen in the next 50 years.
• 
Hollywood once gave us blockbuster epics, brilliant Westerns, great film noirs, and classic comedies.
• 
Now it endlessly turns out comic-book superhero films or pathetic remakes of prior classics.
• 
Our writers, directors and actors have lost the skills of their ancestors.
• 
But they are also cowardly, and in regimented fashion they simply parrot boring race, class and gender bromides that are neither interesting nor funny.
• 
We have been fighting in Afghanistan without result for 18 years.  Our forefathers helped to win World War II and defeat the Axis Powers in four years.
• 
In terms of learning, does anyone believe that a college graduate in 2020 will know half the information of a 1950 graduate?
• 
In the 1940s, young people read William Faulkner, F.  Scott Fitzgerald, Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck.  Are our current novelists turning out anything comparable?
• 
True, social media is impressive.  The internet gives us instant access to global knowledge.
• 
We are a more tolerant society, at least in theory.
• 
But Facebook is not the Hoover Dam, and Twitter is not the Panama Canal.
• 
Our ancestors were builders and pioneers and mostly fearless.
• 
We are regulators, auditors, bureaucrats, adjudicators, censors, critics, plaintiffs, defendants, social media junkies and thin-skinned scolds.
• 
A distant generation created; we mostly delay, idle and gripe.
• 
"Who were these people who left these strange monuments that we use but can neither emulate nor understand?"
• 
In comparison to us, they now seem like gods.
      Did Mueller lie to Congress about meeting with Trump before he took the special counsel job?  (Fox 10/09/2019)
• 
It has always been suspicious that Robert Mueller met with President Trump in the Oval Office the day before he was officially appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate Trump.
• 
Newly uncovered documents show that Mueller and Rosenstein had been privately communicating in the days before that meeting.  They worked sedulously to keep it a secret.  Trump had no idea that Mueller was already on board to serve as special counsel.
• 
So, why was Mueller there in the Oval?
• 
Was it part of a scheme to furtively gather evidence that, as special counsel, he could then use against Trump?
• 
Did he lure the president into a conversation under false pretenses?
• 
The answer appears to be yes. 
• 
"Mueller wanted very badly to have the job as FBI director and to return to the FBI.  I didn't want him.  I rejected him.  By the way, how much of a conflict is it when a guy comes in wanting a job, I say no, and the next day he's your special prosecutor?  It's outrageous."
• 
He deliberately concealed from the president that he was about to launch a damaging investigation that threatened Trump's presidency.
• 
The duplicity was more than a sufficient basis to require that he disqualify himself from the special counsel position.
• 
Under questioning from Congress, Mueller was directly asked whether the president discussed with him the firing of Comey.
• 
The special counsel replied, "Cannot remember."
• 
It is difficult to fathom that Mueller could not remember a critical Oval Office conversation with the President that would have required his recusal.
• 
More likely, the special counsel knew his disqualifying conflict of interest had been exposed and sought to deflect it by claiming total memory lapse.
• 
"Bob Mueller should never have been allowed to do this case."
• 
The evidence continues to mount that the president was right.
      Quid Pro Quo and Extortion: Welcome to Foreign Relations  (10/08/2019)
• 
The coverage of the Trump administration's pressure on Ukraine is verging on the absurd, as to both what is alleged to have been a wrong and the degree to which we should judge it wrong.
• 
In particular, I am referring to the concepts of quid pro quo and of extorting a foreign government.
• 
To listen to commentary, not only by anti-Trumpers but even some Trump defenders who don't seem to understand what they're talking about, one would think that a quid pro quo is always bad, and that it is a terrible thing to pressure a foreign government.
• 
This is nonsense.  Foreign relations typically involve quid pro quo arrangements.
• 
Governments do not ordinarily assist each other out of fondness.  Nations pursue their interests in the world.
• 
Where interests align, they assist each other.  Where interests are opposed, they are adverse to each other.
• 
In any event, they bargain with each other to advance their interests.
• 
It is a matter of "We want you to do this; what do we need to do – whether for you or to you – to make you do it?"
• 
The term quid pro quo has a sinister connotation because we most often hear it in connection with political-corruption cases, often involving bribery.
• 
In truth, all exchanges involve a quid pro quo, but most are not corrupt.
• 
When they are corrupt, it is not because Country A is asking Country B for something, but because Country A is asking for something that it is wrong to ask for.
• 
If the request is not improper, there is nothing wrong with a quid pro quo.
• 
There is, similarly, nothing wrong with squeezing a foreign government in furtherance of American interests.
• 
If important American interests are at stake, the president's job is to pressure other countries.
• 
As long as what an American president is asking for advances an American interest and does not violate either American law or any international obligation we've taken on, there is nothing wrong with pressuring other countries.
• 
Of course, in the real world, things are often not tidy.
• 
Presidents are in charge of foreign relations, and they pursue policies that they've run on.
• 
Presidents seeking reelection need policy successes.  A president's management of foreign policy and his political interests naturally overlap.
• 
At the same time, a policy that is good for the United States may have the collateral effect of politically damaging a president's political rival.
• 
A president should not be discouraged from pursuing American interests just because doing so might help the president or harm the president's opposition.
• 
The fact that Trump's personal interests would be advanced and Biden's damaged does not mean Trump should stop pressuring Iran.
• 
Pressuring Iran is good for America, regardless of whose political fortunes it affects.
• 
... Democrats and other Trump detractors seek to discredit the Barr investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation by claiming that Trump was only seeking Ukrainian assistance that would help him politically.
• 
To the contrary, the Barr investigation, despite media-Democrat disdain for it, is a legitimate Justice Department probe that is in America's interests since it is exploring serious allegations of abuse of power.
• 
The fact that the Barr investigation could advance Trump's political interests and harm Democrats is collateral.
• 
In fact, the investigation could also harm Trump and help Biden if it uncovers that abuse-of-power claims are exaggerated or wrong.
• 
That, too, is beside the point.  In terms of U.S.  interests, it was perfectly appropriate for an American president to pressure Ukraine to assist an American investigation — the fact that this involved a quid pro quo and can be seen as extortionate is unremarkable.
• 
Would it have been better if Trump had not included Biden (and especially Hunter Biden) in the quid pro quo?  Sure.
• 
If activities in Ukraine in 2016 are part of Barr's investigation, then Trump should have just asked for assistance to Barr's investigation and let the Justice Department sort out what, if any, pertinence Biden has to that inquiry.
• 
But to say the inclusion of Biden in the quid pro quo was not just inappropriate but impeachable is ridiculous.
• 
The same people who are screaming about Biden and quid pro quo are indifferent to the undeniable fact that the Obama administration sought and obtained the assistance of foreign governments and intelligence services in the investigation of Trump's campaign.
• 
When it comes to Trump, they would treat a comparatively minor impropriety as a hanging offense; when it comes to Obama, they want to pretend the collusion with foreign governments to interfere in the campaign didn't happen – or excuse the whole thing because, in their minds, Trump is a monster (but don't you dare question Good Ol' Joe).
• 
And you want to talk corrupt quid pro quo?_
• 
Obama traded ransom payments and billions in sanctions relief in order to get a nuclear deal that enriched Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism, and gave that regime a straight-line path to becoming a nuclear power.
• 
He traded five Taliban commanders for a deserter while the Taliban continued to fight against and kill American and allied troops.
• 
You want to ignore every Obama quid pro quo that patently harmed national security, but we're supposed to find high crimes and misdemeanors because Trump, in the course of pressuring Ukraine to assist a Justice Department investigation, also pressured Ukraine to look into potential corruption by a political rival.
• 
Not, mind you, to invent an allegation against Joe Biden out of whole cloth, but to see if there is fire under what sure looks like smoke.
• 
... it insults the intelligence, particularly after years of trumped-up Russian-collusion hysteria, to pretend that what the president has done here is singular, unprecedented, and impeachable.
      China just showed the world how dangerous it really is [and Americans should be worried]  (Fox 10/01/2019)
• 
China sent the world a loud wake-up call Tuesday with one of the largest military parades in global history to mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Communist Party rule.  The parade was evidence of a serious threat China poses not just to its Asian neighbors but to the U.S.  itself.
• 
This is something every American ought to be worried about – particularly members of Congress – regardless of political party.
• 
But unfortunately, the Democratic obsession with removing President Trump from office is dominating the news and taking attention away from China's growing military might, along with just about all else.
• 
The new Chinese weapons, some of which took decades to develop, make the threat posed by North Korea look small by comparison and rival the threat to the U.S.  posed by Russia.
• 
The parade Tuesday featured 15,000 troops and powerful new weapons including drones, sci-fi-style hypersonic missiles, and long-range intercontinental missiles capable of easily striking the U.S.  homeland with a nuclear weapon.
• 
Beijing also put on display two versions of what defense experts have dubbed "carrier-killer" missiles.
• 
If conflict were to break out, China would use its carrier-killer missiles as a first-strike weapon.
• 
Fired from as far as almost 1,900 miles, the missiles would come down on their target at a speed approaching 20 times the speed of sound with devastating destructive power.
• 
Moving fast while also maneuvering to avoid advanced U.S.  missile defenses, the missiles could potentially sink U.S.  warships patrolling as far away as Guam.
• 
The new Chinese missiles could have a powerful impact even if they are never fired, because they could serve as a deterrent that would keep U.S.  warships away from China's coastline and areas of contention like Taiwan and the South China Sea.
• 
The good news is that the Trump administration understands the growing Chinese military threat and has laid out strong plans to ensure our interests in Asia and those of our allies are protected.
• 
... in fact, Washington is already testing new missile platforms that could very well turn the tables on China in a military clash.
• 
Trump has also increased overall military spending, reversing the disastrous cuts that damaged military readiness under the Obama administration.
• 
In addition, Washington is once again building new generations of attack and ballistic missile submarines, working to ensure our allies have the equipment to withstand a Chinese strike while also getting serious on missile defense.
• 
Then there is Trump's push to ensure China's military rise does not come from economic growth stolen in unfair trade practices.
• 
But as is often the case when challenges arise in Asia, Washington seems destined to become distracted once again, thanks to the unending desire by Democrats to impeach the president.
• 
If America turns inward for too long thanks to this unnecessary and sad attempt by Democrats to depose Trump because they can't win at the polls, many of our allies and partners in Asia could very well come to question our commitment to take on the China challenge.
• 
And that would suit Beijing just fine.
• 
See related US-China Maritime Tensions (Dave Granlund, 10/28/2015) cartoon from World picture album
      I've been blessed to live the American Dream – We can never let socialism replace it  (Fox 10/01/2019)
• 
The American Dream.  It's not something that's easy to define, but every American understands it instinctually.  It's part of our ethos.
• 
Our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world, where anything is possible.
• 
We have the freedom to get an education, raise a family, travel, pick a career, and live in peace.  Few countries are like America.
• 
It really is amazing.  And it's important to stop and think about it sometimes – what we have and what we could lose if we let Democratic socialists have their way.
• 
And make no mistake; Democrats want to bring socialism to our country. 
• 
Every day, we enjoy the freedoms inherent in this American experiment.  It's what we know, expect, deserve.
• 
But we shouldn't take it for granted.  Complacency is dangerous.
• 
We can't ignore the fact that our nation's freedom is never guaranteed, that everything we've built can be gone in an instant.
• 
I worry about future generations and the freedoms that they might lose if we allow socialism to flourish in our country, and it's time for you to worry about it, too.
• 
Right now, extreme liberals, both in Congress and in the campaign for president, are promoting a socialist agenda that would reverse the progress of our country and strip American families of freedom and opportunity.  We've heard their proposals.
• 
These are not serious proposals by the Democrats.  It's just virtue signaling to their extreme base.
• 
But we should be worried about what these proposals represent.  They represent the mainstreaming of a new socialist movement in our country.
• 
This new socialist movement thinks that the best way for American families to succeed is to grow government, raise taxes and plunge our country into more debt.
• 
These Democrats talk about being progressive, but they are actually regressive.
• 
They claim to be liberal when in fact the very policies they support would strip Americans of their liberty.
• 
We can look to the past and to countries across the globe to remind ourselves that socialism fails every time.
• 
As the saying goes, the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other peoples' money.
• 
Socialism produces a weak economy that hurts everyone.  It deprives individuals of freedom and opportunity, kills innovation and would destroy the American experiment as we know it.
• 
Winston Churchill said it best when he said, "The inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
• 
The success of our economy depends on free-market capitalism, which has been the greatest force for economic progress in the history of the world.
• 
Rather than restrict the freedom of Americans, we should embrace and thank God, for the opportunity capitalism gives us for limitless achievement.
• 
Socialism is the single most discredited idea from the last century, we cannot allow anyone to take us backward in this terribly damaging direction.
• 
Our children and grandchild deserve the opportunity to pursue their dreams in a free country – dreams that do not and cannot exist under socialism.
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tom Del Beccaro: Decoding Democrats' rush to impeachment  (Fox 10/01/2019)
• 
Congressional Democrats are rushing headlong into impeachment proceedings.
• 
They are doing so without solid evidence that President Trump engaged in anything remotely close to "high crimes and misdemeanors."
• 
Here's why they can't help themselves.
• 
First, the Democratic Party today is not the Democratic Party of years past.  Today's Democratic Party is the party of government and "social justice."
• 
They favor the expansion of government, dramatically so, even though government already accounts for 38 percent of the total U.S.  economy.
• 
They favor the expansion of regulation, even though the costs of existing regulations exceed another 12 percent of the economy.
• 
Democrats today see government as an employer, the provider of pensions and the purveyor of justice through the courts.
• 
Democrats feel their party MUST select the next Supreme Court justice, or they will lose the courts for years to come – as well as their ability to mete out social justice.
• 
As such, having the White House and Senate in Republican hands is more unacceptable to them now than at any time since before the Civil War.
• 
With that intensity in mind, it's time to rethink the attack on President Trump.
• 
Democrats want the presidency.  Trump is in their way.
• 
It's time to realize that this isn't really about Trump's personality or tactics.
• 
They want the presidency, and they will attack future Republican nominees and presidents as well.
• 
Don't be surprised.  The imposition of socialism has been always been an ugly fight.
• 
Secondly, Democrats have resorted to impeachment because the Democratic Party cannot satisfy its base with just the House.
• 
You cannot control government with just the House.  The presidency is a must.
• 
Third, it is a mistake to think the Democrats are unified or that impeachment was a consensus move among them.  Several sets of hands are on the Democratic Party's driving wheel.
• 
One belongs to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to defend 31 freshmen House Democrats in districts that Trump won.
• 
The second set belongs to Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her "Squad." They want to defeat moderate Democrats in Congress — thereby jeopardizing House control.
• 
The 2020 presidential candidates are also grabbing the wheel.  They're demanding "Medicare-for-all," impeachment and massive spending increases.
• 
There's also the impeachment crowd.
• 
In the competition between them, the Democratic Party has moved further to the left, making impeachment all but inevitable.
• 
The last piece to the puzzle of how the Democrats arrived at this moment, is the cold, hard truth the Democrats are facing.
• 
They know the inspector general report on surveillance abuses will be ugly for them.
• 
They are waiting for Attorney General William Barr and U.S.  Attorney John Durham to unload on issues such as crimes committed by Democrats in the 2016 election and with respect to the Ukraine.
• 
They know that President Trump could declassify information on issues ranging from surveillance abuses to the Obama administration's policymaking related to Uranium One and Iran.
• 
What's the Democratic Party to do under these circumstances?
• 
The answer is now plain to see.
• 
They have moved out in front of the pending release of information.
• 
They are taking the fight to President Trump.  They want to dirty Trump in every way possible.
• 
Then, when Durham, Barr and Trump drop their truths — Democrats will claim that it is simple retaliation by a president who has done things wrong all along.
• 
It is, of course, a high-stakes gamble, given the paucity of facts on the Democrats side.
• 
But with so much at stake, the Supreme Court on the line, and the White House in its sights, the Democratic Party thinks it's worth the risk – America be damned.
      Our rights are threatened by an unelected, politically correct, morally righteous elite  (Fox 09/28/2019)
• 
The American founders institutionalized the best of a long Western tradition of representative government with the U.S.  Constitution and Bill of Rights.
• 
These contracts outlined the rare privileges and responsibilities of new American citizens.
• 
Yet the concept of citizenship is being assaulted on the premodern side by the legal blending of mere residency with citizenship.
• 
The undocumented are becoming legally indistinguishable from citizens and enjoy exemption from federal immigration law in some 500 sanctuary jurisdictions.
• 
Multiculturalism has reduced the idea of e pluribus unum to a regressive tribalism.
• 
Citizens cannot even agree over once-hallowed and shared national holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.
• 
It is eerie how such current American retribalization resembles the collapse of Rome, as Goths, Huns and Vandals all squabbled among one another for what was left of 1,200 years of Roman citizenship — eager to destroy what they could neither create nor emulate.
• 
Citizenship has always been protected by the middle classes — on the idea that they are more independent and self-reliant than the poor, but can stand up to the influence and power of the elite.
• 
Yet until recently, we had seen a decade of stagnant wages and entire regions ossified by outsourcing, offshoring and unfair global trade.
• 
Historically, with the demise of the middle class so follows the end of constitutional government.
• 
But citizenship also faces a quite different and even greater postmodern threat.
• 
Many of our coastal elites see nothing much exceptional in America, past and present.
• 
They prefer the culture and values of the European Union without worrying that the EU's progressive utopian promises have been wrecked by open borders, economically stultifying regulations, and unapologetic and anti-democratic efforts to curb free expression and local autonomy.
• 
Often, such "citizen of the world" mentalities fuel shame over the origins and traditions of America.
• 
Does voting — the bedrock right of the democratic citizen — matter that much anymore?
• 
Lone activist federal judges frequently overturn legislation and referenda they find contrary to their own political take on legal theory — without worry that the votes of millions are canceled in a nanosecond.
• 
Meanwhile, the proverbial "swamp" of the bureaucratic, administrative and regulatory state is so vast and unaccountable that a few clerks can harass entrepreneurs, issue edicts with the force of legislation that ruins lives, or indict, regulate or audit a targeted individual into legal bankruptcy.
• 
We still have a Bill of Rights, but many of our constitutional protections are being rendered impotent.
• 
We are unwinding at both ends.
• 
Tribalism, the erosion of the middle class and de facto open borders are turning Americans into mere residents of a particular North American region between Mexico and Canada.
• 
Yet even more dangerously, thanks to the fiats of unelected bureaucrats and officials, along with the social media lynch mobs who boycott, harass and shame us, our constitutional rights are now increasingly optional.
• 
They mostly hinge on whether we are judged worthy by an unelected, politically correct and morally righteous elite.
• 
In theory, American citizenship remains the same.
• 
In reality, it is disappearing fast.
      Trump-Ukraine lesson - Intel agencies want to be government and make elections meaningless  (Fox 09/27/2019)
• 
When President Harry Truman founded the agency right after the Second World War, he envisioned it as a kind of daily newspaper with a readership of one, the president.
• 
And the idea was really simple: the CIA would collect intelligence from a variety of sources, and then they would collate that intelligence and give it to the president.
• 
He would use it to make wise and informed foreign policy decisions.
• 
It was a good idea.  There are a lot of good ideas.  Many of them in D.C.  meet the same fate.
• 
The bureaucracy quickly metastasizes and overwhelms good intentions.  That certainly happened with the CIA.
• 
Within a few years, Harry Truman himself regretted creating it.  In an op-ed he wrote in 1963, Truman complained that "the CIA has diverted from its original assignment.  It has become an operational and at times a policymaking arm of the government."
• 
Today, the agency and other intel agencies like it aren't simply policymaking arms of government.  At times, they clearly want to be the government itself.  They want to run everything, and they do, for moments.
• 
We learned today that the official who filed the so-called whistleblower complaint against the president was a career CIA officer detailed to the White House.
• 
The official did not agree with the president's foreign policy views, so he felt entitled to veto those views and bring the U.S.  government to a standstill, which he did.
• 
We know this because the complaint was released Thursday to the public. You can read it if you want.
• 
It tells us nothing we didn't already know from the transcript of the phone call that's been released.
• 
Trump talked about a variety of issues with the president of Ukraine, including possible corruption involving Joe Biden and his son.
• 
Trump never mentioned military aid or any kind of quid pro quo.
• 
They may not like what Trump said, but it's hard to see how it's a crime.
• 
Certainly, it's hard to see it as an impeachable offense.
• 
And then all of a sudden, everybody in D.C.  nodding sagely in unison thinks it is.
• 
You know, part of this is our fault in the media.
• 
We set up these just terrible incentives where you don't get on television unless you say extreme and mindless things.
• 
Schiff: "This is the essence of what the president communicates: We've been very good to your country.  Very good.  No other country has done as much as we have.  But you know what?  I don't see much reciprocity here.  I hear what you want.  I have a favor I want from you, though.  And I'm going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good.  I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand?  Lots of it."
• 
Keep in mind, that isn't some guy babbling in the men's room at Starbucks.  That's the man who chairs the mighty House Intelligence Committee.  We trust him with our most sensitive information.
• 
His position is that the president should be impeached for asking why Joe Biden's son was paid $600,000.00 a year by a foreign company, and why the prosecutor who investigated that foreign company was fired after a threat from Joe Biden.
• 
Asking about that gets you impeached.
• 
"We are talking about the president using the full power of the United States government in order to pursue and manufacture a politically-motivated investigation against a political opponent," AOC said...
• 
Rep.  Omar, D-Minn., told supporters: "The fact is that this president is corrupt — a corrupt president who violates his oath in office must and will be impeached."
• 
You may be wondering whatever happened to the Democratic Party?  The party you remember, the party of working people?  The fabled Big Tent Party?  That's gone.
• 
Increasingly, the Democratic Party looks like an alliance between the Women's Studies Department in Oberlin and a group of unscrupulous retired intel officials.
• 
The party is both flaky and authoritarian.  That's a rotten combination.
• 
For 230 years, this has been a republic with an elected president — elected.  Over time, it's worked pretty well.
• 
But now, without a single vote being held, no referendum on this at all, bureaucrats in Washington have decided to change the system.
• 
Imagine how you have to run the country when you can't even speak confidentially with your counterparts in other countries?
• 
How does that help America?  It doesn't help America.  You may hate Trump, but you should still be against that. 
• 
Well, that's an administrative coup d'etat.  I mean, it's not an overstatement to say that's what it is.  A lot is at stake here.
• 
If these people whose names you don't know, who were never elected to anything, succeed in taking over the government and running things in real life, we're done.  Our democracy won't recover.
• 
President Trump and future presidents will be mere figureheads.
• 
They will be beholden to a Praetorian Guard of Intelligence officials in Washington.
• 
So Washington clearly wants to pretend that the 2016 election never happened.  Okay, that's amnesia.
• 
But now they want to make sure that no future election will matter.  And that's terrifying.
      Impeachment, Ukraine, Trump and Biden — 10 things you should know  (Fox 09/27/2019)
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says President Trump is not upholding his Constitutional oath.
• 
So, all by herself, she has instituted an Impeachment Inquiry.  Sounds Constitutional — doesn't it?
• 
So, what did Trump allegedly do?  The Democrats have "charged" Trump with soliciting foreign interference in an election for his own benefit.
• 
1.  Democrats think Joe Biden is immune.  The Democrats are saying that the Trump White House and Department of Justice cannot get information from the Ukraine on Biden because he is running for president and therefore is Trump's rival.
• 
By their logic, therefore, Joe Biden is immune from a federal investigation while he runs for office against President Trump.  How very convenient and absurd.
• 
2.  We now know that contrary to news reports and Democrats talking points, the Trump call transcript does NOT indicate Trump withheld aid in exchange for election help against Biden.
• 
There was no quid pro quo.  The Democrats sold a false story.
• 
3.  The Trump call transcript also indicates that the current Ukraine government is more than troubled about the Bidens' actions vis-a-vis the Ukraine and on their own is continuing to investigate that activity.
• 
In addition to that, the President of Ukraine continues to say there was no pressure from Trump to do anything related to that investigation.
• 
4.  A non-tortured reading of the Trump call transcript indicates that Trump asked for assistance with an ongoing DOJ investigation, which ... is not a violation of the law.
• 
Indeed, there is a treaty between the U.S.  and the Ukraine that was signed by President Bill Clinton that is entitled the Treaty with Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters.
• 
That treaty binds the respective countries to provide "documents, records and other items" to each other upon request.
• 
5.  "Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S.  Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S.  ethics laws" related to the Bidens.
• 
In other words, long before Trump made a call, the Ukraine wanted to provide the U.S.  information on the Bidens.
• 
6.  The Obama administration pressured "Ukraine's prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist."
• 
7.  The Obama White House and DNC directly solicited Ukrainian officialsto get involved in the 2016 campaign by asking for dirt on Manafort and by asking Ukrainian President to speak on U.S.  soil negatively about Paul Manafort.
• 
8.  Hunter Biden, who is generally incompetent and was kicked out of the Navy for drug use, made millions off contemporaneous to trips he made with his father when Biden was VP.
• 
The Democrats see no problem with that.  Imagine if Donald Trump Jr.  did that.
• 
"The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors."
• 
9.  The so-called whistleblower was fed the information by others and his attorney worked for Hillary and Schumer.  Doesn't that sound non-biased to you?
• 
10.  Finally, anyone on TV who jumped to the conclusion that Trump broke the law was trying to make a headline not a reasoned judgment with all the facts.
• 
In short, the D.C.  Democrats want to impeach Trump for activities that pale in comparison to what people in their party has been doing for years.
• 
That is par for the course from them these days and a disgrace to the Constitution.
      Instead of winning an election, Dems would rather explain why impeaching Trump is justified  (Fox 09/25/2019)
• 
"I can say with authority, the Trump administration's actions undermine both our national security and our intelligence,' Pelosi said.
• 
"The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections."
• 
"Therefore, today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.  I'm directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.  The president must be held accountable.  No one is above the law."
• 
The people who sold out your country to China are concerned that President Trump betrayed America somehow.
• 
As of this moment, Pelosi's party seems to agree; they are behind her mostly.
• 
As Congressman John Lewis of Georgia explained, working to remove an elected president just a year before a Democratic election is in fact, somehow, a defense of democracy, or something like that.
• 
"I believe - I truly believe - the time to begin impeachment proceedings against this president has come."
• 
"To delay or to do otherwise will betray the foundation of our democracy.
• 
Impeachment?  For years, they told you that Trump was going to be impeached for colluding with Russia, spying for Putin.
• 
Then it turned out he didn't do that.  The story evaporated into dust and seemed to blow away.
• 
Then just a few days ago, they were grumbling about impeachment again, and they dragged in Corey Lewandowski.
• 
Remember him?  They brought him to Capitol Hill to make their case.  That didn't go well at all.
• 
You'd think at some point, Democrats might just decide to run a real presidential campaign in 2020 and beat Donald Trump that way, just like in a democracy.
• 
It would have to be more effective than what they're doing now, and the numbers show it.
• 
As of this morning, Donald Trump's approval rating was the highest it has been since the inauguration.
• 
But no, Democrat don't want to wait until the next election.  They don't want to wait until November.
• 
Politics takes too long, and it leaves too much to chance.
• 
The risk of democracy is voters might not agree with you.
• 
Better to remove your opponents by force, if you can.
• 
Which brings us to the latest question of impeachment: What exactly is this about?
• 
Sorry to laugh in the middle of this — we've spent all day trying to figure out what is the impeachment story.
• 
Within a sentence, here is what they're saying.
• 
They're saying that in a phone call with the president of Ukraine, President Trump threatened to delay a $400 million military aid package to Ukraine, unless the Ukrainian government agreed to investigate possible criminal activity involving Joe Biden's son.
• 
Why Joe Biden's son?
• 
Well for five years, Joe Biden's son, Hunter, it turns out, was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to serve on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
• 
Why would Joe Biden's son be on the board of a Ukrainian gas company?
• 
He had no experience in the energy business.
• 
He didn't speak the relevant language.
• 
He apparently had no experience whatsoever in the region.
• 
It turns out at that very moment, Joe Biden was President Obama's point man for Ukraine.
• 
... at a certain point during this saga, the gas company in question was investigated.
• 
And then in 2016, the Ukrainian prosecutor overseeing that investigation was fired.
• 
Apparently, he was fired under pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden.
• 
Now to the layman, that looks a lot like corruption.
• 
What does it have to do with the president being impeached?
• 
Well, the accusation is that President Trump suggested that that squelched investigation deserved a second look.
• 
And Democrats say that suggestion was an impeachable offense.
• 
Nobody has bothered to explain why sending $400 million in military aid to Ukraine is in the interest of the United States.
• 
They haven't even thought to explain that.
• 
They're too busy yelling about impeachment.  And they're doing it with all the hysterical intensity that has become the hallmark of the modern left.
• 
They have a lot of energy.  Too bad, none of it is focused on the country's real problems, and there are a lot of them.
• 
In many ways, our country is on the wrong track, and people know it.  Everybody knows it, Democrats and Republicans.
• 
But instead of trying to fix any of that, Democrats want to spend the next year explaining — and they plan to — why it was perfectly fair for Joe Biden's ne'er-do-well son to get 600 grand a year from Ukrainian oligarchs.
• 
That's totally fine.
• 
But it's somehow criminal for Donald Trump to ask about that.
• 
That's the message.  Good luck with that.
• 
Hard to imagine many voters will be impressed by it.
• 
      Joe Biden’s actions on Ukraine reek of extortion and obstruction of justice  (Fox 09/25/2019)
• 
The roaring controversy over President Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden, and their respective actions toward Ukraine sorely lacks some key language: the word "extortion" and the phrase "obstruction of justice."
• 
Hunter Biden reportedly earned some $50,000 per month for his services, although he had no expertise in gas production and didn't know Ukraine from Utah.
• 
He was experienced, however, in being the son of the vice president of the United States who, as luck would have it, "was serving as the Obama administration's point man on relations with Ukraine and rooting out bureaucratic corruption."
• 
"I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee," the former vice president explained ... per the CFR's transcript.
• 
"And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from [then-Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor.  And they didn't."
• 
"I said, ‘I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars,'" Biden continued.
• 
"I said, ‘You're not getting the billion.  I'm going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.' I looked at them and said: ‘I'm leaving in six hours.  If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a b****.  (Laughter.) He got fired."
• 
Biden's actions reek of extortion and obstruction of justice.
• 
And President Trump is the bad guy?
• 
... just-announced impeachment inquiry — is fueled by merely an echo of a whistle.  In other words, hearsay.
• 
Conversely, Biden's incriminating words were neither overheard nor just transcribed.
• 
In fact, he said this on camera at an on-the-record CFR meeting.
• 
Video tape exists of Biden boasting about securing the dismissal of the man who was probing his son's possible graft.
• 
So, apparently it's a potentially impeachable offense for President Trump to raise Biden's possible obstruction of justice in a conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky...
• 
Meanwhile, it's perfectly OK that the former vice president, as he personally crowed, blackmailed then-President Poroshenko into firing the top prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden's possible graft.
• 
Successfully sacking one's son's prosecutor via extortion: This is the textbook definition of obstruction of justice.
• 
... like a guy with a red-rubber nose and giant, floppy shoes who screams "STOP CLOWNING AROUND!" the Democrats, yet again, are doing what they do best: psychological projection.
      Tammy Bruce to Bill Weld and others violently vilifying Trump: 'look in the mirror to find the...'  (Fox 09/24/2019)
• 
"In a normal world this would be shocking and it would not come from someone Americans take seriously, but it highlights how seriously broken opponents of the President have become.  It is also a reflection of the nature of the rhetoric that the establishment has propagated ever since they felt threatened by the Trump presidency."
• 
"...  This is now the trajectory of the Left and critics of the President...  unleashing even more unhinged rhetoric to demonstrate to the baying leftist mobs how much they hate him."
• 
"The public chattering class of Democrats and Republicans who remain apoplectic about Trump's success and their own pathetic failures hate Trump because they hate the average American who put him in office.  The president is the proxy for the American voter and every person who dared to fire the establishment in 2016, and it's those people who must be dealt with."
• 
"We've heard comments that suggest violence, recently from Jennifer Rubin, as an example, who is touted as the "conservative" columnist at the Washington Post.  She said in an interview that it is not enough to defeat Trump but that they need to ‘burn down' the Republican Party so that there could be no 'survivors,'"
• 
"Joe Walsh, a Republican who's running for president and who has made clear he hates the president, says he is not running against the President's policies, but to punch him in the face every day."
• 
"Relying on violent rhetoric is now a trend and it is almost as if they have to one-up each other in order for the media to keep giving people like them airtime.  It's as though they feel the next thing they say has to be more dangerous or violent or extreme in order to prove that you are with the people that hate the president.  It's a mob mentality and it feeds on itself."
• 
"These people who imagine themselves the intelligentsia, the moral arbiters of our society, the decent ones, they assure us, must be given the reins of power to protect us from the bad man in the White House.  As they call for the physical assault, arrest and even execution of the president of the United States.  They say they're protecting us from the bad, bad, man when in fact all they have to do is look in the mirror to find the worst among us.  "
      Gutfeld on the climate hysteria protests  (Fox 09/23/2019)
• 
As this idiocy rolls on, we should note that people trying to go to work and put food on their tables don't hurt the environment.
• 
Creating endless blocks of idling cars and trucks does.  Which is what that tantrum did.
• 
The media elevates these idiots.
• 
Because rather than interfering with their lives, activism gives the media an easy assignment.
• 
Worse, we have adults advocating for handing life-changing over decisions to children.
• 
Seriously, is this healthy?
• 
Here's a question.  What would happen if parents in a cult maniacally and falsely informed their children that the world will end in a decade?
• 
Teachers would call social workers — and they would take the kids.
• 
That's the unspeakable truth media hacks ignore.
• 
It's what adults are doing to those children — by fomenting terror — that's so gross and immoral.
• 
But activists and media know kids make great political shields because any critical response will be cast as punching down.
• 
Blocking a path to work for thousands is the real low blow.
      Philip Holloway: I became a police officer in 1989 – I wouldn't do it again  (Fox 09/29/2019)
• 
I graduated from a Georgia police academy in 1989 at the age of 19.  I wasn't even old enough to legally buy the gun I could lawfully carry as a newly-minted peace officer.
• 
We didn't have body cameras or many of the special tools officers have today but, for the most part, we had what we felt at the time we needed.
• 
Particularly we had overwhelming public support – or at least we felt that way.
• 
Today, for a variety of reasons, police don't feel they have that public support any longer.  And they are right.
• 
And that's why I wouldn't do it again.  At least not under today's circumstances.
• 
When I went to the police academy in 1989, I remember being taught in no uncertain terms that deadly force was authorized to stop a fleeing felon.
• 
... it is the polarizing issue of use of force that seems to most affect public perception of police officers today.
• 
Today everyone has a high definition video camera at the ready and available to instantly live stream any police activity to a worldwide audience.
• 
People nowadays are able to see — collectively for the first time — what law officers have always known: there is simply no "nice" way to arrest someone who is potentially dangerous and combative.
• 
Police work can be, by its very nature, quite ugly and violent.  It's never like it is on TV or in the movies.  But it is real life and involves real people.
• 
We demand that our police swear to support and defend the Constitution and laws so we must, in turn, judge them — and their actions — according to the Constitution and laws as interpreted by the courts.
• 
Unlike the court of public opinion or social media, real courts and investigators don't have the luxury of picking and choosing what parts of the Constitution to apply.
• 
... any use of force incident — deadly or otherwise — must be "objectively reasonable" under the totality of the circumstances and that "[t]he "reasonableness" of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.
• 
Unfortunately, this lack of public support has a way of spilling over to police management.
• 
Many officers feel their careers might be sacrificed at the altar of public opinion anytime they have to use force.
• 
If you consider most any cell phone video of police use of force against the backdrop of a pop culture that includes rap music with titles like "F**k The Police" and lyrics such as: "We need to ... kill cops.  Plus stupid, ya stupid, I hope you rot in hell"
• 
Law enforcement is a public service performed by men and women willing to put the best interests of the public ahead of their own.
• 
They may be able to live with the low pay, missing holidays with family, or working long inconvenient hours.
• 
But in my experience, many just can't see their way clear to doing the job without public support and nobody wants to work a job where they are not appreciated.
• 
I know I don't.  And that's why I wouldn't do it again.
      Gregg Jarrett: The Trump whistleblower may not be a whistleblower at all  (Fox 09/20/2019)
• 
The latest media mass hysteria over a whistleblower's complaint that ... "reportedly involved allegations President Trump made a troubling and unspecified ‘promise' to a foreign leader," is based on precious little information.
• 
That has not stopped journalists from convicting Trump in the court of public opinion and predicting his imminent demise.
• 
Who exactly is this unidentified "whistleblower"?
• 
What is the specific nature of his or her "urgent concern" complaint against the president?
• 
Does this complaint really qualify under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA)? 
• 
Despite the paucity of facts, some reasonable observations and conclusions can be drawn.
• 
1.  It appears that an American spy in one of our intelligence agencies may have been spying on our own president.
• 
The complaint suggests that this intel agent was listening in on Trump's conversation with a foreign leader.
• 
Was this person officially asked to listen to the conversation or was he or she secretly listening in?
• 
2.  This agent, who is an unelected and inferior federal employee in the government hierarchy, apparently believes that it is his/her job to second-guess the motivation behind the words of the elected president, who is the most superior officer in the U.S.  government. 
• 
3.  Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping power to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate with leaders of other nations, make demands or offer promises.
• 
The Constitution does not grant the power of review, approval or disapproval to spies or other unelected officials in the executive branch. 
• 
4.  The ICWPA law defines the parameters of an "urgent concern" complaint as an abuse or violation of law "relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters."
• 
The president's conversation with a foreign leader does not seem to fall under this whistleblower definition. 
• 
5.It appears the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) agrees with this assessment.  His agency's general counsel wrote a letter stating the complaint did not meet the ICWPA definition because it involved conduct "from someone outside the intel community and did not relate to intelligence activity"...
• 
To put this in plain language, a spy who allegedly spied on the president does not have a legitimate whistleblower complaint against that president under the law.
• 
The ICWPA is a mechanism to report alleged misconduct by members within the intelligence community, of which the president is not. 
• 
So, it turns out that the "whistleblower" may not be a whistleblower at all.
• 
But you will not hear that from the mainstream media.  They are too busy lighting their own hair on fire. 
      Trump wages war on progressive culture – Dems respond with Trump Derangement Syndrome  (Fox 09/19/2019)
• 
President Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture...
• 
As a result, not even former President George W.  Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump.
• 
For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected and constantly attacked.
• 
In 2016 and early 2017, President Barack Obama's appointees in the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice tried to subvert the Trump campaign, interfere with his transition and, ultimately, abort his presidency.
• 
Now, congressional Democrats promise impeachment before the 2020 election.
• 
The usual reason for such hatred is said to be Trump's unorthodox and combative take-no-prisoners style.
• 
Critics detest his crude and unfettered assertions, his lack of prior military or political experience, his attacks on the so-called bipartisan administrative state, and his intent to roll back the entire Obama-era effort of "fundamentally transforming" the country leftward.
• 
Certainly, Trump's agenda of closing the border, using tariffs to overturn a half-century of Chinese mercantilism, and pulling back from optional overseas military interventions variously offends both Democrats and establishment Republicans.
• 
Trump periodically and mercurially fires his top officials.
• 
He apparently does not care whether the departed write damning memoirs or join his opposition. 
• 
To make things worse for his critics, Trump's economy is booming as never before in the new 21st century: near-record-low unemployment, a record number of Americans working, increases in workers' wages and family incomes, low interest rates, low inflation, steady GDP growth and a strong stock market.
• 
Yet the real source of Trump Derangement Syndrome is his desire to wage a multifront pushback — politically, socially, economically and culturally — against what might be called the elite postmodern progressive world.
• 
Contemporary elites increasingly see nationalism and patriotism as passe.  Borders are 19th-century holdovers.
• 
The European Union, not the U.S.  Constitution, is seen as the preferable model to run a nation.
• 
Transnational and global organizations are wiser on environmental and diplomatic matters than is the U.S.  government.
• 
The media can no longer afford to be nonpartisan and impartial in their effort to rid America of a reactionary such as Trump, given his danger to the progressive future.
• 
America's ancient sins can never really be forgiven.  In a new spirit of iconoclasm, thousands of buildings, monuments and statues dedicated to American sinners of the past must be destroyed, removed or renamed.
• 
A new America supposedly is marching forward under the banner of ending fossil fuels, curbing the Second Amendment, redistributing income, promoting identity politics and open borders, and providing free college, free health care and abortion on demand.
• 
An insomniac Trump fights all of the above nonstop and everywhere.  ... No slugfest is too off-topic or trivial for Trump.
• 
Trump variously goes after antifa, political correctness on campus, the NATO hierarchy, the radical green movement, Planned Parenthood, American universities and, above all, the media — especially CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
• 
For all the acrimony and chaos — and prognostications of Trump's certain failure — a bloodied Trump wins more than he loses.
• 
NATO members may hate Trump, but more are finally paying their promised defense contributions.
• 
In retrospect, many Americans concede that the Iran deal was flawed and that the Paris climate accord mere virtue signaling.  China was long due for a reckoning.
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation proved fruitless and was further diminished by Mueller's bizarrely incoherent congressional testimony.
• 
Trump has so enraged his Democratic adversaries that the candidates to replace him have moved farther to the left than any primary field in memory.
• 
They loathe Trump, but in their abject hatred he has goaded the various Democratic candidates into revealing their support for the crazy Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, relaxed immigration policies and trillions of dollars in new free stuff.
• 
In a way, the left-wing Democratic presidential candidates understand Trump best.
• 
If he wins his one-man crusade to stop the progressive project, they are finished, and their own party will make the necessary adjustments and then sheepishly drift back toward the center.
      Tucker Carlson: What the revival of the left's smear campaign against Kavanaugh is really about  (Fox 09/17/2019)
• 
... not a single allegation against him turned out to be true — not one.
• 
And so the only lasting effect was to traumatize Brett Kavanaugh's wife and children.
• 
And yet the left never to this day apologized for their dishonesty or their profound cruelty.
• 
Nor did they ever accept defeat.  They never do accept defeat.
• 
Why?  Because when politics is your religion, acknowledging reality looks like sin, and so it continues.
• 
Several Democrats said exactly as they did a year ago.  Remember this?
• 
Sen.  Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.: There's no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you.
• 
Sen.  Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct.: We have a constitutional duty to get to the bottom of these allegations.  Judge Brett Kavanaugh has a responsibility to come forward with evidence to rebut them.
• 
Sen.  Chris Coons, D-Del.: Kavanaugh who is seeking a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, and who I think now bears the burden of disproving these allegations, rather than Dr.  Ford and Miss Ramirez.
• 
Sen.  Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.: To those who I hear, say over and over, "This isn't fair to Judge Kavanaugh.  He is entitled due process.  What about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?" He is not entitled to those because we're not actually seeking to convict him.
• 
We're not trying to convict him.  We're just trying to destroy him and his family — so no due process, no presumption of innocence.  Fairness is irrelevant.
• 
Whatever they tell you, don't let them tell you that justice has any role in this.
• 
Of course, this is a pure power grab.
• 
The left feels entitled to run the country — truly entitled to and they feel entitled to control the Supreme Court.  If they don't, it drives them crazy.
• 
Kavanaugh frustrates their political hopes.
• 
So any smear against him is acceptable, no matter what it is.
• 
But don't kid yourself.  It's not just about destroying Brett Kavanaugh; he is ancillary.
• 
It's about destroying the entire legitimacy of our third branch of government, the judiciary.
• 
Plenty on the left are using the Kavanaugh saga to justify packing the court — adding more justices to make it reliably left-wing or to change the rules so they can remove any judge the left doesn't approve of.
• 
This is the opposite of what the third branch was meant to do or be.
• 
The judiciary was meant to change slowly.
• 
The courts change over decades, rather than in response to a single election cycle.
• 
That's the way it was designed and for a reason.  And for more than 200 years, it's worked.
• 
But to the modern left, that's totally intolerable.
• 
They're committed to remaking this country completely right now.
• 
America needs a new system, they tell us, one with open borders and far fewer pesky individual rights.
• 
Rights like the freedom to speak clearly out loud.
• 
The freedom of expression, the right to bear arms, the freedom of religion — no.
• 
To create this new utopia of obedient, happy serfs, they're going to have to destroy all of that — two centuries of precedent and tradition.
• 
Maybe even destroy the country itself, whatever.  They're happy to do that.
• 
As Robespierre noted, when you make omelets, you break eggs.
      Struggling not to forget  (JWR 09/16/2019)
• 
September 11, 2001 was 18 years ago.
• 
Today's public school children weren't even born yet.
• 
Most young people who are in their 20's today don't have much if any memory of it.
• 
The memories of many of the rest of us have dimmed with the passing years.
• 
For the families and friends of those who perished, that day will never be forgotten just as the Holocaust will never be forgotten for Jewish people around the world.
• 
But it isn't enough that those who were personally touched by evil should remember such horrific events, all decent human beings must remember too.
• 
Maybe the tendency of the human mind is to wash over or suppress horrible events over time, but we, as a collective people must never let that happen.
• 
On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists associated with the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States.  Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
• 
Almost 3,000 people in total were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
• 
On September 11, 2001, at 8:45 a.m.  Eastern Standard Time an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
• 
The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors.
• 
Soon evacuation efforts of the tower and its twin were begun and television cameras broadcast live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident.
• 
But then 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767 United Airlines Flight 175 appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center and sliced into the south tower near the 60th floor.
• 
The impact caused a huge explosion showering burning debris over surrounding buildings and onto the streets below.
• 
At that point we all knew America was under attack.
• 
We watched as people jumped out of windows to certain death below.  Broadcasters described the soft splatter sound as the bodies hit the pavement.
• 
We saw people in abject panic running through the streets of New York covered with ash, fear in their faces.
• 
Just as we were attempting to process all of this American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington, D.C., before crashing into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m.
• 
Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to the structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building, which is the headquarters of the U.S.  Department of Defense.
• 
In all, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon, along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.
• 
Then less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the Pentagon, things in New York took a disastrous turn when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke, followed at 10:30 a.m.  with the collapse of the north building of the twin towers.
• 
Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived.
• 
Almost 10,000 others were treated for injuries, many severe.
• 
Among the dead were 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers.
• 
A fourth California-bound plane — United Flight 93 — was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving New Jersey.
• 
Passengers on board heard what happened in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground because of a delay in taking off from Newark.
• 
Realizing what was in store for them, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned a heroic preemptive strike against their terrorist hijackers.
• 
One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jr., told his wife over the phone that "I know we're all going to die.  There's three of us who are going to do something about it.  I love you, honey."
• 
Another passenger, Todd Beamer, was heard saying "Are you guys ready?  Let's roll", over an open line.
• 
What exactly happened next is not known for sure except that the passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have stormed the cockpit with a fire extinguisher.
• 
The plane flipped and hit the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field near Shanksville in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m.
• 
All 44 people aboard were killed.  The Islamists' intended target is uncertain, but theories include the White House, the U.S.  Capitol, or the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
• 
Muslim extremists want the complete annihilation of Western Civilization.  Period.  They still do.
• 
Remember that.  We must never forget the horror of that day.
• 
And we must remember to teach it to our children.
      Dems have lost touch with working Americans [and hold the real extremist views on immigration]  (Fox 09/16/2019)
• 
I think the vast majority of Americans are pro-immigration, as long as it is properly controlled.
• 
And I think the vast majority of Americans are compassionate people who want to give sanctuary to refugees fleeing persecution, as long as it is authentic.
• 
"Folks, I voted for a fence," Biden said in 2006.  "I voted, and unlike most Democrats — some of you won't like this, but I voted for 700 miles."
• 
In 2009, Schumer said the following: "Illegal immigration is wrong – plain and simple.  Until the American people are convinced that we will stop future flows of illegal immigration, we will make no progress in dealing with the millions of illegal immigrants who are here now and on rationalizing our system of legal immigration – that's plain and simple and unavoidable."
• 
Who could possibly disagree with that?
• 
In 2016, Biden said, "We can't wall ourselves off from the problems that are not bound by borders — the threat of communicable diseases like Zika, drug trafficking, climate change.  No wall can be built."
• 
In 2018, Schumer said, "It is a shame that this president, who's plunging the nation into chaos, is throwing another temper tantrum and gonna hurt lots of innocent people.  The Trump temper tantrum may produce a government shutdown.  It will not get him his wall."
• 
Whatever the issue, whatever the facts, if Trump's for it, they're against it, regardless of their previous views.
• 
What a bunch of total charlatans these Democrats are!
• 
It's the same idiocy with asylum.  ... the Democrats lost their minds.
• 
Nancy Pelosi released a totally deranged and factually inaccurate statement, including this: "The Supreme Court's decision to allow the Trump administration to inflict its cruel new asylum policy on the world's most vulnerable populations at the southern border is deeply disappointing, profoundly dangerous and a clear departure from both U.S.  and international law."
• 
These people are so ridiculous.  It's not a departure from international law; it brings us in line with international law.
• 
Do they even know that this new Trump asylum policy is basically the same as the European Union's?
• 
Look, there's a difference between asylum and migration.
• 
Of course, people want to come to America.  It's the greatest place in the world.
• 
But you've got to have an orderly process.  Public consent for immigration depends on government control of immigration.
• 
The asylum seekers are fleeing crime and gang violence, we're told.
• 
Yes, they are.  But guess what?  Those same gangs are here.
• 
The Democrats and the establishment state media have totally lost the plot on immigration.
• 
That's because they've lost touch with working Americans.
• 
It's not their jobs being lost; it's not their incomes going down.  It's not their kids' schools being overwhelmed.
• 
By contrast, the Trump administration is finally putting together the reasonable, coherent immigration policy this country has been crying out for, for nearly 50 years.
• 
We see it with the wall going up, but it's much more than that.  In many ways, it's five walls.
• 
The physical one, but also the legal one with the asylum change, a technology wall, an entitlement reform wall to help reduce incentives, and a foreign policy wall to encourage other countries to do more, as we saw with immediate results with Mexico and the tariffs threat.
• 
On top of all that — and totally contradicting the establishment lie that this is a xenophobic, restrictionist approach — these are walls, as the saying goes, with a door.
• 
Months ago, the president announced a plan not to cut legal immigration but to keep it at present levels, opting instead to reform it to become a merit-based system.
• 
All of this is utterly reasonable and in line with mainstream opinion in this country.
• 
See related Make no Apologies (Michael Ramirez, 06/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: Malevolent McCabe’s appointment with justice is imminent  (Fox 09/13/2019)
• 
Lest we forget, McCabe has helped put people behind bars for lying.  He should be held to the same legal standard.
• 
In a scathing condemnation of McCabe last year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general – a neutral investigator appointed by former President Barack Obama – concluded that McCabe "lacked candor" on four occasions when questioned by federal agents about leaking information to a reporter.
• 
A lack of candor, mind you, is a polite way of saying McCabe lied – not once, but four times.
• 
Federal prosecutors have spent the better part of 17 months evaluating the incriminating evidence.  They have been more than fair in listening to the explanations and excuses offered by defense lawyers.
• 
In his own defense, McCabe claims he was stricken with a sudden onset of incoherence and amnesia.  It was all a misunderstanding and miscommunication, he insists.
• 
In the alternative, McCabe avers that it was nothing more than an innocent failure of recollection.  Not likely.
• 
None of the people associated with Trump were ever afforded such vapid excuses when Special Counsel Robert Mueller leveled criminal charges for lying...
• 
Should McCabe, who has never disguised his enmity toward the president, be treated any differently because he served in law enforcement?  Absolutely not.
• 
McCabe's deceptions are obvious on their face.  He denied to investigators that he helped deliver information to a Wall Street Journal reporter.  In fact, he had.
• 
He told agents he had no idea who leaked the material.  In fact, he had authorized it himself.
• 
In subsequent interviews, McCabe was given multiple chances to correct his lies.  Instead, he doubled down in an audio-recorded interview with the same false denials.
• 
Does that sound like a man who misunderstood a simple set of questions or miscommunicated what he did?  Not even close.
• 
A lapse of memory?  Preposterous.
• 
It should be deeply troubling to all Americans that someone like Andrew McCabe rose to the top of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• 
His termination for dishonesty is only a fraction of the sordid story.
• 
Before he was sacked, McCabe launched a new and secret investigation of Trump designed to punish the president of the United States because he disliked Trump's foreign policy statements and objected when the president dared to declare publicly that he had done nothing wrong.
• 
In addition, the president had the audacity to exercise his constitutional power to terminate McCabe's mentor, James Comey.
• 
McCabe, a person possessed of chronic misjudgment, an inflated sense of self-importance, and utter disregard for both the law and executive authority, should never have been employed at the nation's premier law enforcement agency.
• 
In February, a month before Mueller issued his report that found no criminal "collusion" conspiracy with Russia, McCabe appeared on CNN and the following exchange took place:
• 
Question: Do you still believe the president could be a Russian asset?
• 
McCabe: I think it's possible.
• 
The implication was that the constitutionally elected president was a threat to democracy because McCabe, an unelected and inferior government officer, thought he was.
• 
When asked why he believed Trump had been collaborating with Russia, McCabe offered this explanation: "From the very beginning, the president is referring to the investigation and our efforts as a witch hunt, as a hoax.  In addition to that, he approaches Director Comey and asks him to drop the case against Mike Flynn.  And after Director Comey fails to drop that case, he is in fact fired."
• 
From that statement, we gain three valuable insights into McCabe.
• 
First, McCabe deemed the president's protestation of innocence and attack on the FBI's unjustified investigation to be an admission of guilt and, hence, evidence of treason.
• 
Second, McCabe had no qualms about misrepresenting the known facts of the president's conversation with Comey about Flynn.
• 
Nowhere in the memo that memorialized the president's alleged remark did Comey claim that it was a demand to drop the bureau's investigation.
• 
But even if "hoping" that the fired national security adviser would be cleared is construed as a request to drop an FBI investigation, the president would have been authorized to do so.
• 
Third, McCabe linked Comey's firing to his unwillingness to drop the Flynn case, even though there was no evidence that the FBI director was dismissed because of Flynn.
• 
In McCabe's cloistered and contorted world of law enforcement supremacy, falsely accused people are never entitled to proclaim their innocence.
• 
Such public expressions, according to McCabe, are witness tampering and obstruction of justice.
• 
In reality, they are not.  Even presidents have First Amendment rights.
• 
But if you pronounce Donald Trump a "Russian asset," you are guaranteed employment at CNN.
• 
As of this writing, McCabe is still a paid contributor.
• 
If nothing else, he is an expert on criminality.
      John Yoo: Supreme Court makes right decision allowing Trump asylum policy to take effect  (Fox 09/12/2019)
• 
The Supreme Court was right ... to stop a lone federal district court judge ... from blocking a Trump administration policy designed to limit the ability of Central American migrants to seek asylum in the U.S.
• 
The new Trump administration policy requires migrants from Central America and elsewhere who first travel through Mexico to seek asylum there before seeking asylum in the U.S.
• 
Under the policy, a migrant first has to be refused asylum in Mexico before he or she could seek asylum here.
• 
The Trump administration policy also applies to migrants who travel through other third countries before seeking U.S.  asylum.
• 
But a larger issue is at stake: whether a single federal judge can issue a nationwide order blocking presidential action or even legislation passed by Congress.
• 
... "is pleased that the Supreme Court intervened in this case, which enables full implementation of this important immigration rule across the entire southern border.  This action will assist the Administration in its objectives to bring order to the crisis at the southern border, close loopholes in our immigration system, and discourage frivolous claims."
• 
Tigar's order – known as an injunction – marked the second time that the judge stopped the Trump policy.
• 
This case shows how a single judge in a "resistance" court like the San Francisco federal district court can bring the entire U.S.  government to a grinding halt – even when the judge is wrong on the law.
• 
There can be little doubt that nationwide injunctions like the one issued by Tigar have become the latest tool to stop President Trump from exercising the legal authority at his disposal.
• 
In eight years, the Obama administration faced just 20 nationwide injunctions.
• 
In less than three years, the Trump administration has faced 40.  This is a dramatic increase.
• 
Judges like Tigar have produced a system of legal roulette, where any opponent of a president can simply shop around for the friendliest courts from which to challenge all of the federal government's policies.
• 
Tigar's first nationwide injunction, imposed in July, was even too much for the famously liberal 9th U.S.  Circuit Court of Appeals.
• 
That's why the appeals court overturned Tigar's order and limited his decision to only the states in its territory.
• 
Under normal circumstances, a district court judge would hold off imposing such a sweeping order, in order to allow the federal government to appeal his or her ruling and permit other courts to consider the issue.
• 
Tigar's nationwide injunction prevents the federal government from addressing the crisis at the southern border and undermines the ability of the president and Congress to reach a political solution.
• 
And a nationwide injunction is particularly damaging when the federal government is likely to win its case on appeal to the Supreme Court.
• 
The Trump policy seeks to reduce groundless asylum claims, which according to the government constitute the great majority of such claims.
• 
Rather than fearing persecution in their home countries – as they claim when seeking asylum – most of the asylum seekers are actually economic migrants, seeking to game their way into the United States to get jobs and earn more money than they could at home.
• 
Tigar absurdly found that the federal government had no foreign relations or national security reason to issue its asylum order, and ruled that as a result, the asylum policy had to go through a longer period of administrative development.  This defies common sense.
• 
Tigar also held that immigration law precludes the federal government from including additional qualifications for asylum, even though the law actually says the exact opposite.
• 
Neither Republicans nor Democrats should want a single district judge to have the power to block a policy that is legal and produced by our elected leaders while a case is tied up in appeals in the federal courts for years.
• 
Nationwide injunctions like the one issued by Tigar short-circuit our political system, blocking Congress and the president from carrying out their legitimate functions.
• 
Such nationwide court orders by a single district judge destroy the careful organization of our justice system, which creates layers of appellate and Supreme Court review so that the federal judiciary can carefully consider all possible arguments and facts when it reaches a decision.
• 
The Supreme Court should combat this end-run around the normal justice system by making clear that a district judge can only issue judgments that bind the parties within the geographic territory of his or her district.
• 
If the Supreme Court does not use this case as the opportunity to narrow injunctions, a single district court judge will be able to block the federal government from carrying out its constitutional functions.
• 
That is not what the framers of the Constitution intended.
      Todd Starnes: The left wants to replace God with socialism  (Fox 09/10/2019)
• 
"We've been wondering for many years now why is it that the left has been so hell-bent on declaring war on religious liberty and taking God out of the public marketplace."
• 
"For socialism to rise and really take root, they've got to get rid of religious liberty.  They've got to take away the foundation of this country and that's exactly what's happened."
• 
"We're talking about efforts to destroy artwork that people find offensive, banning books like 'Little House on the Prarie' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' We're talking about taking away monuments and paintings depicting our Founding Fathers."
• 
"You see our public school system is being used as the engine to drive the social change."
• 
"A majority of younger Americans ... don't believe that religion and patriotism are important to their lives anymore."
      Sleep well, Ocasio-Cortez, and consider having a family.  Here's the truth about our planet  (Fox 09/07/2019)
• 
"Even while I was on vacation, I woke up in the middle of the night, at 3:30 in the morning, just concerned about climate change."
• 
"I'm 29 years old.  I really struggle sometimes with the idea of how to be a policymaker and potentially have a family in the time of climate change.  And it really, like, freaks me out and it can be really, really scary."
• 
Does the evidence show Earth has warmed over the past century?  Yes, of course.
• 
Is warming likely to continue for the next several decades, at least?  Yes, probably.
• 
But the available evidence shows that warming is not dangerous and not likely to be catastrophic, despite numerous dire reports from climate alarmists like Ocasio-Cortez and biased government agencies, which are often more interested in accomplishing political goals than engaging in real scientific inquiry.
• 
For example, the evidence clearly shows that sea-level rise is not accelerating at a dangerous pace and that it's in line with sea-level rise measured prior to the widespread use of fossil fuels.
• 
... the hard data overwhelmingly shows that recent warming has not been catastrophic and that humans are better off in our moderately warmer world that they would otherwise be...
• 
"During the past 150 years, as Earth has emerged from the Little Ice Age, the warming climate has brought immeasurable benefits that continue today, including crop yields that have set records in the United States and globally nearly every year."
• 
"Higher temperatures have also spurred a significant increase in global plant life, as measured by NASA satellites.
• 
Recent warming has led to a reduction in persistently lower temperatures, which researchers estimate kill 20 times more people than higher temperatures, and objective data show extreme weather and climate events have actually become slightly less frequent and severe in recent decades, despite numerous false or misleading media reports to the contrary."
• 
Numerous scientists have made similar observations in recent decades, a reality the mainstream press continues to ignore. 
• 
... the chief meteorologist at weatherbell.com, has found that "in the fossil fuel era, in spite of a four-fold increase in population," the number of deaths related to climate has "plummeted."
• 
"So what's happened as it's warmed this half a degree in the late 20th century and the CO2 has gone up and up in the atmosphere, well, what we've done is we've created a greener and greener planet and the greening of the Planet Earth is profound."
• 
Alarmists like Ocasio-Cortez also ignore the many important economic benefits provided by affordable, reliable energy sources like oil and natural gas.
• 
Unlike more expensive wind and solar, conventional energies work regardless if the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
• 
Many conventional energy power facilities, especially nuclear, often last significantly longer than solar or wind facilities.
• 
And conventional energy sources require a lot less land.
• 
If Ocasio-Cortez had it her way and the country was forced to abandon oil, natural gas, and coal — one of the most important provisions in her "Green New Deal" plan — more than 100 million acres of land would need to be consumed by solar facilities and wind turbines.
• 
That's a landmass larger than the state of California.
• 
How many hundreds of millions of animals and countless animal habitats would need to be wiped out in the name of "saving the planet"?
• 
And where does Ocasio-Cortez think all of the required rare earth minerals needed to build and operate those windmills and solar panels would come from?
• 
Someone is going to have to dig them out of the earth, destroying even more land.
• 
And in some cases, the only place to find these materials is in countries with notorious and abysmal human rights records, like the Congo, which has frequently experienced intense violence dnd even permits child labor.
• 
Millions of dead animals, more than 100 million acres of destroyed land, significantly higher energy costs, and child labor — now, that sounds like a nightmare worth keeping you up at night.
• 
Will global warming cause some problems, yes, but probably not nearly as many as proposals like the Green New Deal.
• 
And whatever problems do come humans' way will likely be outweighed by the benefits of warming and could easily be dealt with through technological innovations, human ingenuity, and, if necessary, behavioral changes.
• 
So, Rep.  Ocasio-Cortez, feel free to have as many kids as you'd like and sleep well.
• 
Humans are going to be just fine!
• 
See related The End IS Near... (Michael Ramirez, 01/24/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Green New Deal (Gary Varvel, 03/16/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Yes, Gun Ownership Is a Divine Right  (JWR 09/06/2019)
• 
... said that he wouldn't use "the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the G od-given rights of my fellow Texans."
• 
The basic proposition actually isn't hard to defend, and indeed it is written into our fundamental documents.
• 
This doesn't mean that G od wants you to own an AR-15, or that every jot and tittle of our current gun regime is divinely mandated.  Far from it.
• 
Yet there is a natural right to self-defense and gun ownership is inherently connected to that right in a modern society.
• 
The Second Amendment isn't fundamentally about Uncle Dick bagging deer, but about his ability to defend himself and his family.
• 
The notion of G od-given rights shouldn't be controversial.
• 
It is a bedrock of the American creed, written into the Declaration of Independence.
• 
It's preamble says, of course, that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
• 
In his inaugural address, John F.  Kennedy said "the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globea — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of G od."
• 
The Bill of Rights puts flesh on the bones of those "unalienable rights" of life and liberty, and numbers "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" among them.
• 
Why?  Because the founders believed, rightly, that everyone has an inherent right to self-defense.
• 
John Locke, the English philosopher influential with the founders, wrote:
• 
"I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred."
• 
Owning a gun is an extension of this law of nature, and has been recognized as such for a very long time in Anglo-America.
• 
Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist of the importance of "the original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government."
• 
This right can be used if necessary, per Hamilton, "against the usurpations of the national rulers."
• 
As the great writer and reformer Noah Webster put it, "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
• 
It is a canard that the Second Amendment contemplates gun ownership only in the context of militias.
• 
It clearly guarantees an individual right to bear arms.
• 
It uses the word "people," which appears in other amendments denoting individual rights.
• 
Whatever their merits, the most commonly proposed gun-control restrictions wouldn't substantially lessen gun ownership in this country.
• 
It does mean, however, that there is a limit to how far gun control can go in America, and that proponents of new restrictions should be fully aware that they are tampering with a constitutionally protected individual right.
• 
The Second Amendment doesn't have lesser status than the First.
      Senate Dems' unprecedented threat against the Supreme Court  (JWR 09/04/2019)
• 
In 2017, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., accused President Trump of showing "a disdain for an independent judiciary that doesn't always bend to his wishes" after Trump criticized a federal judge who ruled against his administration.
• 
Senate Democrats, by contrast, have launched an unprecedented attempt to actually bend the Supreme Court to their wishes — threatening to restructure the court if the justices do not rule as they see fit.
• 
What is not acceptable is openly threatening the court with political retribution if it does not rule a certain way.
• 
That is precisely what these Senate Democrats did.
• 
"The Supreme Court is not well," they wrote.  "And the people know it.  Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be 'restructured to reduce the influence of politics.'"
• 
As all 53 Senate Republicans wrote in a letter to the court last week, "the implication is as plain as day: Dismiss the case, or we'll pack the Court."
• 
Talk about disdain for an independent judiciary!
• 
Can you imagine if Trump issued such a preemptive threat?  Heads would explode.
• 
And in contrast to Trump's impulsive Twitter rants, the Democrats issued their threat in a carefully crafted legal brief submitted to the court.  They thought this through and decided that blackmailing the Supreme Court was a good idea.
• 
The Democrats accused the Supreme Court of being too political, but their plan to "reduce the influence of politics" on the court is to have senators order the justices how to decide or face political consequences?  What utter hypocrisy.
• 
The Democrats justify their unprecedented intimidation tactics by pointing out that since 2005, the court has issued 78 5-to-4 or 5-to-3 opinions in which Republican appointees provided all five votes in the majority.
• 
Give me a break.  In each of the cases to which they object, the liberal bloc voted in unison as well.  Were they behaving as a "partisan" minority?
• 
Senate Democrats would have no problem with these 5-to-4 decisions if they had been decided by a liberal majority.
• 
Their complaint is not with the rise of "political influence" on the court, but rather with their lack of political influence on the court.
• 
The judicial left has gone off the deep end because it is losing its battle for an activist liberal court.
• 
In 2016, over a quarter of Trump voters said that the Supreme Court was the most important factor in their decision to support him.
• 
... now that Democrats have threatened to pack the court with liberal judges if they win the White House and the Senate, the Supreme Court will once again be front and center.
• 
For the president, this is a massive stroke of luck.
• 
See related Who Are You Voting for? (Glenn McCoy, 08/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Steve Hilton: Trump is more pro-worker than any previous Republican president.  Here's why  (Fox 09/03/2019)
• 
"Our economic policy can be summed up in three simple, but beautiful words: jobs, jobs, jobs."
• 
"We've created six million new jobs since Election Day.  If I would've said that, no one would have believed it.  If I would've said that, fake news would have said, ‘He's exaggerating.'"
• 
The first step in bringing jobs back was to get the economy moving after the years of stagnation under the anti-business policies of President Obama and the Democrats.
• 
Almost immediately after President Trump was elected, his pro-enterprise agenda led to confidence rising, investments booming, and growth returning to levels that the experts said we'd never see again.
• 
Now that formula - lower taxes and less regulation - is pretty standard conservative policy.
• 
What's different about President Trump is that he is a populist.  He is pro-worker in a way that we haven't seen before from a Republican president.
• 
Establishment Republicans became slaves to a laissez-faire ideology that favored the financial sector and the coastal knowledge economy over manufacturing and the heartland.
• 
They adopted a pro-donor agenda of open borders and free trade at any price.
• 
They worshipped the Wall Street wheeler-dealers who said making things in America didn't matter.
• 
Let's import cheap labor.  Who cares what happens to American workers and their communities when manufacturing moves to Mexico and China?
• 
Well, President Trump does care.
• 
He said no to the one-sided trade deals ... ripping them up or renegotiating them.
• 
He said no to open borders, building the wall, enforcing immigration laws, and pushing for a merit-based system.
• 
He prioritized manufacturing after years of neglect, even intervening with individual companies, to the pearl-clutching horror of the free-market zealots.
• 
With President Trump, we've seen the lowest unemployment in 50 years and the lowest on record for African-American and Hispanic workers.
• 
The president promised "jobs jobs jobs" — and that is exactly what he is delivering.
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: James Comey owes America an apology – He abused his position as FBI Director  (Fox 08/29/2019)
• 
Only the audaciously arrogant fired FBI Director James Comey would demand the equivalent of an apology in the wake of a blistering denunciation of his actions by the Justice Department's inspector general...
• 
As usual, Comey has it backwards.
• 
Comey is the one who owes the American public a sincere apology for abusing his position as FBI director, violating government rules, concealing information from his former agency, leaking sensitive documents without authorization, mismarking memos without classification banners, improperly retaining records in an unsecured location, failing to surrender those records to the FBI, and assuming "carte blanche authority" he did not have.
• 
All of this is contained in the IG's report disparaging Comey's behavior.
• 
Yet, the fired director has chosen to play the victim by tweeting, "I don't need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you' would be nice."
• 
Comey is not a casualty of lies.
• 
He is the richly-deserved recipient of an unprecedented condemnation meticulously spelled out in the report.
• 
He victimized himself through his repeated acts of wrongdoing.
• 
He is lucky he was not indicted.  Yet.
• 
Comey has always insisted that the seven memos he composed about conversations he allegedly had with President Trump were his own personal documents.
• 
This was absurd, of course.  These memos were written in the course and scope of his employment as FBI director.  He spoke with the president in his capacity as head of the bureau.
• 
Sure enough, the IG found that "Comey's characterization of the Memos as personal records finds no support in the law and is wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining Federal records, and the terms of Comey's FBI Employment Agreements."
• 
Nevertheless, Comey kept copies of these documents at his home, an unsecured and unauthorized location.
• 
He did not return the records to the FBI upon his termination, as required.
• 
... makes it a crime to "steal or knowingly convert" a government record "with intent to convert it to his use" or to convey it to another without authority.
• 
Comey gave one of his memos to his friend and attorney, Daniel Richman, with instructions that it be leaked to The New York Times.
• 
This was a serious violation of FBI rules, inasmuch as the content involved sensitive information about an ongoing investigation and it was incumbent on the former director to protect it.
• 
"Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility," according to the report.
• 
... in one memo, Comey recounted how he promised the president: "I don't do sneaky things, I don't leak, I don't do weasel moves."
• 
Comey's leak to the media was the quintessential weasel move.
• 
"What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome," the IG report states.
• 
To make matters worse, he concealed from the FBI that he had given a classified record to unauthorized individuals.
• 
It is disappointing that prosecutors at the Justice Department seem to have given Comey the same "get out of jail free" card that he delivered to Clinton.
• 
Whether Comey's actions can be described as intentional or grossly negligent is of little consequence.
• 
Both constitute a basis for criminal charges under the law.
• 
In his phony embrace of victimhood, Comey states he has been "defamed."
• 
The law of defamation requires proof of a false statement.
• 
By my reckoning, the only false statements seem to have emanated from Comey himself.
      Immigration is not a security issue.  Dems want you to believe that.  It's a bitter lie  (Fox 08/29/2019)
• 
New Jersey Sen.  Cory Booker: "Survivors of sexual assault who are watching this body of powerful people, and what will happen.  This toxic culture, this pernicious patriarchy in this country has to stop."
• 
Massachusetts Sen.  Elizabeth Warren: "I am angry on behalf of women who have been told to sit down and shut up, one time too many."
• 
Independent Vermont Sen.  Bernie Sanders: "We need a change in our culture, in terms of how men treat women."
• 
So those are strong words coming from the party of Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy.  Did they actually mean any of them?  It was pretty easy to find out.
• 
Here's the question: how do you treat people you really care about?
• 
Would you leave your children at home alone with the front door unlocked?
• 
Would you invite strangers over to stay with them when you're gone?
• 
Probably not.  That would be crazy.  It would endanger their lives.
• 
Only a cruel and stupid person would do something like that.
• 
And yet Democrats are intent on doing the very same thing to our country.  They brag about it.
• 
Sen.  Booker has said, "On day one, I will make sure that number one, we end the I.C.E.  policies and the Customs and Border policies that are violating the human rights."
• 
... Sen.  Warren said this: "Offer a home to refugees.  That is who we are.  That's our values.  That's part of what we do."
• 
Presidential candidate Julian Castro has said, "So instead of building a wall or closing the border, we should choose compassion instead of cruelty."
• 
Sen.  Kamala Harris, has said, "We welcome refugees and bring people out of the shadows."
• 
Sen.  Kirsten Gillibrand, the former presidential candidate, has said, "Immigration is not a security issue.  It is an economic and a humanitarian and a family issue."
• 
You see that?  Immigration is not a security issue.  That's what they're demanding you believe.
• 
Has there ever been a more bitter lie?
• 
This week, authorities there charged a Salvadoran national called Nelson Reyes-Medrano Drano with raping a teenage girl at knifepoint.
• 
Reyes-Medrano is at least the fifth illegal immigrant arrested for rape in Montgomery County just this month.
• 
Five, just this month.
• 
Two of the others who have been charged with rape are charged with raping an 11-year-old girl.
• 
The details are horrifying.
• 
How did this happen?  Simple.
• 
Montgomery County is a sanctuary for criminal aliens.
• 
When it came right down to it, in the end, the safety of their own citizens meant less to them than the chance to posture yourself righteously about immigration.
• 
They wanted to feel like moral heroes, even if it meant that women got raped.
• 
Those are the real priorities.
      Cal Thomas: 'Lost' generation abandoning traditional American values  (Fox 08/29/2019)
• 
There are people in every generation who believe the generation following theirs is either going to the dogs or will ruin the country
• 
The founders and subsequent generations — perhaps excepting the Gilded Age and the horrors of slavery — mostly believed in the virtues younger people either now reject or approach with indifference.
• 
How can this be?  What has happened between the World War II generation, which gave so much so their children and grandchildren might enjoy the blessings of liberty, and the current generation, which seems cool to what once seemed to matter most?
• 
Generalizations are always problematic, but I have lived long enough and witnessed the general decline to make some.
• 
Prosperity is one explanation.  People who make more money than previous generations and possess a lot of stuff seem less inclined to participate in community...
• 
Stuff and the personal satisfaction of achievement lead to a decline in one's need for God — too much money, too little purpose.
• 
Politicians become a god-substitute and politics their religion.
• 
Then there is culture.  Younger people are exposed to what we collectively call "media" more than any previous generation.
• 
Unrestricted abortion has cheapened how many young people view the value of human life.
• 
For some, children are viewed as a financial burden and an intrusion on adult lifestyles.
• 
Sociologists and historians will tell us these things are cyclical, like weather.
• 
That has been true in the past when spiritual revivals often followed a fallow period of faithlessness and a focus on self.
• 
I'm not sure that cycle will repeat with younger people, given what they are taught at public schools and in liberal universities.
• 
The values that shaped and sustained America through economic downturns and wars had to be taught and instilled in the next generation. 
• 
The question is can America survive when our moral, spiritual and patriotic foundations are destroyed?
• 
If you don't love your country, what's the point of having one?
      Victor Davis Hanson: Why are so many young people calling themselves socialists?  (Fox 08/29/2019)
• 
"Socialist!" is no longer a McCarthyite slur.
• 
A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.
• 
Five years ago, septuagenarian Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S.  Senate – Vermont's trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness.
• 
But in 2016 Sanders' improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as socialist governments were either imploding or stagnating the world over.
• 
After Clinton's loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, Sanders is back, running as a socialist warhorse, promising endless amounts of free stuff, with those promises suddenly being taken seriously.
• 
Note the shock over Clinton's 2016 defeat, the furor directed at a take-no-prisoners Trump, and sudden progressive criticism of the Obama presidency as too temporizing, weak and ineffectual.
• 
College-educated Americans collectively owe an estimated $1.5 trillion in unpaid student loans.
• 
Many of these debtors despair of ever paying the huge sums back.
• 
Canceling debt is an ancient socialist rallying cry.  Starting over with a clean slate appeals to those "oppressed" with college loans.
• 
A force multiplier of debt is the realization that many students borrowed to focus on mostly irrelevant college majors.
• 
Such degrees usually offer few opportunities to find jobs high-paying enough to pay back staggering obligations.
• 
Asymmetrical globalization over the last 30 years has created levels of wealth among the elite never envisioned in the history of civilization.
• 
In addition to these disparities, "free" but unfair trade – especially with China and to a lesser extent with the European Union, Japan and South Korea – hollowed out the interior of the United States, impoverishing and diluting the once-solid middle class.
• 
Warped free trade and Chinese buccaneerism, not free-market capitalism per se, impoverished millions of Americans.
• 
Lots of young people claim to be socialists but are instead simply angry because they cannot afford a home, a new car or nice things in their "woke" urban neighborhoods.
• 
Usually, Americans become more traditional, self-reliant and suspicious of big government as they age.
• 
Reasons for such conservatism have often included early marriage, child-raising, homeownership and residence in a suburb, small town or rural area.
• 
Today's youth are generally marrying later.  Most have few if any children.
• 
They are concentrating in the urban centers of big- and medium-sized coastal blue cities, such as Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle – but often at dead-end jobs that pay them just enough to get by and enjoy the appetites and perks of cool life in the big city.
• 
These are the ingredients for a culture that emphasizes the self, blames others for a sense of personal failure, and wants instant social justice.
• 
Finally, schools and colleges have replaced the empirical study of economics, history and politics with race, class and gender indoctrination.
• 
Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, Soviet Union strongman Josef Stalin and Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong each killed millions of their own people.
• 
Today's students romanticize Che Guevara and Fidel Castro because they are clueless about their bloody careers.
• 
Few learn why naturally rich nations such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela ... have traditionally lagged far behind due to years of destructive central planning, socialist economics and coerced communist government.
• 
The handmaiden of failed socialist regimes has always been ignorance of the past and present.
• 
And that is never truer than among today's American college-degreed (but otherwise economically and historically illiterate) youth.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Beginning of US Slavery  (JWR 08/28/2019)
• 
"America Wasn't a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One."
• 
"Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all."
• 
... I'm going to focus on the article's most serious error, namely that the nation's founders intended for us to be a democracy.
• 
That error is shared by too many Americans.
• 
The word democracy appears nowhere in the two most fundamental founding documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
Instead of a democracy, the Constitution's Article IV, Section 4, declares, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."
• 
Think about it and ask yourself whether our Pledge of Allegiance says to "the democracy for which it stands" or to "the republic for which it stands."
• 
Is Julia Ward Howe's popular Civil War song titled "The Battle Hymn of the Democracy" or "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"?
• 
The founders had utter contempt for democracy.
• 
James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper No.  10, that in a pure democracy "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual."
• 
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, delegate Edmund Randolph said, "that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy."
• 
John Adams said: "Remember, democracy never lasts long.  It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.  There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
• 
U.S.  Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
• 
The U.S.  Constitution is replete with anti-majority rule, undemocratic provisions.
• 
One provision, heavily criticized, is the Electoral College.
• 
In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College so that in presidential elections, heavily populated states could not run roughshod over sparsely populated states.
• 
In order to amend the Constitution, it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses, or two-thirds of state legislatures, to propose an amendment, and requires three-fourths of state legislatures for ratification.
• 
Part of the reason for having a bicameral Congress is that it places another obstacle to majority rule.
• 
Fifty-one senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators.
• 
The president, with a veto, can thwart the will of all 535 members of Congress.
• 
It takes a two-thirds vote, not just a majority, of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.
• 
In addition to not understanding our Constitution, Hannah-Jones' article, like in most discussions of black history, fails to acknowledge that black Americans have made the greatest gains, over some of the highest hurdles in the shortest span of time than any other racial group in mankind's history.
• 
The evidence: If black Americans were thought of as a nation with our own gross domestic product, we'd rank among the 20 wealthiest nations.
• 
It was a black American, Gen.  Colin Powell, who headed the world's mightiest military.
• 
A few black Americans are among the world's wealthiest.
• 
Black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities.
• 
As such, it speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people.
• 
Just as importantly, it speaks to the greatness of a nation within which such progress was possible, progress that would have been impossible anywhere else.
• 
The challenge before us is how those gains can be extended to a large percentage of black people for whom they appear elusive.
      Gutfeld on Bernie's comments about China  (Fox 08/28/2019)
• 
"What we have to say about China, in fairness to China and its leadership is, if I'm not mistaken, they have made more progress in addressing extreme poverty than any country in the history of civilization, OK.  So they've done a lot of things for their people," Sanders said.
• 
He's right.
• 
According to the World Bank, the number of poor in China went from 880 million in 1981, to less than 10 million.
• 
But I wonder how they did that?
• 
Well, the Chinese "socialists" killed millions of poor people, so there's that.  Dead people aren't poor.  Just dead.
• 
They called that the "Great Leap Forward."
• 
After that, they used a tool Bernie despises: capitalism.
• 
It was only the Chinese rigorously adopted free-market principles, private ownership and decentralization, that they transformed their economy from a house of horrors to something much more humane.
• 
The things that saved a billion lives in China are the things Bernie thinks harmed our country.
• 
The lesson is that those who scream about inequality embrace ideas that create more inequality.
• 
By replacing equal opportunity with equal outcomes, you end up with two classes: the poor and the powerful.
• 
Which happened in China.
• 
Of course, China went "whole Communist," resulting in mass murder, religious persecution, forced abortion and famine.
• 
The number of dead in China under Mao has to be counted in the tens of millions.
• 
So yeah, praise is in order for China finally coming around to abandoning bad ideas.
• 
Maybe Bernie should do the same.
      Marc Thiessen: Trump administration can't defend the defensible  (Fox 08/28/2019)
• 
The Trump administration's inability to defend the defensible is simply mind-numbing.
• 
Even when the president is doing the right thing, he and his team can't seem to get out of their own way.
• 
Asked in an NPR interview whether the words "Give me your tired, your poor" are still part of the American ethos, Cuccinelli replied that what Lazarus really meant to say was: "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."
• 
Lazarus did not need Team Trump's editing.  She wrote: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" – not yearning for food stamps or free government health care.
• 
Trump is not changing the American ethos; the Democrats who want to give free stuff to foreigners are.  Not difficult.
• 
After China imposed new tariffs on American goods, the president announced via Twitter: "Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China."
• 
... the president tweeted, he really meant it.  "Try looking at the [International] Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977," he wrote, "Case closed!"
• 
Not really.  If Trump ever actually tried to use this law to "order" U.S.  businesses to leave China, he would almost certainly be overturned by veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress.
• 
Once again, the president took a completely reasonable policy and turned it into a needless controversy.
• 
President Trump was absolutely right to call out Democratic Reps.  Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan for their virulent anti-Semitism — including their charge that Israel's supporters in Congress are disloyal to America and, as Tlaib put it, "forgot which country they represent."
• 
But then, Trump declared that "any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat" show "either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty" – inadvertently using the very same anti-Semitic trope that got Omar and Tlaib in trouble in the first place.
• 
It was ridiculous because Trump is the most pro-Israel president in U.S.  history.
• 
And the same Democrats who had just been defending Omar and Tlaib five minutes earlier were now accusing Trump of anti-Semitism.
• 
Yet, Trump handed them an opening – and lost the moral high ground.
• 
This self-defeating pattern is undermining the Trump presidency.
• 
If you hit the mute button, the administration is doing a great job in many areas.
• 
Reforming our immigration system to reward work and discourage dependency; taking on China's predatory trade practices; standing up for Israel and against anti-Semites are all good policies.
• 
But when the sound comes on, the chaos and lack of discipline drown it all out.
      Our values are collapsing – How can we be shocked by the decline of civility, spread of hate?  (Fox 08/27/2019)
• 
There is no doubt that America has become more divided, less cohesive, and a lot less civil over the last few decades.
• 
Conservatives often point to the proliferation of liberal indoctrination in academia or an increasingly ideological and activist news media.
• 
Those on the left, meanwhile, are apt to lay the blame on President Trump, the personification of all of their fears and anxieties.
• 
A new poll ... however, paints a picture at odds with theories and in many ways, it's more disturbing than either of these narratives.
• 
The poll, which replicates a survey from 1998, shows a drastic drop in the number of Americans who place a high value on patriotism, belief in God, and having children.
• 
If these figures are accurate — and the precipitous drop in church attendance suggests they are — how can we be surprised at the growing division in our public life?
• 
How can we be shocked at the collapse of civility and the spread of hatred?
• 
The loss of God-consciousness must correlate directly to this sad and intensifying state of affairs.
• 
A culture that doesn't see God as real can easily devalue life, become deadened to any thoughtful feeling towards others, and feel no sense of responsibility or accountability for individual actions.
• 
When a primetime "comedy" host announces that he's "glad" a political adversary is dead, that he hopes his death was "painful," and is cheered on by his studio audience no less, I fear that sentiment is not an anomaly, but a reflection of the kind of culture that America is becoming.
• 
When I see so many Americans, especially the young, cite that vile sentiment with approval, I fear that the worst implications of the WSJ/NBC News poll are already upon us.
• 
Are we surprised that young people aren't getting married and starting families?
• 
Undoubtedly, there are financial and material factors — there always are, but they don't explain the full picture.
• 
Why have kids if you think the world will end in 12 years and you see no value in life beyond the temporal and physical?
• 
I fear that both sides — conservatives who believe our divisions can be healed if only the media and the universities would pipe down, as well as liberals who assume that everything will become more civil once the president they despise is out of office — are engaged in some very wishful thinking.
• 
A society that isn't rooted in the absolute morality of faith in God and collective belief in the sacred value of human life will always tend toward division and incivility, regardless of who is in political power or who writes our textbooks and newspapers.
• 
More than a glimmer of hope exists in the public embrace of faith, pronouncements about our shared belief in one Almighty God, and steadfast defense of life in the womb that we have seen from President Trump.
• 
But the trends reflected in the WSJ/NBC News poll are greater and longer-lasting than one man's service in public office, no matter how transformational his presidency may be.
• 
I sincerely believe that this poll will disturb other Americans as much as it disturbed me.
• 
I pray it will serve as a warning that we must return to the values of faith and morality that sustained America for so long.
• 
Most importantly, I pray that all Americans heed that warning together.
      San Francisco has a new definition of political insanity – [You won't believe this one]  (Fox 08/27/2019)
• 
The latest, but surely not the last demonstration of insanity, is San Francisco's Board of Supervisors' adoption of new "person first" language guidelines meant to "change the public's perception of criminals."
• 
The words "convicted felon," "offender," "convict," "addict" and "juvenile delinquent" are out.
• 
These individuals will henceforth be referred to as a "justice-involved person."
• 
Someone previously called a "criminal" will now be referred to as "a returning resident," or "a formerly incarcerated person."
• 
... the intent is to keep people from being "forever labeled for the worst things that they have done.  We want them, ultimately to become contributing citizens, and referring to them as felons is like a scarlet letter that they can never get away from."
• 
A noble objective, to be sure, but language has — or used to have — a purpose beyond interpersonal communication.
• 
Like so much else today, language has now been appropriated to advance political agendas.
• 
The encroachment of euphemisms on common sense is everywhere.
• 
Illegal immigrants have become "undocumented workers."
• 
Babies in the womb lose their humanity when they are labeled "fetuses."
• 
Euphemisms are most used to hide a more accurate description of behavior or status in order to avoid conflict, or not injure someone who might be offended or hurt.
• 
It fails to communicate anything meaningful, while claiming to do so.
• 
George Orwell called it "Newspeak," or "doublespeak."
• 
Too often, euphemisms are used to make bad behavior appear good, or at least tolerable, and to allow one to avoid responsibility and accountability.
• 
They are interpreted according to one's personal wishes.
• 
As Humpty Dumpty told Alice in the Lewis Carroll classic: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
• 
The English language once conveyed meaning.  Properly written and spoken, it suggested one was educated and capable of conversing in polite company.
• 
Today, it is often used to cover up true intentions.  Consider how often "racism" is misapplied.
• 
The proper use of language can also be redemptive.
• 
That used to be a major goal, along with punishment, of penitentiaries — the word being derived from "penitent," suggesting the possibility of changing one's life after admitting wrongdoing and repenting so as not to repeat bad behavior.
• 
Is anything "bad" today, or has that also become subjective?
• 
In our muddled language and culture, one dare not suggest anyone has done anything wrong lest negative labels be attached to them.
• 
Such labels are unevenly applied.  The political left often retains them to attack the right, but should the right seek to use words that accurately describe the conduct or status of another they are condemned as old-fashioned, rigid, judgmental, or worse.
• 
"Wardrobe malfunction," has been a recent favorite, a euphemism for showing off what were once considered "private" body parts.
• 
If you are unemployed, you are "between jobs" or a "consultant."
• 
"Underserved community" means the politicians aren't getting all the money they want.
• 
A corollary: you are no longer poor, you are "economically disadvantaged."
• 
Instead of applying euphemisms, San Francisco should be seeing to the homeless ("previously housed individuals"?) and the filthy streets that now require maps so people can avoid stepping in human waste.
• 
Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but the city seems to have lost its mind there too.
      Trump is the real populist.  Those are the facts.  Democrats are not even close  (Fox 08/27/2019)
• 
Let's start with the big argument at the heart of positive populism. 
• 
"After years and years of building up other countries we are finally building up our country, standing up for our jobs, our workers, and standing up for our dignity."
• 
"The forgotten men and women of America will never ever be forgotten again.  You were forgotten."
• 
This is the Democrats' central claim: Donald Trump has broken his promise to help working Americans.  He's not a real populist; his policies have only helped the rich.
• 
Honestly, these are lies, lies, lies.  Here are the facts, the facts, the facts.
• 
Between 2016 and 2018, corporate profits rose by $220 billion while workers' earnings went up by almost $1 trillion — four times more.
• 
The Democrats also say Trump is just continuing what Obama started.  But the facts show this is a complete lie, too.
• 
Workers' earnings increased by 42 percent more during President Trump's first two years in office than Obama's last two.
• 
There was a massive and almost instant jump - a turnaround that has destroyed the left's economic argument because it's a perfect test case of what pro-growth pro-enterprise economics can do.
• 
Yes, it's true that corporate tax cuts and deregulation helped businesses.
• 
But who do you think actually creates jobs and pays wages?
• 
Helping business is the way you help workers.
• 
Let me explain how it works for the economically-illiterate Democrats and their idiotic stooges in the establishment state media: Lower taxes and less regulation give businesses the confidence to invest.
• 
That means more innovation and higher worker productivity.
• 
That means more jobs are created, and workers are paid more because they're producing more.
• 
On jobs, the latest report showed 164,000 jobs were added, bringing the labor force to almost 163 million - a new, all-time record.  With President Trump, we've seen the lowest unemployment in 50 years, and the lowest on record for African-American and Hispanic workers.
• 
On workers' pay, the latest data on employee compensation showed that earnings rose 4.5 percent in 2017 and 5 percent in 2018.
• 
President Trump is specifically delivering on the promises he made to the forgotten men and women, who in 2016 revolted against an establishment that punished them for decades in the name of elitist dogma, like open borders, free trade, and globalization.
• 
In the Trump economy, incomes are rising fastest for the lowest-paid.
• 
Hourly pay growth for the bottom 25 percent has outpaced that of higher earners every month of the Trump presidency.
• 
The facts demonstrate conclusively that working Americans are the winners in the Trump economy.
• 
Yes, he is the real populist and it's the Democrats who are fake.
• 
Populism is about power to the people.
• 
The left is about taking power away from people and giving it to the government.
• 
"Well, Donald Trump may have a good economy, but that's just because of traditional conservative policy.  Where he's moved away from Republican orthodoxy, like on trade and China, it's been a disaster."
• 
... tariffs work.  They worked on the border with Mexico and are working with China.
      The way the critics talk, you'd think our entire economy was dependent on  ()
• 
But remember, in 2018 imports from China were just 2.7 percent of our economy and exports to China just 0.9 percent.
• 
... the Wall Street wheeler-dealers in the capital market system who for decades have screwed the American worker to make themselves rich, especially over China.
• 
So it is highly revealing that these elitist globalization ideologues are dumping on Trump just at the moment when his populist trade policies are starting to work.
• 
For 50 years, China was moving inexorably towards its stated aim of toppling America as the world's economic and military superpower by 2049, not least by cheating on trade rules and stealing technology.
• 
Now, thanks to President Trump, China is reeling.
• 
As a direct result of the Trump tariffs, manufacturers are moving supply chains out of China.
• 
This was the foundation of China's rise — and it's crumbling before our eyes.
• 
The establishment loves to regurgitate their tired talking points about consumers paying for the trade war.
• 
But they are idiotically short-sighted.
• 
They don't take into account the costs to our society - and our economy - of shipping jobs to China so they can ship cheap products back here.
• 
That would be my policy: If you want to sell it in America, you can damn well make it in America.
• 
The establishment just doesn't get the historic geo-strategic turnaround that Trump tariffs are delivering.
• 
Here's what to ask the Never Trumpers and the conservative ideologues and the establishment: If you don't like what President Trump is doing on trade, what's your alternative?  What's your plan to stop China from cheating us?  What's your plan to stop China from beating us?
• 
These Trump tariffs are the first thing in 50 years that have gotten China's attention, and they are reshaping the global economy to America's advantage.
• 
In 2016 ... we saw once again the true genius of this country.
• 
America elected as president the only person who was prepared to confront its greatest challenge.
• 
President Trump is not just the real populist — he's the really successful populist.
• 
Where he's followed traditional conservative economics — tax cuts and deregulation — the results have been great, especially for working Americans.
• 
But where the president has followed his own instincts — on trade and China — the results have been transformational and historic.
• 
That is positive populism in action.
      Robert Blecker: Pittsburgh synagogue massacre is a crime that deserves death penalty  (Fox 08/27/2019)
• 
The U.S.  Justice Department made the right decision when it announced Monday that it will seek the death penalty against Robert Bowers, the man charged with murdering 11 Jews gathered in prayer at a Pittsburgh synagogue last Oct.  27.
• 
According to police, Bowers told them "I want to kill Jews."
• 
The horrendous massacre he is accused of carrying out, motivated by virulent anti-Semitism, cries out for capital punishment.  Justice simply demands it.
• 
The carnage in Pittsburgh shocked our nation and much of the world.
• 
Whether the victims are Jews in a synagogue, African-Americans in a church, or Muslims in a mosque, we expect and have largely witnessed the common outrage from all decent people, whatever their color, whatever their creed.
• 
After all, "in a well-governed state, citizens, like limbs on a single body, should feel and resent one another's injuries," Solon, the great Greek lawgiver, declared 2,500 years ago.
• 
Over several decades, I have spent thousands of hours inside maximum security prisons and on death rows.
• 
I have interviewed convicted murderers to identify the worst of the worst among them and thus separate those murderers who deserve to die from those who don't.
• 
During my visits, the daily lives of lifers in prison – spared the death they arguably deserved – appalled me.
• 
Inside maximum security prisons, those sentenced to life without parole form friendships, play ball, eat ice cream and watch movies – simple pleasures their victims will never enjoy.
• 
It may not be a great life – but it's a life they greatly prefer to the alternative, as their low suicide rate shows.
• 
Typically, after notorious killings many abolitionist news organizations have cast the death penalty in a thoroughly negative light, as a barbaric relic that has no place in modern society.
• 
Yet most people – whatever their general political persuasion, however sensitive they are to problems with class or race bias in the criminal justice system – know intuitively and feel certain morally that some vicious murderers do deserve to die.
• 
I would reserve society's ultimate punishment only for the worst of the worst of the worst.
• 
Evil exists in the extremes, as Aristotle taught us.
• 
In this case, by randomly killing Jews at prayer, the mass murderer managed to combine the worst of two extremes – a passionate hatred for a people based on their religion, and a cold and callous indifference as to who within that group he would kill.
• 
Should Dylann Roof – the white supremacist who entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., and killed nine black congregants peacefully worshipping – live or die?
• 
Should Joshua Komisarjevski – who sexually abused an 11-year-old girl, posted cell phone photos of her and then tied her to her bed, poured gasoline over her and burned her alive – live or die?
• 
He was convicted of the 2007 triple murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters – 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Mikaela.
• 
Should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – who placed a bomb next to a child at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and coldly calculated to kill and maim as many people as possible – live or die?
• 
These vicious killers violated our sanctuaries and randomly destroyed innocent victims in what should be safe and sacred spaces.
• 
Today we tolerate too little and hate too much.
• 
But unfortunately, there is a time to hate, and there are people whom we should detest. 
      Bias has killed the ‘Gray Lady’ — and Dean Baquet fired the fatal shot  (NYP 08/26/2019)
• 
"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up."
• 
In this case, it is also impossible not to be disheartened and furious.
• 
The transcript shows that the rot of bias at the Times is far beyond the pale and there is no hope of recovery.
• 
Yet not a single person there declared the obvious — that the paper is betraying its principles.
• 
Rigor in reporting and restraint in judgment once made the Gray Lady noble.
• 
Now she is dead, her homicide an inside job.
• 
The transcript ... reveals a confederacy of ignorance and bigotry involving hundreds of people. 
• 
By giving reporters and editors license to try to stop Donald Trump from becoming president, then letting them peddle the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, Baquet helped unleash the hatred that is tearing America apart.
• 
Never before has a single media institution played such a destructive role in the nation's life.
• 
"How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks?  How do we cover the world's reaction to him?  How do we cover America, that's become so divided by Donald Trump?  How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven't done in a large way in a long time?  That, to me, is the vision for coverage ... for the rest of the next two years."
• 
This isn't journalism.  It's political activism aligned with the talking points of Democrats.
• 
Though none of those asking questions are identified, they are indistinguishable in wanting the paper to regularly call Trump a racist and a liar.
• 
These are supposedly straight news reporters and editors, yet are unrestrained in demanding that their partisan opinions dictate coverage.
• 
"Could you explain your decision not to more regularly use the word racist in reference to the president's actions?"
• 
"You mentioned that there could be situations when we would use the word racist.  What is that standard?"
• 
"I just feel like racism is in everything.  It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting."
• 
"What is the overall strategy here for getting us through this administration?"
• 
Not once does he express any doubt that Trump is guilty as charged, or say that reporters should not be expressing partisan opinions.
• 
He's only quibbling over how to present the agreed-upon conclusions.
• 
... there is zero evidence in the transcript that anyone in the room objects.
• 
Even allowing that some might have doubts about an entire news organization speaking with one scripted voice, the silence shows nobody felt secure enough to say so.
• 
The failure of anyone to recognize that the approach violates the paper's historic standards of fairness and the strict separation of news from opinion speaks volumes about how low the Times has sunk.
• 
If there is a silver lining, it is that the public has been warned.
• 
Readers who want straight facts and fair play won't find it in the Times.
• 
All they will get is a biased agenda and a guaranteed conclusion.
• 
See related Newz (Glenn McCoy, 08/18/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Unmasking (Glenn McCoy, 04/04/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tony Perkins: Solution to gun violence isn't what you think, says former police officer  (Fox 08/25/2019)
• 
Increasingly, few if any genuinely safe places exist as a refuge from armed, angry, addicted young men pumped up on violent video games and suffering from the absence of a moral core.
• 
Schools, churches, shopping centers, businesses, and almost every place people gather have become targets for deranged individuals who are set on perpetrating evil and in possession of lethal weapons.
• 
At what point will we have the courage to acknowledge that our nation has a problem?
• 
... the growing frequency and scale of such armed atrocities are symptomatic of a much deeper crisis, fomenting for decades.
• 
It is dishonest and self-serving of politicians who claim that this crisis is the result of statements made by President Donald Trump about securing our southern border.
• 
How would they explain the mass shootings that took place in Orlando, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino or Aurora during the Obama administration?
• 
Restricting the implements of violence while ignoring the causes is futile.
• 
A deadly game with life-and-death stakes plays out in all cultures when violent people choose to act against their fellow citizens.
• 
As Jesus observed in Matthew 15:19, from the human heart comes murder.
• 
To talk about the "why" and not just the "how," requires we go beyond external, environmental factors to focus on the internal aspect of morality.
• 
And we can't have an honest discussion about morality without including religion.
• 
Our nation's founders understood the importance of faith and morality working hand in hand in our republic to restrain the worst of our human nature.
• 
George Washington in his farewell address at the end of his second term as president included several pieces of advice for preserving America's prosperity, security and happiness.
• 
He observed: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."
• 
... Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
• 
Some will be quick to say that nearly 250 years later, America has moved beyond the faith that inspired nation builders.
• 
That is a tragedy.
• 
Today our culture increasingly marginalizes public faith and religion, pushing it from the public square.
• 
But in the process, we've lost public morality, common decency and virtue, which are essential to freedom.
• 
To achieve security for our families and communities while preserving the freedom that has made America great, we have only one option: Restore morality by renewing our commitment to the free exercise of religion.  In other words, we should protect, not prevent, religious freedom.
• 
Our baser nature clearly is not changed by passing more laws.
• 
The promises of security through more government restrictions will only serve to erode our freedoms while providing little protection.
• 
Rather, the solution to the gun violence plaguing our nation will be found in a willingness to recognize, as did the Founders, that as a people we are dependent upon and accountable to an omniscient God.
• 
It is only from such an understanding that morality and public virtue become commonplace, which is essential for freedom.
• 
New gun laws never achieve what a commitment to the Golden Rule can accomplish.
• 
America will be safer if all of us do unto others as we want them to do unto us.
      Ocasio-Cortez has yet another bad idea that makes no sense and would cause big problems  (Fox 08/25/2019)
• 
Last week the radical democratic socialist proposed yet another in a long series of impractical, unachievable and harmful ideas: abolishing the Electoral College.
• 
Before explaining why this is a very bad idea, let me give some breaking news to Ocasio-Cortez, who apparently was absent the day her high school social studies teacher explained how the Constitution is amended.
• 
Amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College is virtually impossible.
• 
That's because a constitutional amendment needs the support of two-thirds of the U.S.  House and Senate for starters.
• 
It then needs to be either ratified by the legislatures in 38 states, or by a constitutional convention requested by at least 34 states.
• 
Abolishing the Electoral College would hurt states with small populations and help states with large populations.
• 
There are a lot more states with small populations than large ones, so there is no way that the members of Congress and state legislatures would vote in favor of an amendment to reduce the importance of their states in the presidential election process.
• 
Hey, but Ocasio-Cortez has never let reality get in the way of her fantasies – like her belief that socialism, the Green New Deal and other ideas that would destroy our economy and millions of jobs are just wonderful.
• 
In her latest outburst, Ocasio-Cortez called the Electoral College a "scam" that perpetuates racism.
• 
"Due to severe racial disparities in certain states, the Electoral College effectively weighs white voters over voters of color, as opposed to a ‘one person, one vote' system where all our voters are counted equally."
• 
But in truth, the Electoral College isn't a "scam."
• 
It was carefully designed by the framers of our Constitution because they were concerned that a national popular vote to elect the president would grant far too much power to larger states and urban areas.
• 
And more than two centuries after the Constitution was first written, their arguments remain as astute and important as ever.
• 
To illustrate just how absurd things could get, consider the following scenario...
• 
Picture a two-candidate election with 2016's turnout.
• 
The Republican wins 54 percent of the vote in 48 states, losing only California, New York, and D.C.
• 
That's a landslide victory, right?
• 
But then imagine that the Republican nominee who managed this feat was so unpopular in California, New York, and D.C.  that he or she loses all three by a 75 percent-to-25 percent margin.
• 
That 451-87 landslide in the Electoral College, built on eight-point wins in 48 states, would also be a popular-vote defeat, with 50.7 percent of the vote for the Democrat to 49.3 percent for the Republican.
• 
Of course, ... fictional scenario is exactly what Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats want – an America in which presidents could effectively be chosen by two far-left states like California and New York.
• 
Now, that sounds like the real "scam" to me.
• 
One of the primary purposes of the Electoral College is to guarantee more equal footing for smaller, rural states – and that's exactly what it does.
• 
And it's extremely difficult to become president without building a large coalition of voters from many parts of the country, many of which have very different cultures, ideas, religious beliefs, ideological beliefs and economic interests.
• 
The purpose of the Electoral College isn't to help white people; it's to elevate the power of voters in states that otherwise would be completely forgotten and disenfranchised.
• 
Socialists like Ocasio-Cortez don't care about the Electoral College because they are worried about "fairness."
• 
There's nothing "fair" about giving a small minority of states significantly more power than the rest of the states.
      Tucker Carlson: San Francisco bans words to hide its crime problem — and to control your mind  (Fox 08/23/2019)
• 
For the past couple of years, we've reported in some horrifying detail on how the professional left has totally transformed the city of San Francisco from this country's most beautiful city, our Cape Town, into a cesspool of filth, homelessness and drug addiction.
• 
That is not an exaggeration.  There are now more junkies in San Francisco than there are high school students.
• 
And so you won't be surprised to learn that the city has also become threatening and dangerous.
• 
But don't worry, the city's leaders have a plan to respond to this.
• 
And of course, it's not more cops or better enforcement of the law.  That would be bigoted.
• 
Instead, the city of San Francisco has decided to ban words that suggest San Francisco has a crime problem.
• 
If people aren't allowed to talk about crime, maybe they won't notice crime exists.  That's the thinking.
• 
So last month, the city's Board of Supervisors decreed that there'll be no more "convicted felons" in San Francisco.  Going forward, ex-cons are to be called, "justice-involved individuals." Well, as it happens, the people they committed crimes against are also "justice-involved individuals."
• 
So, in other words, victim and criminal are now morally indistinguishable.
• 
That's on purpose.  This is woke equality.
• 
... back in the city of San Francisco, there are no longer any "juvenile delinquents."
• 
The whole category has disappeared.  Criminals under 18 are now referred to as "young people impacted by the juvenile justice system" — as if the system, and not the kid, committed the crime, which is what the left in fact believes.
• 
It's your fault, not theirs.  Check your privilege, Middle America.
• 
Drug addicts, meanwhile, in San Francisco are now called "people with the history of substance use." "Use," not "abuse."
• 
Now, you could laugh this off.  San Francisco, after all, is where all the crazy things happen.
• 
But language makes thought possible.  When the words disappear, so does our ability to think about the ideas the words represent.
• 
When they prevent you from saying the obvious, over time, it becomes impossible to see the obvious.
• 
And that's exactly of course, why they do it.  Those who control your words, control your mind.
• 
See related New San Francisco Terminilogies (Gary Varvel, 08/26/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
      Cal Thomas: NY Times rewrites history as propaganda for left-wing Dems  (Fox 08/23/2019)
• 
The newspaper's executive editor ... recently called a staff meeting to announce "The 1619 Project," named for the year the first African slaves were brought to Virginia.
• 
"The goal of the 1619 Project," says a statement from the newspaper "is to reframe American history."
• 
More like rewrite it.
• 
This is the stuff of totalitarian regimes where the media serve as a propaganda organ for the state, or in this case the surging left wing of the Democratic Party.
• 
No more America beginning with the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers and the Constitution.
• 
Africans had no say in these, though Jefferson's brilliant line about all of us being created equal would resound nearly a century later in a Civil War that led to the freeing of slaves and the long road to achieving Jefferson's noble statement.
• 
... it appears the newspaper's ultimate goal is to change what is taught in public schools so that children will no longer think highly of their country because of the "stain" of slavery – a stain that has been more than paid for in blood and federal programs, which have attempted to lift some descendants of slaves out of poverty.
• 
"The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race..."
• 
One excerpt reveals the drift: "If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation."
• 
Never mind that "brutal" capitalism has lifted more boats than any other economic system.
• 
We are led to believe that America is evil, soulless, that those at the top have always exploited those at the bottom.
• 
There's appears to be advocacy for bigger government, reparations and never-ending guilt for things we today had nothing to do with.
• 
Is this what we want to impose on our children?
• 
The Times' attempt to shape history to fit its own biases is not journalism.
• 
If public schools follow its lead, they will begin to resemble schools in countries where freedom is not the prevailing tenet and antithetical to what the founders gave us.
      Harmeet Dhillon: Democrat Stacey Abrams' sore-loser example is the wrong message for America  (Fox 08/22/2019)
• 
From childhood, American children are taught that whatever the contest – be it softball, hopscotch, soccer or track – you shake your opponents' hands and say some version of "good game," regardless of whether you win or lose.
• 
And if you lose, you up your game and try again.
• 
But that is not the prevailing view in today's Democratic Party.  The mantra of Democrats today is: we never lose – the game is rigged, the other side cheats.
• 
Democrats called for Donald Trump's impeachment even before he moved into the White House.
• 
Then the narrative quickly shifted to their claim that Trump didn't really win the presidential election – Russia cheated.
• 
... the never-ending impeachment drumbeat in the House has hijacked Democrats' policy agenda (perhaps a silver lining in this grim tale).
• 
After saying in October 2016 that refusing to accept the results of an election was "horrifying" and "a direct threat to our democracy," Hillary Clinton surfaces to complain every few weeks, like a ghost haunting a mansion empty of ideas.
• 
But even Clinton – who conceded her loss to Trump – looks like a good sport compared to Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who lost the 2018 gubernatorial election but remains in raging denial of reality.
• 
Abrams did not lose a close election.  She lost by 54,723 votes.
• 
Compare this to Democratic Vice President Al Gore's loss in the 2000 presidential election in Florida (537 votes), Republican Sen.  Norm Coleman reelection loss in Minnesota in 2008 (312 votes), or even Democratic Sen.  Bill Nelson's loss in Florida last year (10,033 votes).
• 
Abrams lost by a margin over four times larger than the three candidates above combined.
• 
Yet Gore, Coleman and Nelson all accepted their losses. 
• 
Abrams has never conceded – instead, she proffers wild conspiracy theories about how the election was "rigged," even as she admits ... "I have no empirical evidence that I would have achieved a higher number of votes."
• 
Instead of distancing themselves from her alternate reality, Democrats have lifted up Stacey Abrams as a leader.
• 
It is not about minority voter suppression – it is about Democrats winning all elections, because that is their only definition of a "fair fight."
• 
"What we're going to do through Fair Fight 2020 is we're going to fight back.  But we're fighting early.  We're doing this now.  We're not waiting until we have a nominee.  Because no matter who the Democratic nominee is, they're going to win Georgia."
• 
Gone is any pretense of a level playing field and poll access – Democrats will win, voters be damned!
• 
Carter said: "To make sure that a person arriving at a polling site is the same one who is named on the list, we propose a uniform system of voter identification based on the ‘REAL ID card' or an equivalent for people without a driver's license...  Voter registration in many countries is often tied directly to a voter ID, so that voter identification can enhance ballot integrity without raising barriers to voting...  A good ID system could deter, detect, or eliminate several potential avenues of fraud ... and thus it can enhance confidence."
• 
Yet 40 years later, Democrats such as Abrams now insist, illogically, that it is racist to secure ballot integrity through voter ID.
• 
Voter suppression is real – but not quite how Democrats describe it.
• 
In 2008 we saw enforcers armed with clubs at polls; in 2012 and 2016 we saw Republican poll officials thrown out of polling places where they were legally permitted to be, and in 2017 and 2018 we saw poll officials illegally voting for people.
• 
In the 2017 special election we finally saw multiple election officials charged when they forcibly changed or suppressed the votes of Green and Republican Party voters in favor of the Democratic candidate.
• 
Against the modern background of what constitutes documented voter suppression, there can be no more results-oriented voting scheme than one – like Abrams' – that announces that Democrats WILL win, come what may.
• 
Stacey Abrams announced her new effort at an elementary school presumably to teach children about voter suppression.
• 
Ironically, it is Abrams who could learn something from the elementary students.
• 
You shake your opponents' hands, gracefully concede defeat, improve your skills, and try, try again.
• 
Abrams' sore-loser example is the wrong message for America.
      Gregg Jarrett: Why the Trump-Russia phantasm will ultimately lead to a reckoning with justice  (Fox 08/21/2019)
• 
American citizens have a right to know what their government is doing.  That is the law.
• 
The FBI routinely ignores the law.
• 
Roughly 50 years ago, Congress grew fed up with federal agencies like the FBI operating in the shadows of secrecy.
• 
Without public scrutiny, there was no transparency and accountability.
• 
Rogue operators could act outside the bounds of the law and conceal their insidious actions under the cloak of confidentiality.
• 
A new law was passed called the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
• 
It is through this Act that the veil of secrecy has been pierced in the Trump-Russia "collusion" case.
• 
... order the FBI to search its records for any communications with Christopher Steele, the maladroit ex-British spy who composed the specious anti-Trump "dossier" that was commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to torpedo his candidacy in 2016.
• 
At the time, Steele was also on the bureau payroll as a confidential informant.
• 
James Comey's FBI exploited the uncorroborated "dossier" to launch its criminal investigation of Trump while masquerading the probe as a counterintelligence operation. 
• 
Comey is no longer in charge, but his replacement, Christopher Wray, is his equal when it comes to hiding evidence of potentially corrupt acts.
• 
At its core, Steele's "dossier" was based on little more than multiple hearsays from supposed Russian sources who were largely anonymous.
• 
It is quite possible that these unidentified sources never existed at all or, in the alternative, the ex-spy was fed Russian disinformation to the amusement of the Kremlin.
• 
Senior FBI officials well knew the sketchy provenance of the "dossier" and the mutable character of its author.
• 
Indeed, they were warned.  They didn't care.
• 
They also knew that the accusations contained therein were so dubious and unverified that they could never be used in court or to initiate a formal investigation of its target.
• 
Yet, undeterred by the constraints of law, the FBI used them anyway.
• 
In essence, the outlandish rumors fueled by partisan enemies of Trump and the lawlessness of the FBI invented the biggest political "con" of all time –a deliberate deception that managed to dominate and, to some extent, disable the Trump presidency.
• 
Steele did not work alone.  His carefully cultivated false narrative of Trump-Russia "collusion" was engineered by hired surrogates of Clinton campaign and Democrats...
• 
With clever calculation, Simpson and Steele hustled their "dossier" to the media and Clinton allies in the upper echelons of government, with the FBI as the ultimate receptacle for all phony information.
• 
By any reasonable standard, the "dossier" was a ludicrous document on its face and the FBI surely knew it.
• 
They assigned undercover agents to infiltrate the Trump campaign to gather compromising evidence to confirm it.
• 
This effort fizzled, as did the FBI's offer to Steele of a $50,000 bonus, if only he could verify the contents of his memo.
• 
No payment was made since it was impossible to verify the fable he had composed.
• 
He later admitted that it was merely "raw intelligence," and in court documents he discredited its veracity.
• 
None of this impeded Comey's FBI or President Obama's justice department
• 
Vital evidence was concealed, the judges were deceived, and the court was defrauded.
• 
It was never informed, for example, that the "dossier" was funded by the Clinton campaign and that its author had been fired by the FBI for leaking and lying.
• 
Instead, the FBI and DOJ vouched for the credibility of their "source," even though he was not a source at all.
• 
After a year-long surveillance, no evidence of "collusion" was collected and the supposed "spy" was never charged with anything at all.
• 
The strategy to dismantle Trump's bid for the highest office was dependent on proliferating the erroneous and lurid story that he was a modern-day "Manchurian Candidate" or "Putin's Puppet."
• 
When it did not gain the desired traction and the Republican nominee was elected, his enemies doubled-down on the scheme to portray Trump as a Russian stooge who would betray his nation once he set foot in the Oval Office.
• 
A complicit media was all too willing to convict Trump in the court of public opinion by perpetuating these calumnies without bothering to honestly examine either the relevant facts or applicable law.
• 
Unfounded allegations that the president was in league with Putin served as rich fodder for endless stories, commentary, and denunciations on Capitol Hill and the compliant press.
• 
This was precisely what the progenitors of the lie had desired all along.
• 
Within three months, Trump was fed up with Comey's duplicity and misrepresentations.
• 
When he fired the FBI director, the escalating witch hunt became a full-blown political maelstrom.
• 
It ended only when special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of a criminal "collusion" conspiracy. 
      Marc Thiessen: If Omar and Tlaib can boycott Israel, why can’t Israel boycott them?  (Fox 08/21/2019)
• 
... accused Israel of denying her and fellow congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., entry because they are "the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress."
• 
... accusing Israel of implementing "Trump's Muslim ban"
• 
Sorry, it's not a Muslim ban; it's an anti-Semite ban.
• 
Israel's decision to bar the two U.S.  lawmakers was a mistake, because it has given them a much bigger platform from which to attack Israel.
• 
But let's be clear: There is nothing outrageous about Israel's decision to bar entry to politicians who advocate its destruction.
• 
If Omar and Tlaib can boycott Israel, why can't Israel boycott them?
• 
Omar says Israel's decision interferes with her ability to do her work "as a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs."
• 
Maybe so.  But the problem is not that Israel barred entry to a member of that committee, but rather that there is an anti-Semite sitting on that committee.
• 
Omar has said that when she hears people call Israel a democracy, "I almost chuckle." She has said "Israel has hypnotized the world"; has declared her hope that Allah will "awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel"; supports a boycott of Israel, a country she has compared to Nazi Germany; accused her House colleagues who support Israel of pushing "for allegiance to a foreign country"; and declared that support for Israel is "all about the Benjamins."
• 
How is it that she continues to sit on the congressional committee that helps set U.S.  policy toward Israel?
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., actually defended Omar's "allegiance to a foreign country" remark, saying "I don't believe it was intended in an anti-Semitic way."
• 
I'm sorry, what other way could Omar have intended it?
• 
Like Omar, Tlaib has accused her colleagues of dual loyalty — a classic anti-Semitic trope — declaring "they forgot what country they represent."
• 
She advocates a one-state solution, which means she opposes the very existence of the state of Israel.
• 
Tlaib wrote for Louis Farrakhan's publication, the Final Call, which regularly publishes anti-Semitic screeds.
• 
... she invited a Palestinian activist to her swearing-in who has praised Hamas and Hezbollah and has equated Zionists with Nazis.
• 
Omar and Tlaib showed their true colors when they chose not to join a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel earlier this month in favor of a trip organized by Miftah, a rabidly anti-Semitic group that has accused Jews of using "the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover," has published neo-Nazi propaganda questioning "the Jewish ‘Holocaust' tale" in quotes and has celebrated terrorists who murder Israeli children.
• 
And, as though to prove Israel's point, after being denied entry, the two lawmakers shared a cartoon on Instagram by an anti-Semitic cartoonist who placed second in an Iranian newspaper's 2006 Holocaust cartoon contest.
• 
The fact that Democrats tolerate, and even embrace, Omar and Tlaib is appalling.
• 
And it points to a larger problem.
• 
There is anti-Semitism on both the right and the left.
• 
On the right, anti-Semitism manifests itself in skinheads marching in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us!"
• 
On the left, anti-Semitism manifests itself in Democratic members of Congress who compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
• 
But while right-wing anti-Semites remain on the political fringes, where they belong, on the left anti-Semites have found their way into the halls of power and are being defended by the Democratic Party's leaders.
• 
How sad that so many prominent Democrats are condemning Israel's decision to bar these anti-Semites more vigorously than they have condemned their anti-Semitism.
• 
See related I'm ... Anti-Semitic (Bob Gorrell, 02/13/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Rashida Tlaib’s “grandmother” trick – nice try  (INN 08/20/2019)
• 
Some of us remember it as the excuse we gave for playing hooky for class or for work, "I had to go visit my sick grandmother."
• 
It's always been the classic routine to gain sympathy, and no one does it better than BDS-flavored Palestinian Arabs, or more cynically than Rashida Tlaib, who was elected to represent Michigan's 13th congressional district, largely Detroit.
• 
Imagine the surprise, among voters, to listen to her say, "When I won, it gave the Palestinian people hope..."
• 
Wasn't she elected to give the "Michigan people hope?"
• 
You would expect those to be her constituents — those who make the cars, rather than those who use the cars for ramming into Jewish civilians waiting at an Israeli bus stop.
• 
This happened days ago to two Israeli teens dear to me, with unbearable consequences.
• 
So now is not the time to cry me a river.
• 
Then what about grandma?  She seems awfully spry at 90 for someone living under "oppression."
• 
It is a statistical fact, by the way, that Arabs living under Israeli "oppression" live longer, healthier, happier lives than anywhere in the Arab world.
• 
But you will hear none of that from the sob sisters, whose anti-Semitism is well-documented and now comes in a double dose...
• 
Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are taking their show on the road to poison the air with regard to the Special Relationship that exists between the United States and Israel.
• 
The special friendship was codified by President John F.  Kennedy, when Democrats were the good guys...and in God we trusted, not Allah.
• 
Enter the Four Ingrates – now especially Tlaib and Omar – and in a blink the Party stinks from the odor of anti-Semitism and the Special Relationship has turned wobbly.
• 
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi – hello?  Anybody home to discredit the two blood libel artists?
• 
In their silence, they support the two scoffers.
• 
The two grievance sisters were at it today at a "press conference" to air their bad vibes and if you thought you had channeled Berlin, 1933 by mistake no, this is America, 2019.
• 
They spent more than an hour spreading it thick, one blood libel after another, though without Wagner's Die Walkure.
• 
Tlaib wept talking about checkpoints in Israel.
• 
Only failing to mention the rise of checkpoints all around the world before, during and after 9/11, due to the manifold acts of terrorism committed by her "people."
• 
At the moment Israel is facing threats of annihilation from Iran, and so it is every moment of every day.
• 
No other country but Israel endures anything like this.
• 
Also at this moment Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad are firing at Israel and arming themselves to the teeth for the dream of destroying the Jewish State. 
• 
On top of all that, plus BDS, the Israelis are expected to roll out the red carpet to be bullied even further...on their own turf.
• 
A particular Jewish/Israeli grandmother that I love and admire is suffering, at this time, for her grandchildren...so please...
• 
Please spare me Omar and Tlaib's sob stories.
• 
This is not the time to weep for Tlaib's grandmother, who appears to be doing just dandy.
      The Left's vile smear of America's founding  (JWR 08/20/2019)
• 
"Europeans did not outdo others in enslaving people or treating slaves viciously."
• 
"They outdid others by creating a Christian civilization that eventually stirred moral condemnation of slavery and roused mass movements against it.  Perception of slavery as morally unacceptable — as sinful — did not become widespread until the second half of the eighteenth century.
• 
"Today we ask: How could Christians or any civilized people have lived with themselves as slaveholders?  But the historically appropriate question is: What, after millennia of general acceptance, made Christians — and, subsequently, those of other faiths — judge slavery an enormity not to be endured?"
• 
It's not a question anyone running in the Democratic presidential primaries, or editing The New York Times, is inclined to ask.
      Steve Hilton: Trump-haters hype up a recession while the real economy is booming  (Fox 08/19/2019)
• 
President Trump made the economic case for his re-election in classic style the other night during his rally in New Hampshire.
• 
"You have no choice but to vote for me because your 401(k)s will be down the tubes."
• 
"Everything's gonna be down the tubes.  So whether you love me or hate me, you got to vote for me."
• 
But according to the people who hate the president, it's all going down the tubes now.
• 
It's pretty obvious that these establishment Trump-hating hysterics — all of them, of course, living comfortable coastal lives — actually want a recession because they think that's the best way to get rid of Trump.
• 
At least one of them is honest about it.  "I've been saying for about two years — that I hope we have a recession, and people get mad at me," said Bill Maher...
• 
Yeah, I wonder why, Bill.  Perhaps because in a recession, real people - working Americans - get hurt, not you and your rich friends in the establishment state media, of course.
• 
They'd be reporting on a recession, not living it.
• 
We saw all this talk of recession last week, not because of anything that happened in the real economy, but because of the fake economy — the one conjured up by panicky idiots and algorithms on Wall Street.
• 
They're really not very smart.  They're certainly not thoughtful or kind.  They're often poorly-educated, mostly ignorant and always self-interested and greedy.
• 
They hear a rumor, massively overreact to a single piece of data, push some buttons and then follow each other like demented sheep.
• 
The worst thing is, their panicky idiocy can have real-world effects.
• 
In the end, the economy is not some abstract thing.  It is a human thing, the collective result of countless human decisions.
• 
So actually, the Wall Street idiots and the establishment state media literally could cause a recession just by going on about it.
• 
"The average worker is working, getting paid more.  That's going to translate into good credit performance on the consumer side.  The real risk for the U.S.  economy is if the consumers slow down."
• 
"We have nothing to fear about a recession right now except for fear of a recession."
• 
That is exactly right.  We must not let the panicky wall street wheeler-dealers and the Trump-hating establishment state media talk us into a recession.
• 
We must keep the focus on the real economy, not the fake economy.
• 
In the real economy, the Trump administration's pro-enterprise agenda is working.
• 
Lower taxes and less regulation gave businesses the confidence to invest.
• 
That means more innovation and higher worker productivity.
• 
That means more jobs are created, and workers are paid more because they're producing more.
• 
With President Trump, we have the lowest unemployment for 50 years, and the lowest on record for African-American and Hispanic workers.
• 
While the Trump-haters pray for a recession and Wall Street plays around with the fake economy, the real economy is booming.
• 
So is everything just fine and dandy, with nothing to worry about.
• 
Can President Trump and his team just sit back and ride the economic wave all the way to reelection next year?
• 
Not at all.
• 
There's no question that the rest of the world is doing poorly.
• 
So what should President Trump do to keep our economy moving ahead?
• 
It's no use just yelling at the Fed — there's a limit to what they can do.
• 
But there are two big things the president can do, on his own initiative, without Congress or anyone else.
• 
Get rid of the tax on inflation, and you'll see trillions of dollars redeployed to highest and best use."
• 
The second big idea is on trade and China.  ... He's the first western leader in 50 years to stand up to China, and it's working.
• 
But there's nothing wrong with a tactical pause to get the best possible economic climate for the re-election campaign.  Make a deal now, and then hit them hard after the election.
• 
Here's the bottom line: The Trump economy is fundamentally strong and delivering good jobs and higher earnings for the working Americans who suffered in the years of stagnation.
• 
The biggest threat to our economy comes from the loony left economic policies of the Democrats, which would scare off investment and bring back stagnation.
• 
So the president and his team should take the initiative and take positive and practical steps to boost the economy now: index capital gains and a temporary trade deal with China.
      WARNING: America, Revealed  (JWR 08/16/2019)
• 
One thing about tragedies: They reveal people for who they really are.
• 
In the past two weeks, we've learned a lot about our media and political class.
• 
Our country endured two separate and horrifying mass shootings, one in El Paso, Texas, and the other in Dayton, Ohio.
• 
Between them, at least 31 people were murdered.  Two massacres, back to back.
• 
It's tempting to look for themes that connect them, but if there are any, they're not political.
• 
One gunman appeared to be a Trump voter.  The other supported Sen.  Elizabeth Warren.
• 
There's no obvious ideological lesson here.
• 
But that hasn't stopped the usual power-hungry politicians from trying to leverage human pain for political advantage.
• 
Thirty-one dead, and the only thing these politicians can think about is how to terrify Americans into voting for them.
• 
These are our political leaders.  Their comments are disgusting.
• 
Nobody really believes this is about Trump or about assault weapons.
• 
If only it were that simple.  Our problems go far deeper.
• 
What's the real diagnosis?
• 
Author James Howard Kunstler, one of our wisest cultural observers, summed it up this way: "This is exactly what you get in a culture where anything goes and nothing matters.  Extract all the meaning and purpose from being here on earth, and erase as many boundaries as you can from custom and behavior, and watch what happens, especially among young men trained on video slaughter games."
• 
He's right.  Young men are the problem.
• 
Many of our boys are living in what Kunstler describes as an "abyss of missing social relations" with "no communities, no fathers, no mentors, no initiations into personal responsibility, no daily organizing principles, no instruction in useful trades, no productive activities, no opportunities for love and affection, and no way out."
• 
Our leaders are too cowardly to say so, but the signs are everywhere.  Mass shootings are just the final manifestation.
• 
Suicide rates for young Americans are the highest ever measured.  So are drug-related deaths.
• 
Fifteen percent of millennials still live with their parents.
• 
Fifty years ago, more than 80% of American adults ages 25 to 34 were already married and living with a spouse.
• 
Today, less than half of adults in that age range are married.
• 
A huge portion of American young people aren't in any kind of relationship at all.
• 
It's no wonder millions of young people feel helpless, miserable and alone.
• 
They lack friends or parents or religious organizations to give their lives purpose and moral coherence.
• 
Most people think our democracy is fake.  The policies they live under, the jobs they hold and even their personal opinions are controlled by tech monopolists, media scolds and Washington bureaucrats.
• 
America is supposed to be a free country, but millions of young people look around and feel like they're trapped in a stagnant dystopia.
• 
In such an environment, a few people will lash out in violence.
• 
Millions of others will simply fade away, from suicide or overdose or diabetes.
• 
This is the real crisis, the one that produced those horrifying scenes on TV over the weekend.
• 
Washington is happy to pretend it isn't happening.
• 
But it is.  You can't ignore it forever.
      Betsy Ross' Hong Kong  (JWR 08/16/2019)
• 
It seems like years ago now but it was only a few weeks ago, last July 4th, when Nike decided to cancel a sneaker that featured the Betsy Ross version of the American flag on it because it offended Colin "Take a Knee" Kaepernick who claimed the flag represents slavery and white privilege.
• 
Nike listened to this jerk because they pay him millions of dollars a year as their spokesman.
• 
As you remember Kaepernick, at best a so-so football player, gained widespread attention in 2016 by refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest to supposed police brutality against blacks.
• 
Since then other America-hating athletes, including members of the US women's soccer team have followed suit.
• 
(I wonder why it is that so many Americans who have had great success in America hate America?  But that's a question for another time.)
• 
Contrast that with what has been going on recently on the other side of the world with protesters in Hong Kong.
• 
The citizens want freedom and democracy.
• 
Chinese media has warned of potential terrorism rising in the country and even accused the US of supporting the riots.
• 
Why?  Because the pro-democracy supporters in the streets have been seen waving the American flag, the ultimate symbol of freedom.
• 
There is one video in particular that shows Hong Kong protesters holding a line of American flags as one of them begins to sing the "Star Spangled Banner," the American national anthem — that very same national anthem that Colin Kaepernick and his fellow America-haters refuse to sing or stand for.
• 
Hong Kong isn't the first place in the world where people yearning to be free have waved our flag as a symbol for liberty, democracy and freedom.
• 
The Stars and Stripes has represented freedom for over two centuries.
• 
No other country on earth has given people more liberty and more opportunity for a happy, successful life than the United States of America.
• 
The "American Dream" is very much alive in the hearts of those men and women who live under communism, tyranny, and dictatorships.
• 
Ask anyone who has lived under the boot of communism what they think of when they see the American Flag.
• 
It isn't white supremacy I guarantee you.
• 
While I feel extremely lucky to be living in a country that inspires so many on earth with the desire to be free, I'm saddened to think that so many of my fellow Americans who do have that opportunity are foolish, self-absorbed ingrates.
• 
See related That Flag Offends Me (Michael Ramirez, 07/04/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Not Standing for the Anthem (Sean Delonas, 09/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      ICE, Border Patrol are targets for left-wing extremists.  Where's the outrage from Dems?  (Fox 08/14/2019)
• 
Americans have always argued about how our government should be run and what actions it should take.
• 
For the most part, we've settled our difference with ballots and not bullets – the Civil War being the worst exception, when irreconcilable differences over the immoral institution of slavery tore our nation in two and claimed the lives of an estimated 620,000 Americans.
• 
Today it seems like we're fighting a small-scale civil war.
• 
Some angry people are claiming they have the right to harm and even kill others because of differences over political and public policy issues – or because they believe people belonging to a particular racial, religious, ethnic or other group are somehow evil or inferior and must be attacked.
• 
This is a poisonous attitude that is dangerous and un-American.
• 
Terrorism, murder and acts of violence are wrong whether they come from the right or the left.
• 
They should be condemned by all Americans and all our institutions, including government, political parties, religious institutions, and the media.
• 
Some Democratic presidential candidates and others in their party have wrongly blamed President Trump for creating a climate of hatred that encouraged the El Paso killings.
• 
But the truth is that President Trump is simply doing his job by securing our border and enforcing existing laws.
• 
Congress can change those laws if it wants, and if enough lawmakers support new laws they can even override a presidential veto.
• 
But presidents don't have the right to simply ignore laws.
• 
Imagine the justified uproar, for example, if the president said he wasn't going to enforce civil rights and anti-discrimination laws.
• 
And the same anti-Trump media and Democratic politicians who seek to portray our current president as a racist who hates immigrants seldom mention that President Barack Obama deported a lot more illegal immigrants.
• 
In 2012, for example, Obama deported nearly 410,000 people – a record.
• 
Last year President Trump deported just over 256,000 immigrants.
• 
In his eight years as president, Obama deported nearly 3 million.
• 
It's particularly disturbing that many of the same Democratic politicians, news organizations and other groups that justifiably condemned the El Paso shooter for his hate-filled diatribe against Hispanic people and his murderous rampage have failed to condemn the hate-filled diatribes and violence generated by extremist on the left.
• 
Just last month a man attacked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Washington state with a firearm and tried to set the building on fire.
• 
If he had succeeded, he could gave killed as many as several hundred people – ICE employees and hundreds of immigrants being detained for hearings.
• 
Before attacking the ICE facility, the man is accused of sending a letter to friends that he titled a "written manifesto," which detailed his motivation to "take action against the forces of evil" – specifically "fascism" and "concentration camps."
• 
Sound familiar?  Authorities say the El Paso killer sent the same sort of manifesto, except he was a right-wing extremist, while the ICE attacker was a left-wing extremist.
• 
Border Patrol Agents – along with their spouses and children – have been bullied and harassed at schools, churches and elsewhere because someone in their family chose to serve his or her country by joining the ranks of the Border Patrol.
• 
When I was acting director of ICE I had to deal with numerous death threats against my family and myself.
• 
At one point I had round-the-clock armed protection around my home for weeks.
• 
In addition to the threats of violence, we see elected officials at the local, state and national level calling the Border Patrol, ICE and anyone that enforces our immigration law Nazis, racists, and obscene names.
• 
Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has even called federal detention facilities for illegal immigrants "concentration camps," as if they were no different than the death camps where the Nazis tortured and murdered millions of Jews and others.
• 
And what have employees of the Border Patrol and ICE done to deserve both threats of violent attacks and verbal attacks from Democrats in Congress and the media?
• 
Like President Trump, President Obama and presidents before them, they have enforced the laws that Congress enacted.
• 
But where is the outrage from the nearly two dozen Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination regarding the attacks noted above coming from left-wing extremists?
• 
Where is the outrage by the media and by the Democratic leadership in Congress?
• 
Here's the bottom line: Hate is hate, terrorism is terrorism, and murder is murder.
• 
Politicians who condemn attacks on themselves and institutions and policies they support have an obligation to condemn such attacks on their opponents just as vigorously.
• 
We must not let political campaigns go from a war of words to a war where people are being killed and wounded.
• 
One civil war was enough.
      Meanwhile, This Is What LGBTQ Organizations Are Doing to Society  (JWR 08/13/2019)
• 
... LGBTQ organizations are quietly going about their work dismantling ethical norms, making a mockery of education, ruining innocent people's lives and destroying children's innocence.
• 
As a famous Soviet dissident joke put it: "In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it's the past that is always changing."
• 
LGBTQ organizations care about lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders as much as communists cared about workers.
• 
They use them as a cover for their real agenda: dismantling civilization as we know it.
      In responding to mass murders, thoughts and prayers are incredibly important  (Fox 08/10/2019)
• 
Some in America have tried to blame President Trump for these tragedies, which is ridiculous.
• 
The El Paso shooter reportedly wrote a deranged "manifesto" in which he predicted the media would blame his actions on Trump, but he said he'd been angry over illegal immigration for years before Trump ran for office.
• 
The El Paso gunman said he thought illegal immigrants were using up resources that should be spent on universal health care and a guaranteed income – hardly issues favored by Trump supporters.
• 
As for the Dayton shooter, he reportedly described himself on Twitter as a far-left Democrat and supporter of Sen.  Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination – and praised Satan.
• 
He was reportedly upset by Trump's election, and was impatient for socialism to come.
• 
Classmates described the Dayton gunman as a bully who liked to threaten women.  One of his deceased victims was his own sister. 
• 
In Chicago, the tragedy that's being overlooked by the media is that over 59 people were shot – seven fatally – last weekend.
• 
Much of the violence in that city is attributed to gang crimes – hardly anything the president instigates.
• 
The El Paso shooter was a radical segregationist and the Dayton shooter a democratic socialist.
• 
Racism wasn't the common denominator either.
• 
The El Paso shooter was targeting Mexicans, the Dayton shooter targeted his sister and people at random, and the violence in Chicago was largely black-on-black gang violence. 
• 
The bottom line is this: you can pass laws, blame the weapons, ban free speech and argue politics from now until doomsday.
• 
But you'll never legislate the evil out of people's hearts.
• 
This is never going to end until we have a reawakening of morality and values and invite God back into the public square, the public schools and the public discourse.
• 
Kids must be reared to practice the Golden Rule, observe the Ten Commandments and believe that we are all made in the image of God.
• 
We must once again value mutual respect and common decency.
• 
We must learn to care for each other and watch out for each other so that when one is bullied, alienated or starts down the wrong road, someone else is there to notice and do something about it.
• 
We must cherish life as sacred and believe that superficial differences like skin color are meaningless.
• 
Until then, passing more laws and pointing more fingers is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 
So I hope you'll join me, ignore the scoffers, and keep saying prayers.
• 
It's not a meaningless gesture.  It's the only thing that's ever really going to help.
      When evil is revealed and we refuse to see, act  (JWR 08/08/2019)
• 
A manifesto thought to be linked to the El Paso killer was posted online just before the assault on Walmart shoppers and, according to the Washington Post, maintains that he has held "his white supremacist ideology for many years, predating President Trump and his 2016 campaign, which he says did not influence his reasons for carrying out the attack."
• 
The Dayton shooter described himself on social media as a pro-Satan "leftist" who hoped to vote for Sen.  Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for president.
• 
One question no one is asking: why is evil rampant in our country?
• 
I don't mean obvious evil like the all too frequent mass murders.
• 
There are other evils, which seem to have come from the "pit" and are roaming among us uncontrolled.
• 
We seem to tolerate everything these days and oppose controlling what once was called evil behavior.
• 
Bad behavior is now considered good and good behavior is thought to be bad. 
• 
Those who practice good behavior are often labeled with words that end in "-phobe."
• 
Societal norms have been undermined.  Normal is what individuals think is true for them.
• 
If this sounds like a sermon, maybe that's what we need to hear.
• 
On March 30, 1863, Lincoln issued a Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer because of the Civil War, which was tearing America apart.
• 
This passage contains a message for us:
• 
"And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?  We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven.  We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten G od.  We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the G od that made us!"
• 
"It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."
• 
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reached a similar conclusion when he considered how communism had managed to dominate his native Russia for seven decades.
• 
In his 1983 Templeton Prize address, Solzhenitsyn said: "More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten G od; that's why all this has happened.'
• 
"Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval.  But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten G od; that's why all this has happened.'"
• 
These men were on to something.
• 
Blaming others hasn't worked.  We've tried that and more.
• 
Why not try G od?
      The left demands conformity, will use threats to keep people in line until the next election  (Fox 08/07/2019)
• 
"Gun control saves lives." That's what they're telling you day and night...
• 
Anyone who opposes gun control, they'll tell you by implication of - not directly - is a bad person, a callous, cruel, probably violent, person.
• 
Somebody who doesn't care about the safety of others.
• 
"Stab him in the heart.  Break his neck." That was one of the messages for Mitch McConnell.
• 
They're totally opposed to violence, and that's why they want to kill Mitch McConnell.
• 
Almost everything the left says these days is projection.
• 
In almost every single case, they accuse you of exactly what they're doing...
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In the wake of two horrifying mass shootings, they've been telling us President Trump is a hater.
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"He is using race to divide us!" they scream.  "It's wrong."
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Well, they are right about the second part.  It's definitely wrong.
• 
They are using race to divide us.  That's a core tenet of the left.
• 
Identity politics is the process of dividing people on the basis of immutable characteristics, factors they can't control.
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They promise some Americans reparations.
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They denounce others for their skin color.  They call it "privilege."
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The entire country, they'll tell you, is fundamentally racist and therefore, evil.
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So they're buffoons.  Yes, they are.
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They're dumb.  Of course.
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Do they have no idea what they're really saying?  Probably not.
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But that doesn't make the cumulative effect any less sinister or damaging.
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What you're watching every day is a systematic effort by the left to undermine the institutions that hold this country together.
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Chief among those institutions in this and all societies throughout time, is law enforcement, our justice system.
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But now, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, the left is telling us police are racist monsters.
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It's disgusting.  Dividing us?  Oh, yes, they're dividing us.
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Or how about our thousands of ICE agents working to enforce laws that the Congress passed?
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Now Democrats are calling those people Nazis.
• 
Good people doing a thankless job that we need to have done only to have some pampered moron like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez savage them for political reasons.
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None of this is new by the way.  Three years ago, you'll remember Hillary Clinton ran an entire presidential campaign on this premise, attacking the country itself and its people as immoral bigots.
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"You could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.  Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, — you name it."
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That's a message of unity?  No.  It's a message of disunity.  It's a message of hate, actually. 
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... Texas Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro ... tweeted out the names of 44 residents of San Antonio who've donated to the Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
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Illegal activity, but he tweeted them out.  And then he tweeted out the names of their employers, too.
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Why do you think he did that?  You know the answer.
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It wasn't that long ago that the Boston Globe ran an op-ed suggesting that restaurant workers poison the food of Trump supporters.
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And of course, Democrats like Cory Booker and Maxine Waters have been calling on people to harass and scream at people tied to the Trump administration.
• 
For years they've been saying that.
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Our democratic system only works when citizens are free to disagree, free to say to their neighbors, "We're on separate pages.  We vote for separate people," and not be afraid to say that.
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But the left is making us afraid to say that.
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The left demands total conformity.  They don't believe in diversity in any sense.
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They'll use censorship and threats to keep people in line.
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And in the short term that may work...  But over time, it's a big mistake.
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It's exactly how things fall apart.
      Why so many mass murders?  Study impact of violent video games and impose age restrictions  (Fox 08/07/2019)
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War is ugly and a nightmare to experience – neither glamorous nor enjoyable.
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It's nothing like the violent video games that allow players to happily "kill" animated figures from the safety of their bedrooms.
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As a combat veteran of two wars, I've seen the terrible human cost of violence close up – badly wounded fellow soldiers, others killed in the prime of life, enemy combatants burned beyond recognition.
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Destroyed homes, businesses and schools.
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Now violent video games are in the news as a possible contributing factor to mass murders here in the U.S., following the horrific weekend massacres...
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The weekend's mass shootings – following many others over the years – have triggered another round of calls to bans certain types of firearms.
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But the problem isn't the gun; the gun is an inanimate object.
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The problem is the person who pulls the trigger on the gun and shoots innocent victims.
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What makes some people pull the trigger?
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One factor that deserves closer examination is violent video games and their effect in desensitizing some young men so that they move from shooting figures on a screen to shooting flesh-and-blood men, women and children.
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Millions of Americans play video games.  The vast majority don't turn to real-world violence.
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But regrettably, some do.
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The massive growth of first-person shooter games that give a visceral, virtual-reality view of carnage sends a message to gamers that killing is OK, cool and the right thing to do.
• 
Nearly all American gun owners use guns safely and properly – for hunting, at shooting ranges, or for personal protection if faced with a deadly threat.
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What drives a very small number to use their weapons to attack others?
• 
... it's time to look at the effects of glamorized violence, especially in first-person shooter video games that enable the player to experience the action through the eyes of a gun-toting "good guy" who kills "bad guys" in violent confrontations.
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The shooter games are immersive and personal.  They allow players to look down the barrel of a gun and blow people into a bloody mist.
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These video games have grown in popularity and technical sophistication, with some using 3D graphics, desensitizing players to the horror of killing another person.
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"The research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in pro-social behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression."
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These video games follow the same concepts that have made the field of advertising an effective multibillion-dollar industry.
• 
Advertising is designed to get you to do, think or buy something.
• 
If you show or tell people the same thing enough times, you can change their perception and sometimes change their behavior.
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Someone playing a first-person shooter kills "bad guys" over and over again.
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This leads to two major messages being ingrained: that the player can decide who the "bad guys" are, and that killing them is the proper response.
• 
... whether it's a hero or anti-hero, the message is that "killers are cool."
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The player in a first-person shooter video game is on a mission.
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It may be a good one – like saving innocents or winning a military battle.  Or it may be a bad one, like being a great car thief or other type of powerful criminal.
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Either way, players are given the impression that they are the one who can make a difference and that they must not fail because they hold the fate of many in their hands.
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For those who discount this idea, explain to me what other factor has changed so dramatically in the past few decades to desensitize young people to committing acts of horrendous violence.
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Violent video games are just one way our society glamorizes violence and killing through movies, TV, music and other forms of entertainment.
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We need to take a hard look at why we do this, and to decide if measures should be taken to promote more positive behavior.
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... if these games are indeed causing some people to take violence from virtual reality to the real world, we need to determine if some reasonable limits can be placed on the games and who plays them, in order to save lives.
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Is this glorification of death and destruction really what we want to expose our children to in their formative years?
      America Is Drowning in the Left's Lies About Trump  (JWR 08/06/2019)
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The president of the United States, Donald Trump, never said there were "fine" Nazis or Ku Klux Klansmen.
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This is one of the two great lies of our time — the other being that all Trump supporters are racists...
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I cannot think of a lie of such significance that was held as truth by so many Americans, by every leading politician of one of the two major political parties and disseminated by virtually the entire media.
• 
The reason we don't recoil when the president labels the mainstream media "fake news" is that we know the charge is true. 
• 
Has one major media news outlet yet apologized to the American people for preoccupying them for nearly two years with the lie of "Trump collusion" with Russia?
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Has one Democrat?  Of course not.
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Because with regard to the Trump-Russia collusion issue, the news media were never driven by a pursuit of truth; they were driven by a pursuit of Trump.
• 
Truth is a liberal value, and it is a conservative value.  But it is not left-wing value.
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A leftist says whatever is necessary to gain power.
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When Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides," he was referring to people demonstrating in Charlottesville for and against tearing down a statue of Confederate general Robert E.  Lee, not to Nazis and antifa.
• 
Ali has the audacity to write: "I feel compelled to ask Trump supporters: Is it worth it?  How many have to suffer for you to feel great again?"
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The Atlantic is proud to publish such hate-inducing mendacity.
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And the left accuses conservatives of hate.
      John Hagee: Trump's Commission on Unalienable Rights should be lauded, not condemned  (Fox 08/01/2019)
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The prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah penned the principles of righteousness that became the moral foundations of Western civilization.
• 
When our forefathers landed at Plymouth Rock, they rightly recognized these same principles and entered into a covenant with God that their community in the New World would strive to be righteous.
• 
America's founding fathers also realized that rights come not from man, but God, writing that we are endowed by our Creator "with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
• 
They are the cornerstone of a free existence.
• 
A government that protects our rights to life, liberty and property maximizes the likelihood that our lives will not be "...nasty, brutish and short."
• 
Central to liberty is one's right to worship God as one sees fit.
• 
Recently the Trump administration announced the creation of The Commission on Unalienable Rights.
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This board is charged with providing "fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation's founding principles of natural law and natural rights."
• 
Unsurprisingly, the far left, delivering little more than '"everything President Trump does is bad" messaging, have predicted this commission will somehow be used to impede human rights.  That false claim is intended to conceal an insidious agenda.
• 
In reality, far-left malcontents just don't like the president, often do not care for faith in general, and perhaps worst of all, see rights as being bestowed by government–an extremely dangerous proposition given that what man gives, man can take away; whereas rights endowed by our Creator are eternal.
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The illiberal left approaches unalienable rights in this manner in order to abuse the concept and advance a political agenda.
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Case in point: for the new left, the right to property is twisted to include the right to others' property through wealth redistribution.
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For the old left, the right to liberty is contorted to include the right to kill the unborn, sacrificing the child's right to life.
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In order to accomplish these intellectual acrobatics, while simultaneously seeking to undermine a right as fundamental as freedom of religion, the regressive Progressives deny the Divine origin of our rights.
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From their perspective, better they decide what one's rights are than God and the Judeo-Christian traditions upon which this country was founded.
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From their perspective, they are wiser than Jeremiah and Isaiah, and Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.
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But they are wrong.  Our forefathers judiciously interpreted the wisdom of the Prophets and created a world-changing system of government–which exists to protect, not bequeath, our God-given rights.
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And the protection of basic human rights, including freedom of religion, should guide our foreign policy.
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People of faith and conscience should applaud the Trump administration's Commission on Unalienable Rights because its foundation and intent are righteous, and if successful its result will be a better, freer world.
      What color is anti-Semitism?  (INN 07/30/2019)
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They are women and they are "women of color," so that finishes the argument in their favor, no matter what they say – according to our New Culture.
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Answer them back when they go off against Israel and instantly you are "racist."
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You've been profiled and they've been exempted.
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The culture police now insist that we all be identified through race and gender, and it is already happening all over, and it probably started with those Four Ingrates.
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They are the ones who introduced a New Wave, and it runs like this — They can.  You can't. 
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Trump calls them out for their anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism and straight they go rushing to their corners, where they can't be touched, because they are privileged through race and gender.
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They can.  You can't, on any topic, and what a perfect world of impunity they have carved out for themselves.
• 
No chance at all that they are simply overly-indulged spoiled brats.
• 
For nowhere do you read that Trump is being picked on solely because he is a man, whereas, say, Elizabeth Warren will make ear-splitting speeches to assert that she is being targeted for being a woman.
• 
Cummings, whose Baltimore district is partly a Third World eyesore (Bernie said so himself), has been hotly antagonistic against Trump, but he can say what he wants.
• 
Trump can't, according to the New Culture.  ... "Donald Trump steps up attack on black lawmaker."
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No!  The feud began when Cummings attacked Trump for the situation at the border.
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Trump then shot back that Cummings ought to be more concerned with the situation on his own turf, where through corruption and neglect, Cummings' district is rife with rats, lawlessness, robbery and a murder rate that is second highest in the country, after St.  Louis.
• 
What's color got to do with it? 
• 
So too the Four Ingrates. 
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What's color got to do with it when their anti-Semitism is in plain sight?
• 
It is the content of their character that points the finger back at them as bigots.
• 
We've met these types throughout our history and they are never to be presumed harmless, or taken lightly.  We know how it begins.
• 
We need to fight this, again, again, and again.
      Can’t We All Just Get Along?  (AG (07/22/2019))
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Apparently no — at least until after 2020.  Two examples summarize why.
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"We don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice," said U.S.  Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), one-quarter of "the squad" sowing havoc among Democrats in the House.
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"We don't need black faces that don't want to be a black voice.  We don't need Muslims that don't want to be a Muslim voice.  We don't need queers that don't want to be a queer voice."
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Of the Republican Party, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes said the other day: "It must be peacefully, nonviolently, politically destroyed with love, compassion and determination, but utterly confronted and destroyed.  That is the only way to break the coalition apart... Not by prying off this or that interest.  They are in too deep.  They have shamed themselves too much.  The heart of the thing must be ripped out.  The darkness must be banished."
• 
In other words, the new progressive message is that we all must vote monolithically and predicated on our superficial appearance, religion, or sexual orientation.
• 
And the Trump base must be destroyed, though annihilated with "love" and "compassion."
• 
All are presently shocked that Donald Trump would dare suggest that if anyone did not like the United States, then perhaps he or she might, of their own volition, consider leaving the country.
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Perhaps no politician should ever advise American citizens with whom he disagrees to leave the country.
• 
But Trump did not suggest mandatory departures — in the manner that Rep.  Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) had wanted Trump supporter and immigrant Sebastian Gorka deported.
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Trump was not talking of some grand swap in the explicit fashion that NeverTrumpers have variously wished for the Trump Republican and/or white working-class base to be forcibly exported and replaced by Latin American border crossers.
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"If only we could keep the hard-working Latin American newcomers and deport the contemptible Republican cowards — that would truly enhance America's greatness."
• 
... Trump's larger point was exasperation that he was tired of being constantly smeared as a racist and fascist.
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He was especially piqued at U.S.  congressional representatives and the Left at large, who transfer their current unhappiness with America back to its very founding and innate nature — and the accompanying monotonous baggage of name-changing, statue-toppling, and nonstop censuring and boycotting.
• 
Certainly, then, it was logical that anyone who harbored such existential animus toward the United States might take Trump's advice, end their current torment, and thus gladly and voluntarily free themselves from an oppressive land.
• 
... gross ingratitude when Southern California-residing Mexican immigrants, legal or otherwise, a few years ago booed the American soccer team of the country they most desperately sought to enter and cheered the Mexican team, whose country they had done all they could to leave.
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... I never quite figured out why one of my students, here illegally from Mexico, waved the Mexican flag while participating in a ritual, free-speech area burning of the U.S.  flag — all to showcase his anger at being exposed to deportation to Mexico.
• 
I suggested at the time he instead just carry a handwritten placard, "Please, I will do all I can from now on legally to stay in your wonderful country."
• 
Ilhan Omar presents a most exasperating case because on the one hand she poses as an avatar of the successful immigrant, while on the other she neurotically whines that America has failed utterly to meet her expectations when she fled a Kenyan refugee camp to enter the United States.
• 
Her fervent anti-Israelism is fueled by an equally despicable and loud anti-Semitism.
• 
And she rarely seems to acknowledge that a foreign country welcomed her in extremis, subsidized her upbringing and education, and, quite unlike her tribalist, racist, and anti-Semitic native Somalia, relegated matters of race, gender, class, and religion to insignificant status or indeed saw them as advantages to be rewarded in electing her to Congress.
• 
So, the larger landscape of the new age of acrimony is not a sudden loss of manners, but rather a complete progressive meltdown at the election of Donald J.  Trump.
• 
We now forget that half the country was quite upset by the 2008 election of Barack Obama, not because of his race, but out of concern that he had been the most partisan voting senator of the era in the entire U.S.  Senate.
• 
Opponents were taken aback when he boasted, shortly before his victory, about fundamentally "transforming" the country.
• 
During the campaign he had urged his supporters to take a gun to a knife fight and to "get in their faces" (which targets did he signify by "their"?), as well as writing off the Pennsylvania working class as backward gun and bible clingers, and his own grandmother as a "typical white person" (what did he mean by "typical" and did it apply to 230 million Americans?).
• 
Obama mocked charges that Trinity Unity Church of Christ of Chicago was fueled by racism, by swearing he could no more disown Rev.  Jerimiah Wright — his anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-American personal pastor, whose kindergarten banal sermons on the "audacity of hope" became the inspiration for Obama's second book — than the grandmother who raised and nurtured him.
• 
What did Obama mean when he weighed in during the Trayvon Martin affair by remarking that Martin might have resembled the son he never had?
• 
What exactly were Obama's own injunctions about knowing when to quit making lots of money, or to acknowledge that one does not build his own business, or to realize that it is not a time to profit ever to apply to his post-presidential, lucrative self — or was all that just transitory boilerplate demagoguery aimed at a particular class of which he had not quite yet joined?
• 
Obama's minions were pilloried as Orwellian figures who monitored the communications of Associated Press reporters and James Rosen of Fox News, who jailed a minor videomaker to scapegoat him for the Benghazi mess, and who went after journalist critic Sharyl Attkisson.
• 
Obama likely knew that his own FBI and CIA were in violation of federal law in their zeal to ensure a Hillary Clinton continuum and the destruction of the Trump candidacy.
• 
Republicans lost no time in blasting Obama...  After all, that is what American politics has at times always been — a rough and mean-spirited brawl to discredit your vulnerable enemies and thereby reacquire power by winning elections.
• 
Yet there was never a sustained and collective Republican effort to enlist the media to remove Obama from office by means other than an election.
• 
Republicans during the transformative Obama era were content to chalk up huge wins in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, to go to court in hopes of stopping Obama's executive orders, to shut down the government if need be to stop excessive spending, to investigate scandals such as "Fast and Furious" and Benghazi, and to censure Attorney General Eric Holder.
• 
But what they did not do was immediately declare Obama an illegitimate president or a president so foreign to their own liking that they forthwith sued in three states to overturn the election.
• 
They did not stage a campaign to subvert the voting of the Electoral College, or introduce articles of impeachment right after his inauguration.
• 
In efforts to impeach, they did not turn loose a special counsel and over a dozen right-wing government lawyers for 22 months and $35 million worth of harassment, or obsess over their president's long (and often checkered history), as they wheeled out each week of his presidency an assortment of stale crooks, terrorists, and racists from his past ... or go after the Obama children, all to force him from office.
• 
When Obama essentially got caught on a hot microphone promising Russian President Medvedev that he would be flexible after his reelection on the implementation of long-planned Eastern European missile defense if Vladimir Putin would give him a little room, Republicans did not introduce articles of impeachment on grounds he was "colluding" with a foreign power...
• 
Even if conservative forbearance derived only from pragmatic lessons from their own past ill-fated impeachment of Bill Clinton, they still did not seek to impeach Obama.
• 
I don't remember the conservative movement labeling the majority of Americans who voted for Obama as deplorable people, as irredeemables, as the dregs of society, as Neanderthal clingers to their Bibles and guns...
• 
Much less was there a "NeverObama" left-wing movement that repeatedly dreamed out loud of deporting the rival but hated hard-left Obama base and swapping them with illegal aliens.
• 
Mitt Romney did not go on a year-long crusade blaming dozens of things and people for his own poorly conducted 2012 presidential campaign and claiming he was "robbed."
• 
Again, by all means his opponents can, if they so wish, ridicule, caricature, and blast Trump and hope he fails.
• 
But after trying for nearly three years to destroy the president and prematurely remove him by any means necessary before a scheduled election, please do not appeal to the better angels of our nature — while deploring the new "unpresidential" behavior of Donald J.  Trump for lashing out at those who sought to reduce him to a common criminal, pervert, traitor, dunce, and Satanic figure.
• 
... Donald Trump sensed that half the country had had enough and he would return slur for slur — and so may the best brawler win.
• 
After all, in 2019, this 243rd year of our illustrious nation, most Americans are not simply going to curl up in a fetal position, apologize for the greatest nation in the history of civilization, and say, "Ah, you're right, Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib.  It is an awful country after all — and always was."
• 
While one may always wish that the president and his critics tone down their venom ... it is hard for half the country to feel much sympathy for the Left that sowed the wind and are reaping an ever growing whirlwind.
      Transforming America  (JWR 07/21/2019)
• 
After hearing the comments at a press conference by the four "progressive young women of color" (Congresswomen Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Tlaib) three things were crystal clear:
• 
1.) These people hate traditional America;
• 
2) they blanket themselves with victimhood and race in an attempt to win favor;
• 
and 3) they are a product of several generations of progressive anti-American teaching in our schools and culture.
• 
There are not YET enough voters who want to, in the words of Barak Obama, fundamentally transform the United States of America.
• 
But this can very well change, and faster than you think.
• 
... the Left has over the course of more than four decades successfully taken control of our schools, our publications, our news media, our culture through the arts and entertainment, and yes even our houses of worship.
• 
So it isn't surprising why so many today, particularly the younger generations, have leaned left.
• 
What IS surprising is that the U.S.  hasn't gone totally socialist by now.
• 
In order to succeed, the Left must not only push their socialistic policies, they must tear down the basic tenets on which America was built and they have been working on it for more than 40 years.
• 
They teach the youth to hate America and hate the men who founded it.
• 
If history is taught at all, it is a revisionist history, an anti-patriotic view of our history.
• 
All these elements (school, the press, entertainment, clergy) work in tandem to fully indoctrinate people.
• 
Many have seen this coming for a long time, most notably President Reagan.
• 
It is especially timely, I believe, to recall what Reagan said more than 30 years ago.
• 
In a speech given on July 6, 1987:
• 
"It is time that we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers and if we will pass on to these young people the freedoms we knew in our youth, because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  It has to be fought for and defended by each generation."
• 
And in his farewell address to the nation on Jan.  11, 1989 President Reagan said this in his summation:
• 
"Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time.  But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past 8 years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism.  This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge."
• 
"An informed patriotism is what we want.  And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?  Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America.  We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American.  And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.  If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio.  Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school.  And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture.  The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special.  TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties."
• 
"But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed.  Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children.  And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.  Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it.  We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise.  And freedom is special and rare.  It's fragile; it needs protection."
• 
"So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important — why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.  You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D - day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach.  Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, 'We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.' Well, let's help her keep her word.  If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are.  I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.  Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual."
• 
Reagan's words have never been more apropos and disturbingly prophetic than are today.
      Ilhan Omar’s outrageous anti-Israel resolution should be defeated in House  (Fox 07/18/2019)
• 
BDS is, in effect, a declaration of economic warfare against Israel
• 
In introducing the resolution, Omar actually equated Israel – the only true democracy in the Middle East and a close American ally – with Hamas, a designated Palestinian terrorist organization.
• 
And in an appalling insulting move, the text of the Omar resolution itself compares a boycott of the Jewish state today to boycotts of Nazi Germany – a nation that carried out the mass murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
• 
In addition, Omar's resolution demonstrates a shocking lack of knowledge about the First Amendment of the U.S.  Constitution and a fundamental lack of understanding about how anti-discrimination laws work.
• 
Omar does not seem to have a problem expressing her virulent hatred of the state of Israel.
• 
With the unambiguous goal of eliminating the only Jewish state in the world, the BDS movement has been repeatedly and demonstrably linked to radical terrorist groups.
• 
None of the state laws dealing with BDS bans or punishes in any way speech that is critical of Israel.
• 
And none of these state laws stops anyone who desires to do so from boycotting Israel.
• 
... "these laws simply say: If you want the state to do business with you, you need to abide by the state's policies of sound and fair business practices, including anti-discrimination rules."
• 
... "as a matter of law, there is a fundamental difference between a state suppressing free speech and a state simply choosing how to spend its dollars.  To argue otherwise would be to suggest that New York state is constitutionally obligated to support the BDS Movement, which is not only irrational but also has no basis in law."
• 
... the Supreme Court has said that "when government speaks, it is not barred by the Free Speech Clause from determining the content of what it says."
• 
This means that the government is allowed to pick a side in a debate.
• 
And the Supreme Court has continually refused "to hold that the Government unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of viewpoint when it chooses to fund a program dedicated to advance certain permissible goals, because the program in advancing those goals necessarily discourages alternative goals."
• 
... anti-BDS statutes exemplify the states' right to take a moral position on an issue.
• 
To summarize, anti-BDS bills do not violate the First Amendment because they relate only to government speech, not private speech.
• 
See related I'm ... Anti-Semitic (Bob Gorrell, 02/13/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The ‘Squad’ aims to guillotine the Democratic old guard  (NYP 07/16/2019)
• 
The socialist party has absorbed what is left of the old Democrats.
• 
At first, the progressive old guard in Congress, like good Girondists, found the revolutionary carnivores useful in reducing the ranks of the Trumpians, the Tea Party, Reagan Democrats, old Perot voters and the white working class to the inanimate status of "deplorables," "irredeemables," "clingers" and "dregs" — and with them, the bigoted, racist, sexist, nativist, classist, homophobic and xenophobic GOP.
• 
Certainly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a few geriatric sympathizers such as Sens.  Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin enjoyed the progressive feasting on the ancien regime — especially the unity offered by shared hatred of the obviously soon-to-be-impeached, deposed, exiled and discredited President Trump.
• 
But revolutionary carnivores are rarely sated.  Once they run out of easy hostile targets, they get hungry and as cannibals start to eye their own.
• 
We have already seen that autophagy in the initial primary debates in which all the major Democratic presidential candidates shouted out the most outlandish agendas possible in a desperate effort to ensure that no rival could possibly pose more to their left.
• 
All the while, Pelosi, Schumer and a host of old Democrats enjoyed the new energy that was directed against the evil Trump.
• 
To revolutionary cheers, 1 million illegal aliens crossed the border in the first six months of 2019.
• 
The media-left-wing-celebrity nexus sought to devour Trump by myriad means.
• 
Once all these efforts to destroy Trump failed, so too waned ­superficial revolutionary solidarity.  In the manner that Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety guillotined naive Girondists, so, too, "the Squad" of Reps.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib are now damning Pelosi as a racist.
• 
What were the Pelosi generation, the left-wing journalist crowd and the professoriate thinking when they harangued nonstop about the forthcoming irrelevancy of supposed old, white dinosaurs?
• 
That thereby, such woke white liberals somehow had purchased exemptions from the very executioners whom they had helped create?
• 
What is the next wrinkle in this revolutionary trajectory to the guillotine?
• 
Just as the Jacobin agenda was nihilistic, so are the fantasies of the adolescent Squad.
• 
No sane American would ever willingly embrace the ludicrous Green New Deal, the abolition of the Electoral College, the end of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, extending the franchise to 16-year-olds, cancellation of college debt, free tuition, reparations, a wealth tax or legal infanticide.
• 
Mostly, the Jacobins frighten the old progressives.  They empower Trump.  They make what is left of the Never Trump Republicans look even more ridiculous.
• 
Ultimately, they are racists, who self-define by their appearance and their ethnic backgrounds in an ever more integrated, multiracial country in which the effort to transcend those Neanderthal considerations was largely the story of the last century.
• 
Where will it all lead?  To the metaphorical collective Democratic guillotine unless some sane Democrat stands up and says no more — and learns that the revolutionary mob might prefer to guillotine the guillotiners.
      Woke assimilation: Teaching our pols to hate America  (JWR 07/16/2019)
• 
Beto O'Rourke — the losing Texas candidate for the US Senate who bootstrapped his way into becoming a losing presidential candidate — had a message for refugees who had come to America: Your new country is a hell-hole.
• 
The former congressman told a roundtable of refugees and immigrants in Nashville last week: "This country was founded on white supremacy.  And every single structure that we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression."
• 
Just in case the newcomers were inclined to believe that they had escaped to the greatest country on Earth — an open, dynamic, generous society that, whatever their struggles now, will afford them opportunities unimaginable back home — Beto was there to tell them of all its sins.
• 
This is the backdrop of the controversy over Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born left-wing member of Congress whom President Trump urged, in particularly noxious tweets, to return to her native country and fix it before presuming to tell us what to do.
• 
It's a mistake, though, to think that Omar is anything other than on her way to total assimilation, only on the terms set out by Beto O'Rourke.
• 
America has two assimilation problems.
• 
One is immigrants feeling only a tenuous connection to America and getting isolated in ethnic enclaves
• 
The other is immigrants like Omar — and some of her second-generation colleagues — assimilating into the America of identity politics and grievance.
• 
They have learned to speak not just English but the language of oppression.
• 
They understand our system — at least no less than the average officeholder — but hold it in low regard.
• 
They may be citizens, but they are certainly outraged victims.
• 
"I arrived at the age of 12 and learned that I was the extreme other."
• 
"I was black.  I was Muslim.  I also learned I was extremely poor and that the classless America that my father talked about didn't exist."
• 
Somehow, despite all the depredations, she gained a seat in Congress.
• 
It wasn't peans to her new home that paved her way, but the tropes and priorities of a progressive left, as you'd expect from a former Director of the Women Organizing Women Network.
• 
Omar doesn't represent a majority-minority district.
• 
She started her elected career ... by getting to know "older peace-and-justice hippies."
• 
She attended Black Lives Matter protests and established relationships with all the left-wing groups in Minneapolis.
• 
Most of these people wouldn't object to, indeed would welcome and expect, her adversarial posture toward the country where she gained more notoriety and power than the vast majority of the native-born.
• 
Her narrative is the narrative of American malignancy.  Her default is to blame America first.
• 
She explained that local Somali-Americans attempted to join the Islamic State as a function of "systemic alienation."
• 
She contends that she has met American veterans "who say the most horrendous things, who have complete disregard for life."
• 
And she has accused her congressional colleagues of singling her out for demonization.
• 
Anyone who thinks these attitudes are alien to the United States has never been to a modern college campus or watched MSNBC.
• 
In short, whatever foolhardy things Trump may tweet, Ilhan Omar is not suited to return and fix Somalia — rather to join a segment of the American elite.
      Ingraham: 'Left' trying to destroy what it means to be American  (Fox 07/12/2019)
• 
"The historical purge that we are witnessing all over the country is part of a larger agenda.  To destroy what it means to be American.  And it's getting more audacious by the day."
• 
"In St.  Louis Park, Minnesota, the geniuses on the city council there recently decided to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from town meetings.  Their reason?  To create a more welcoming environment to a diverse community.  Oh, welcoming to everybody but Americans who actually love the pledge."
• 
"The easiest path to social media start today is one where you take cheap swipes and America symbols and traditions."
• 
"Our progress on racial issues is conveniently ignored by cynical actors who are, frankly, using these past horrors for a power grab and, they hope, a total reorganization of our society here and a massive wealth confiscation."
• 
"There is a price for surrendering your sovereignty and your identity and we are going to pay it if we don't defend our history and our traditions."
      Tucker Carlson: US rescued Ilhan Omar  (Fox 07/10/2019)
• 
Like many of you, we've been watching with amazement and alarm as the leaders of the Democratic Party, day after day, attack the country they say they want to govern.
• 
It's remarkable, and a very new development. 
• 
Now, it's routine to hear Democratic presidential candidates question the basic legitimacy of the United States.
• 
That should worry you.  No country can survive being ruled by people who hate it.
• 
We deserve better.  For all of our country's flaws, this is still the best place in the world.
• 
Most immigrants know that and that is why they come here.  It's also why we've always been glad to have them here.
• 
But now, there are signs that some people who move here from abroad don't like this country at all.  ... one of those people now serves in our Congress.
• 
Think about that for a minute.  Our country rescued Ilhan Omar from the single poorest place on Earth.
• 
We didn't do it for the money, we did it because we are kind people.
• 
How did she respond to the remarkable gift we gave her?
• 
She scolded us, called us names, showered us with contempt.
• 
It's infuriating.  More than that, it is also ominous.
• 
The United States admits more immigrants more than any other country on Earth, more than a million every year.
• 
OK, Americans like immigrants, but immigrants have got to like us back.
• 
Ayaan Hirsi Ali would, by the standard of identity politics, seem to have everything in common with Ilhan Omar.
• 
She was born in Somalia, moved to Kenya and eventually came to this country.
• 
Unlike Omar, she loves and cares about the United States.
• 
She believes this country is superior to the country she came from.
• 
It's not about race.  But, of course, Omar and her friends already know that.
• 
Nothing they say on the subject of race is sincere.  It's all the hustle designed to get them what they want.
• 
Omar has made a career of denouncing anyone and anything in her way as racist.
• 
That would include virtually all of her political and personal opponents.
• 
It includes even inanimate objects like the border wall, that's racist.
• 
So was the Congress, so is the entire state of North Dakota, she once tweeted.
• 
Omar may be from another country but she learned young that crying racism pays.
• 
The bigger question is, who taught her that?
• 
She didn't arrive from a Kenyan refugee camp announcing people as bigots for a political campaign.
• 
She wasn't always a professional victim.  That is learned behavior.
• 
Importantly, she learned it here.
• 
In some ways, the real villain in the Ilhan Omar story isn't Omar, it is a group of our fellow Americans.
• 
Our cultural gatekeepers who stoke the resentment of new arrivals and turn them into grievance mongers like Ilhan Omar.
• 
The left did that to her, and to us.
• 
Blame them first.
      Marc Thiessen: NY Times is wrong – American greatness is real, not a myth  (Fox 07/10/2019)
• 
Maybe President Trump was right that we needed a "Salute to America" last week, because apparently some Americans have lost sight of the greatness of our country.
• 
"America may once have been the greatest," the Times video declares, "but today, America, we're just OK."
• 
The fact is, all the freedom and progress those other countries enjoy today would not be possible without the United States.
• 
The reason that "a lot of countries have freedoms" today is because our Founding Fathers pioneered the principle of popular sovereignty, where governments answer to the people instead of the other way around.
• 
At the time of our founding, the rest of the world was ruled by monarchs.
• 
Our founders established the first country in human history that was built on an idea – the idea of human liberty.
• 
For most of our history, American democracy was a global outlier.
• 
In 1938, on the eve of World War II, there were just 17 democracies.
• 
It was not until 1998 – just two decades ago – that there were more democracies than autocracies.
• 
That dramatic explosion of freedom didn't just happen.
• 
It was the direct result of the rise of the United States as a global superpower.
• 
Today, 4.1 billion people live in democracies.  (Of those who do not, four out of five live in China.)
• 
The unprecedented expansion of liberty has produced unprecedented prosperity.
• 
... "for the first time since agriculture-based civilization began 10,000 years ago, the majority of humankind ... some 3.8 billion people, live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered 'middle class' or 'rich.'"
• 
None of that would be possible without the Pax Americana guaranteed by U.S.  military.
• 
Americans liberated a continent, rebuilt much of it from the rubble of war with the Marshall Plan, and then stood watch on freedom's frontier and prevented a Soviet tank invasion across the Fulda Gap.
• 
And today, the only thing that stops North Korea from invading South Korea or China from invading Taiwan is American military might.
• 
So, let's be clear: Every country that enjoys democratic governance today owes its birth of freedom to our Founding Fathers, and the continued existence of their democracy to the U.S.  military.
• 
Today, for all its flaws, America remains the freest, most innovative, most prosperous country in the history of the world.
• 
We are a nation of unparalleled military power and unlimited opportunity.
• 
There's a reason we have a crisis on our southern border; millions want to come here so that they can share in the abundance of American prosperity.
• 
The men and women who flew those fighters and bombers over the National Mall last week make it all possible.
• 
They provide the critical foundation of peace and security upon which our freedom, and the freedom of all the world's democracies, is built.
• 
Maybe Luxembourg scores better on some measures, but no one is counting on Luxembourg to secure the peace of the world.
• 
Trump was right to shine a spotlight on our men and women in uniform and to remind those who have lost sight of it that the United States is not simply the greatest nation on Earth; we are indispensable.
• 
Without us, the world would be mired in the darkness of totalitarianism rather than the light of liberty.
• 
That is better than "just OK."
• 
See related Just OK (Gary Varvel, 07/04/2019) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: The Democratic Party is now a religious cult - and Biden and Pelosi don't...  (Fox 07/09/2019)
• 
After almost 200 years, the Democrats were a political party with conventional political goals.  That's no longer true.
• 
The Democratic Party is now a religious cult, with all that implies.
• 
Dissent has been banned.  Anyone who questions the party's leftward fringe is denounced as a racist heretic.
• 
The party has descended into a purity spiral, and nobody is safe, not even the party's own leaders.
• 
Take Nancy Pelosi, for example.  She is the most left-wing Speaker of the House in the history of the United States.
• 
She has been a fire-breathing liberal for longer than, I don't know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been alive.
• 
But none of that has been enough to save her.  Ocasio-Cortez and a tiny group of House freshmen demand explicit socialism in this country right now.
• 
They want to open the borders, empty the prisons and take over the entire U.S.  economy in the name of fighting climate change.
• 
Now, Pelosi may agree with these goals, but she has contempt for their total ignorance of how laws are made.
• 
They're against the democratic system itself, and Pelosi has expressed that contempt repeatedly in public.
• 
"Give us power because of our skin color." That's the argument Tlaib is making.
• 
Many make that argument; Ocasio-Cortez made the very same case during her Democratic primary campaign last year.
• 
By definition, it is a racist pitch.  It's every bit as repugnant as a white candidate making the same appeal.
• 
And many Democrats did make that appeal — that racial appeal — under Jim Crow.
• 
"Vote for me because of my race." It's disgusting.
• 
But it's everywhere now, and Democrats applaud it.
• 
People like Joe Biden are the past in the Democratic Party.  And like so many others he is being denounced as — wait for it — a racist.
• 
To the Democratic Party, remorse is a sign of weakness, and the weak are eaten.
• 
The Democratic Party demands absolute perfect fidelity at all times.  Anyone who fails to measure up is finished forever.
• 
Now, that attitude is an effective way to terrify weak people and keep public figures in line.
• 
But the question electorally is, will it work on the country?
• 
Normal Americans know they're not racist.  They don't think their neighbors and friends are racist, either.
• 
They don't care about that.  They care about their jobs, their safety, their families, their country.
• 
For years, they've watched in despair as both major parties drifted away from those concerns.
• 
They took a chance electing Donald Trump because he seemed willing to put the basics first.
• 
Will they re-elect him is the question.
• 
If Democrats continue to act like this, absolutely, they will.
      Steve Hilton: Proud Americans - That's not who today's Democrats are  (Fox 07/08/2019)
• 
There was a time when being pro-America was a given for politicians in both main parties.
• 
Of course, President Reagan put it beautifully when he talked of a "shining city on a hill."
• 
But I also loved Bill Clinton's great line, "There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America"
• 
But this past week, this July 4, we saw that those days are gone.
• 
Yes, we still have a Republican president who, like Ronald Reagan, is obviously proud of America and happy to say it, to celebrate it.
• 
But today's Democrats?  No.  They're embarrassed by America, far from celebrating America.
• 
They want to tear it down and turn it into something else.
• 
"Donald Trump, I believe, is incapable of celebrating what makes America great because I don't think he gets it," former Vice President Joe Biden said.
• 
Okay.  Here's some of what the president actually said:
• 
"Together, we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told: The story of America ... It is the spirit, daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love that built this country into the most exceptional nation in the history of the world, and our nation is stronger today than it ever was before."
• 
I think you'll find, Joe China, that President Trump "gets" what makes America great better than a knackered old swamp creature who took billions of dollars in bribes in the form of payments to his family businesses from America's No.  1 enemy.
• 
But it wasn't just Biden.  It was all of them.  "How dare you celebrate America" cried the left.  "It's not who we are."
• 
... the big point is captured in that smug platitude trotted out there by the ridiculous Eric Swalwell and the rest of the left these days: "It's not who we are."
• 
For once, that phrase told us something useful about the Democrats, just not in the way they intended.
• 
The Democrats won't celebrate America because their new ideology demands that they denigrate America, not least with their reckless, divisive lies about concentration camps at the border, collusion with Russia, and "Hitler" in the White House.
• 
Today's Democrats are engaged in a concerted effort to smear this country at home and in the eyes of the world.
• 
When they tell you they don't want to celebrate America because "it's not who we are," believe them.
• 
President Trump, by contrast, laid out exactly why we should celebrate.
• 
The American spirit he talked about on Independence Day has driven some of the most profound human achievements in history, from medical breakthroughs to artistic glories to engineering and technological marvels.
• 
American ingenuity has continually confounded what the world thinks is possible.
• 
It is America's greatest achievement that has made all the others possible.
• 
And that is the genius framework constructed by the Founders and expressed in the founding documents, all in service of that simple, but revolutionary idea — liberty under the law.
• 
It is the guarantee of individual liberty that gave the pioneers the confidence to set out into the unknown, that gave the entrepreneurs the belief they could build something better, that convinced communities they could govern themselves.
• 
Power to the people.  Decentralized and limited government.  The rule of law.
• 
These are the foundation of the American spirit, and they have paved the way, not only for America's long-lasting democracy but also our world-beating economic system, in which investment, innovation, and above all, success, are rewarded, not punished.
• 
The Democrats don't want limited government; they want endless, relentless, extravagant intervention by an all-knowing all-seeing all-powerful state.
• 
Today's Democrats don't even want the most vital element of the American inheritance: The rule of law.
• 
The Democrats point to the Statue of Liberty and say that immigration control is un-American.
• 
But they forget one vital thing.  It's not just liberty.  It's liberty under the law.
• 
And it is their blatant, thuggish assault on the rule of law that is truly un-American.
      Charlie Kirk: Starbucks engages in intolerable discrimination against police  (Fox 07/06/2019)
• 
On Feb.  1, 1960, four black college students sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and politely ordered coffee.  White waitresses ignored them because the store had a policy of not serving African-Americans.
• 
The incident sparked massive protests across the nation involving sit-ins by black people at Woolworth lunch counters, leading the chain to finally desegregate that July and boosting the civil rights movement.
• 
This week, on the Fourth of July, the Officers Association in Tempe, Ariz., says six police officers were drinking coffee at a Starbucks coffee shop before the start of their shift when they were asked to move out of the line of sight of a customer or leave the store.
• 
A barista told them a customer "did not feel safe" because of their presence.
• 
The officers — including some who have defended our country in the military — left.
• 
It's obvious that the discrimination against black people who were trying to order coffee all those years ago was wrong, shameful and inexcusable.
• 
It should be just as obvious that the same is true for the discrimination against the police officers at the Starbucks in Arizona this week.
• 
In late May, Starbucks closed 8,000 stores across the U.S.  for several hours of anti-bias training after two black men in one of the chain's coffee shops in Philadelphia were arrested for trespassing while they waited for a friend to join them.
• 
Are we now going to see a similar store closure for anti-bias training regarding police who want to order overpriced coffee at Starbucks?
• 
Don't hold your breath.
• 
Donald Trump ran for the presidency as a supporter of law enforcement.  Both before and since his election, President Trump has repeatedly stood at podiums across the country and has been outspoken in his praise for the people who put on a uniform every day to protect American citizens from threats found not across oceans, but across the street and even in coffee shops.
• 
Quite ironically, the support President Trump has shown is one of the driving reasons that police are now facing such open hostility across the country.
• 
This particular wrongheaded thread runs something like this: Trump is evil and wants to harm minorities; Trump supports the police; therefore, the police are evil and want to harm minorities.
• 
No one can claim all police are perfect, or that no police officer has ever acted improperly or even criminally.
• 
The truth is that the vast majority of police officers willingly risk their lives to protect the rest of us from criminals who would commit all sorts of crimes and do us grave harm if no police were around.
• 
Who in their right mind would want to live in a city without a police force, where criminals were free to rob, rape, murder and do anything else they wanted?
• 
The person who complained to the barista about the police officers in the Starbucks store would no doubt welcome their presence if attacked by violent criminals.
• 
And just by being in the Starbucks, the officers would almost certainly have scared off any criminals who entered and kept them from attacking anyone.
• 
The bottom line is that the prejudice that says all members of a group should be the targets of our hatred and be discriminated against is wrong and frankly, un-America – whether we're talking about people from a particular racial, ethnic, religious or professional group.
• 
Starbucks needs to make sure all of its employees understand this, or else fire them for engaging in intolerable discrimination.
• 
      Joe diGenova: Five questions the Dems won’t ask Mueller  (Fox 07/03/2019)
• 
By forcing Mueller to testify, however, House Democrats are also giving their GOP colleagues an opportunity to cross-examine the witness with crucial questions that have never been answered about the two-year witch hunt into non-existent Russian collusion.
• 
Since the Democrats will undoubtedly devote their time exclusively to questions intended to trick Mueller into contradicting the clear conclusions in his report – that there was no collusion and no basis for obstruction of justice charges – it will fall to the Republican members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees to query Mueller about the lingering questions that the report did not address.
• 
When did investigators conclude that there was no collusion?
• 
Why did Mueller go so far beyond the scope of his collusion probe, spending many months investigating nonsensical claims that President Trump obstructed justice, especially when the underlying activity couldn't even be prosecuted without demonstrating intent to obstruct justice?
• 
Why did he keep the entire country in suspense, including the president of the United States, if he clearly knew that Donald Trump was not working with the Russians?
• 
Did Mueller destroy evidence? 
• 
Last year, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report that contained even more troubling revelations – messages that FBI paramours Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had exchanged on their government-issued cell phones during their time on the Mueller team had been mysteriously erased.
• 
Who made the decision to delete these messages?
• 
Was Mueller aware of the fact that the phones would be wiped?
• 
Why did no one at the DOJ attempt to preserve this vital information?
• 
To what extent did the Office of Special Counsel rely on information produced by the FBI's spying on the Trump campaign? 
• 
This question is absolutely critical to understanding the context of Mueller's findings.
• 
The American people deserve to know why the FBI spied on the Trump campaign, especially if actors within President Obama's DOJ intended to use the probe for partisan purposes, such as destroying Trump's candidacy, and later, his presidency.
• 
Why did Mueller fail reach any conclusions concerning whether the president obstructed justice?
• 
While Mueller attempted to justify the lack of a conclusion on obstruction in his report by arguing that the Justice Department can't indict a sitting president, the guidelines he cited would not have prevented him from directly expressing in the report that his team concluded that obstruction charges could be pursued against the president of the United States if not for that limitation.
• 
If Mueller truly believed that President Trump had obstructed justice, he could have easily said exactly that in his report.
• 
How many of Mueller's agents were rabid partisans determined to take down President Trump?
• 
In the eyes of at least some of Mueller's investigators, the Russia probe was expressly intended to destroy Donald Trump's presidency.
• 
Strzok was removed from Mueller's team after his obvious anti-Trump bias became public knowledge, but 13 other investigators with extensive ties to the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton remained with the Special Counsel's Office for the duration of the witch hunt.
• 
What steps did Mueller take to prevent the political bias within his team from influencing the course of the investigation?
• 
These are just some of the many questions that Mueller needs to answer when he testifies before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.
• 
The Democrats certainly won't ask them, though, so it will be up to the Republicans to get to the bottom of what really happened during his infamous investigation.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Not guilty verdict for Navy SEAL Gallagher is welcome news – He shouldn’t have been prosecuted  (Fox 07/03/2019)
• 
The verdict proved that even the badly broken military justice can still get things right on occasion.
• 
Gallagher, who heroically risked his life and served his country for 20 years in the Navy, should never have been charged.
• 
He spent nine months in prison awaiting his trial and was treated disgracefully by the Navy he so loyally served.
• 
We should honor the brave Americans in uniform who carry out their duties despite grave danger while they face enemy fighters who want to kill as many Americans as possible.
• 
Navy prosecutors and agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) should be ashamed of their treatment not only of Gallagher, but of his family.
• 
Who drags minor children out into the streets at gunpoint in the middle of the night, then dismisses it as "standard operating procedure?"
• 
The decision to charge Gallagher was inexcusable.
• 
He should never have been charged with the killing of a mortal enemy of the United States who was a member of ISIS, one of the most radical and deadly jihadist groups on the planet.
• 
ISIS fighters have committed the most gruesome and atrocious acts imaginable – public beheadings, burning people to death in cages, slicing little boys in half, mass terror against Christians and more.
• 
Yet prosecuting our courageous warriors is a recurring anti-American theme that infected the military justice system around 2012 and hasn't stopped.
• 
Thankfully, even in the military justice system we adhere to the time-honored American principle that guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 
... without a meaningful overhaul of the military justice system, rogue military prosecutors are still likely to target prominent warfighters like Chief Eddie Gallagher.  What a slap in the face to the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country.
• 
President Trump, as commander in chief, should put a stop to this.
      Cal Thomas: Censoring the census citizenship question is about politics, not the law  (Fox 07/02/2019)
• 
In last week's 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court rejecting the Trump administration's claim that adding a question about whether a person is a U.S.  citizen was for the purpose of helping to enforce the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John Roberts left the door open for the administration to come up with a more compelling reason.
• 
Proof of citizenship is required when applying for most jobs in the country.
• 
When I travel internationally and return home, there are two lines at Immigration and Customs.  One is for noncitizens and the other for citizens.
• 
A form requires me to state my citizenship and show my U.S.  passport.
• 
To apply for a U.S.  passport I must provide proof of citizenship.
• 
In other countries, a stamp on my passport not only limits the amount of time I am allowed to stay, but also prohibits me from employment.
• 
In the UK, I can't use the National Health Service because I am not a citizen.
• 
Other nations have a right to pass and enforce such laws.
• 
Only in America do we pass laws and then allow people to get away with ignoring them.
• 
Dictionary.com defines "citizen" as a person who is "a native or naturalized member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to its government and is entitled to its protection (distinguished from alien)."
• 
That last part "distinguished from alien" is key.
• 
How does one determine whether a person is an alien, or a U.S.  citizen, with the entitlements and benefits that go with citizenship?
• 
By asking the question, of course.
• 
There is no right to be in America and no right to become a citizen, especially when some people break our laws to get here and then break them again to remain by failing to show up for a court hearing on the legitimacy of their asylum claims and ignoring deportation orders, which are issued after giving due process.
• 
A case can be made that Democrats want the citizenship question left off the 2020 form so they can import more future voters for their candidates and skewer districts to create a permanent electoral majority.
• 
Politics, not the law, has changed everything.
• 
Both parties are at fault for failing to enforce existing laws and by not reforming the broken system.
• 
It is not only a disgrace, but national suicide.
• 
If it continues, the country we inherited from our forebears will be no more.
      Don Brown: Prosecuting American warriors for killing the enemy undermines ‘America first’  (07/01/2019)
• 
"From this day forward, it's going to be only America First."
• 
The room burst into enthusiastic applause.
• 
Frenchmen?
• 
Applauding "America First?"
• 
I stood in disbelief.  But then it struck me.
• 
To these French conservatives, "America First" meant re-assertion of Western nationalism, particularly on border protection, where Trump had been outspoken.  Unrestrained immigration from jihadist countries had stung France hard. 
• 
But "America First" isn't just about border protection.
• 
In battle, it also means protecting American soldiers from brutal jihadists hell-bent on killing Americans.
• 
The murder statute under the Uniform Code of Military Justice was designed to instill good order and discipline among the troops, not to prosecute American warfighters for killing the enemy.
• 
But prosecuting an American paratrooper for "murder" for killing brutal America-hating Taliban terrorists who have no rights under the Constitution?
• 
Murder charges against a Navy SEAL for killing an ISIS insurgent?
• 
That's "America First?"
• 
Let that sink in for a moment.
• 
Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, Army Green Beret Matt Golsteyn, and 82nd Airborne Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance all have this in common: All were charged or convicted (in Lorance's case) of killing the enemy in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
• 
Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher is being prosecuted for "murdering an ISIS operative."
• 
That's the same ISIS, by the way, that murdered 250 children in a dough kneader, that beheads Coptic Christians on the shores of Libya, displaced millions of Christians in the Middle East, burns men alive in cages and decapitated American journalist James Foley?
• 
And we prosecute a Navy SEAL for "murdering" one of these animals?
• 
Golsteyn and Lorance were charged with killing Taliban bomb-makers in a warzone – Taliban bomb makers who, by the way, had already killed American troops.
• 
So, we prosecute American warriors for "murder" for killing enemy terrorists who already killed Americans.
• 
... corrupt military prosecutors backed up by spineless military judges and investigators, send an ominous message: Protecting dead, American-killing terrorists is more important than not only American warfighters' lives but also more important than the United States Constitution.
• 
... military prosecutors trashed the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments.
• 
Corrupt military prosecutors aren't putting America First.  They're putting ISIS and the Taliban first.  And they're putting themselves first.
• 
Either "America First" is going to mean something, or it's not.
• 
We have a corruption problem in the military justice system – and only one man can fix the problem – President Donald Trump.
• 
... Trump should appoint an independent advisory panel of former Judge Advocates, reporting directly to him, as commander in chief, with marching orders for recommendations on rooting out corruption from the military justice system to restore the system to its original purpose – helping commanders win America's wars, not prosecuting warriors for snap-judgment actions on the battlefield.
• 
The military justice system must operate under a philosophy that puts America first.
      Cal Thomas: 10 questions Dems should have been asked in debates – But weren’t  (Fox 06/29/2019)
• 
... as I tortured myself watching the two "debates," which were not really debates, but mostly a show of memorized sound bites, I thought of unasked questions that ought to have been put to them all.
• 
Question 1: Some of you have, or had, the power to change many of the things you now say are wrong with America.  Why didn't you?
• 
Question 2 (for Joe Biden): You and President Obama, for a time, had a Democratic majority in Congress.  Why didn't you reform immigration laws and address homelessness?
• 
Your administration deported a lot of people who were in the country illegally, so why criticize President Trump for wanting to follow your example?
• 
Do our laws mean nothing?
• 
Question 3: During the second debate, all of you raised your hands when asked if you would provide free health care to immigrants who are here illegally.
• 
Aren't you inviting even more to come to America with such a policy, and wouldn't that add to our already staggering debt?
• 
Follow-up: Trump said we should take care of Americans first.  Why would you use American tax dollars to pay for people who break our laws?
• 
Question 4: Is there anything Trump has done that you could praise?  Many of you talk as if unemployment hasn't declined — especially for minorities — and wages haven't risen.
• 
Unemployment is at, or near, record lows and wages are up.
• 
Question 5: Some of you think raising taxes again is a good idea, but with $22 trillion in federal debt and with record amounts of revenue already coming into Washington, isn't the real problem uncontrolled spending?
• 
Follow-up: Are there any government programs you would cut or eliminate?
• 
Question 6: Many of you have a lot of complaints about the United States.  Is there anything positive you could say?
• 
Question 7: Many of you have criticized President Trump for confronting Iran and withdrawing from the nuclear deal.
• 
Iran is a major sponsor of terrorism in the world and its leaders say they have a religious mandate to wipe out Israel and impose Islamic law on everyone.
• 
How would you negotiate with their leaders and what is your plan for fighting terrorism?
• 
Question 8: Some of you say Russia is the greatest existential threat and others name China.
• 
How would you oppose Russia's adventurism and China's expansionism?
• 
How would you deal with China spying on us?
• 
Question 9 (for Sen.  Kamala Harris): You attacked Joe Biden for working with segregationist senators during his time in the Senate.
• 
He (and Lyndon Johnson, who pushed through significant civil rights legislation in the '60s) said it was necessary in order to accomplish anything.
• 
If you were in the Senate at that time, would you have refused to work with those senators, possibly scuttling significant legislation that has led to improvements in the lives of many Americans, including African-Americans?
• 
Question 10: There have been 60 million abortions in America since the Supreme Court's Roe v.  Wade decision in 1973.
• 
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, black women are more than five times as likely as white women to have an abortion.  Does this trouble you?
• 
Follow-up: Some states allow babies to die if they survive an abortion and some call that infanticide.  Are you opposed to that practice?
• 
These questions and others might have provided more useful information to the public than the ones tossed at the candidates.
      Debate shows Democratic Party has broken from reality, no longer cares about what's true  (Fox 06/28/2019)
• 
The Democratic Party went completely insane on Wednesday.
• 
That's been happening for a while, of course — insanity is a process.
• 
But Wednesday night at the first Democratic primary debate of the 2020 season, they made it official.
• 
Elite Democrats have permanently broken with reality.
• 
They no longer care about what's true, what's possible, even what's real.
• 
They live in a kind of dream-state, a place of fantasy punctuated by howls of self-righteousness.
• 
Julian Castro was an actual cabinet secretary in the Obama administration.  It was only a couple of years ago.
• 
He explained at the debate that men who get pregnant have the moral right to taxpayer-funded abortions.  I'm not joking.
• 
"I don't believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice ... And you know, what that means is that just because a woman or let's also not forget someone in the trans-community.  A trans-female is poor.  It doesn't mean they shouldn't have the right to exercise that right to choose."
• 
And so they cheered.  Behold, late empire liberalism in full flower.  Who exactly is the constituency for Castro's idea?
• 
There never have been any people like that.  There never will be any people like that.
• 
Why?  Because it's impossible.  Biological men cannot get pregnant.
• 
Pretending otherwise is lunacy.  It's the very definition of lunacy.
• 
But Julian Castro doesn't care.  Taxpayer-funded transgender abortion sounds like something that all good progressives should support.
• 
So Castro fervently does.
• 
And critically, he knows that nobody in the room will defend science or pause to ask him what the hell are you talking about?
• 
They can't say a word.  They're too intimidated.  They know HR is watching.
• 
So they nod like monkeys, as if everything he is saying is completely sane.
• 
"Oh, good point, Mr.  Secretary.  Trans-females shouldn't have to pay for their own abortions.  That's racist."
• 
The whole thing was like a cartoon or an "Evil One" novel.  It went on like this all night.
• 
"When somebody comes across the border, we should not criminalize desperation, to treat that as a civil violation."
• 
And you thought this was your country just because, like your ancestors, you were born here.
• 
Just because you pay half your income to the government to keep the whole thing going, you thought it was your country?
• 
Think again, racist.
• 
America belongs to the rest of the world.  Your job is to shut up and pay for it.
• 
Complain and we will punish you.
• 
... de Blasio is the single worst mayor in the 400-year history of New York City.
• 
... once he had the mic, de Blasio promised to seize your money and give it to his supporters, who he explained deserve it much more than you do.
• 
"Yes, we're supposed to be for 70 percent tax rate on the wealthy."
• 
"You hear folks say there's not enough money.  What I say to them every single time is there's plenty of money in this world.  There's plenty of money in this country.  It's just in the wrong hands."
• 
Got it?  We've got the power; soon we'll have all the guns and we're coming for your stuff. 
• 
Some of the least impressive people in America are making the rules.
• 
Hope you're excited for it.  At least men will be able to get free abortions.
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Dem presidential debaters want to do what Trump already accomplished  (Fox 06/27/2019)
• 
Did you hear that?  Something sounded awfully familiar during the Democrats' first presidential debate in Miami.
• 
"If they can save a nickel by moving a job to Mexico, or to Asia, or to Canada, they're going to do it," Sen.  Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., complained when discussing the way American companies ship jobs over the border or overseas.
• 
"We need to say, ‘any corporation can come and use that research, they can make all kinds of products from it, but they have to manufacture right here in the United States of America."
      Other observations from the Democratic debaters Wednesday night sounded familiar, as  ()
• 
Rep.  Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, told a well-worn campaign trail story about his family members being made to pack up factory machinery in boxes to be shipped to China.
• 
He lamented that, after "tax cuts" and "bailouts," General Motors has "the audacity to move a new car they're going to produce to Mexico."
• 
Where have we heard this stuff before?
• 
Back in 2015 and 2016, candidate Donald Trump relentlessly beat the exact same drum the Democrats beat Wednesday night.
• 
Every day on the campaign trail, he expressed his outrage at the outsourcing of American manufacturing.
• 
Trump told stories of closed factories, jobs outsourced overseas, and the forgotten working men and women of America.
• 
He promised to get America back to work again.
• 
So what's the difference between Trump and the armchair Democratic "presidents?"
• 
The difference is that the Democrats are only talking about it, but President Trump has already done it.
• 
Job creation?  He's already done it!
• 
Trump has overseen the creation of no fewer than 5.4 million new jobs in the last two-and-a-half years, and that trend shows no signs of stopping.
• 
These Democrats want to end the scourge of unemployment?  The unemployment rate is already 3.6 percent!
• 
Four of these candidates weren't even alive in 1969, which is the last time America had such low unemployment.
• 
The Democratic candidates want to bring manufacturing back to the American heartland and raise wages?
• 
President Trump already did it.
• 
After decades of decline — largely because previous presidents refused to do anything to stop unfair, subsidized competition from totalitarian foreign countries such as China — our factories have added hundreds of thousands of jobs and increased wages.
• 
For the first time in a generation, American manufacturing is resurgent.
• 
Donald Trump had a concrete plan to stop foreign cheaters from exploiting our companies, stop Washington regulators from strangling innovation, and stop cheap illegal immigrant labor from sapping wages — and he's done all of that.
• 
These "faux-Trumpian" Democrats can go ahead and try to steal the president's platform if they want.  ... but Trump promised all those same things in 2016 — and he's actually delivered results to the American people.
• 
That familiar sound we heard at the debate was that of candidates who are four years behind the man who is already creating jobs and reviving America.
• 
They're simply too late.  President Trump is already getting the job done.
      Actually, Bernie Sanders Is a Communist with a severe Jewish Problem  (INN 06/26/2019)
      Freedom From Consequences Isn't Freedom  (JWR 06/26/2019)
• 
"Are you truly free if you graduate hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt?  Are you free if you cannot pursue your dream because you don't make enough to cover your student loan payments?  We will #CancelStudentDebt because there is no freedom without economic freedom."
• 
This is an Orwellian redefinition of the term "freedom."
• 
Freedom has traditionally meant the ability to make your own decisions — and to live with the consequences of those decisions.
• 
But Sanders' rhetoric here is merely the latest in a long line of such redefinitions from the American left.
• 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggested that "true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence" — and proceeded to make more Americans dependent on government than ever before in American history.
• 
He declared "freedom from want" in January 1941, in the midst of a second Great Depression of his making — the prior year, the unemployment rate in the United States was 14.45 percent.
• 
The mere declaration, as it turned out, did not end want.
• 
And the redefinition of freedom as government-sponsored dependency did not end in prosperity or freedom.
• 
Nonetheless, the suggestion that freedom lies in prosperity — not that freedom is the precondition for prosperity — still retains draw.
• 
That's mainly because the human heart will always embrace the notion that our shortcomings spring not from choice but from circumstance.
• 
Sometimes that's true.  But in a free country, it's far more often untrue.
• 
Still, that notion relieves us of responsibility while making demands of others.
• 
After all, if freedom lies in lack of college debt, then those who demand that you pay your debts are curbing your freedom.
• 
Canceling student debt may mean a more carefree life for those who voluntarily took on debt, but it means a more burdensome life for those who have paid off their debts, who didn't go to college or who haven't yet been born.
• 
And carefree doesn't mean free.  It simply means that someone else may be taking responsibility for your decisions.
• 
Going to college is often seen as an important step toward adulthood.
• 
Responsible financial decision-making is a far more important step.
• 
Disconnecting the two just continues the infantilizing of American adults.
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The way Dems see things, you are not responsible for anything.  And that spells disaster...  (Fox 06/26/2019)
• 
Good news!  According to Democrats, you are not responsible for anything.
• 
You're no longer responsible for your student debts, for taking care of your children, for putting aside money for retirement, buying health insurance, saving to put your kids through college.  Nothing.
• 
Someone else, someone who is working hard to fulfill their responsibilities and paying taxes, will provide all those things.
• 
Except that, eventually, we actually will run out of other peoples' money.
• 
Our society is demanding less and less of our citizens.  We don't even demand they obey our laws.
• 
If people come into our country illegally, we make sure they get free health services and even free college.
• 
If people jump turnstiles or misbehave in schools, we soften the rules so they can avoid punishment.
• 
Our standards of behavior are collapsing all around us.
• 
Forget outrage about bad language or bad manners; that is so last century.  Today, anything goes.
• 
But when people are not expected to provide for themselves, where there is no expectation of individual responsibility, that's when society begins to break down.
• 
The current crop of Democratic candidates is competing for voters by promising the earth and the moon.
• 
Forget a chicken in every pot; we're talking caviar and champagne...for everybody.
• 
Progressives don't even hear how nuts their arguments sound.
• 
Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., one of the loudest voices on the left, is crazy about Sanders' plan to wipe out $1.6 trillion in student debt and to provide free college for all.
• 
She appeared alongside the Democratic socialist at the roll-out of his new proposal, talking earnestly about a 17-year-old friend whom she had mentored while still in college.
• 
Her friend had won acceptance to several "prestigious" colleges, according to AOC, but no scholarship money.
• 
She decided she just had to attend her "dream" college, even though it meant taking on $250,000 in debt.
• 
According to AOC, that example illustrates how absurd our education system is.
• 
Sorry, that example illustrates how absurd AOC's world view is.
• 
Instead of realistically assessing the economics of following her dream, the young friend took on debt that is now undoubtedly a burden.
• 
But, let us remember, she made that decision, with AOC's help, presumably.
• 
She may regret her choice; but why should it now be the taxpayers' problem?
• 
She could have attended a local, affordable, community college, or a state university, which would have left her much better off financially.
• 
Not everyone can have everything they want.
• 
Following your dream is not a "right."
• 
People make choices in life, including whether they want to borrow to further their careers.
• 
There are plenty of problems with our education system, including its high cost, which has driven student debt higher.
• 
But let's not absolve the individual from responsibility.
• 
Among other choices: what to study.  Needless to say, earning a degree in computer engineering will allow quicker debt repayment that taking a course in poetry.
• 
One can be sympathetic with young people starting out, and especially with those who graduated during the lean post-crisis years when jobs were scarce and many did not find the employment they hoped for.
• 
The good news is that today jobs are plentiful, and graduates are finding work much more quickly than a decade ago.
• 
The student debt "crisis" – if ever there was one – is on the decline.
• 
Defaults are dropping and income for graduates (and everyone else) is rising.
• 
The real crisis is convincing Americans they have no accountability.
• 
That is an insult and, eventually, a disaster.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Need Help (Michael Ramirez, 07/02/2014) cartoon from USA picture album
      Jay Sekulow: The questions Robert Mueller must be asked on July 17  (Fox 06/26/2019)
• 
The upcoming Congressional hearings in July are pure political theatre.  There is nothing new to learn.
• 
This is just an effort by Democrats to keep the anti-Trump narrative alive as long as they can.
• 
But Mueller's appearance before Congress is certain to create problems for Democrats.
• 
Why?  Because Mueller will face questions from Republicans, too.  Discerning questions.  Fact-finding questions.
• 
Questions Americans have wanted to be answered for a long time.  Questions that will get to what really went on.
• 
There are many difficult questions that Mueller will face.  Here's just a few:
• 
When did you know that there was, in fact, no collusion or conspiracy by the Trump campaign with Russia?
• 
What did you do with evidence gathered by former FBI agent Peter Strzok?
• 
Why did you not take an inventory of the contents of Strzok's phone when he was terminated?
• 
Why did you allow the phone to be wiped clean and be reissued?
• 
Do you really believe it is the job of a prosecutor to exonerate a person after an investigation?  Did you not conflate the prosecution's burden of proof?
• 
These questions are just the beginning.  There will be more questions.
• 
Questions about conflicts of interest.  Questions about evidence of political bias.  Questions about irregularities.
• 
There will be more questions.  And Mueller will not be able to avoid.
• 
Mueller will have a lot to explain.
      Alan Dershowitz: Mueller shouldn’t tell Congress anything about Trump not already in his report  (Fox 06/26/2019)
• 
... Mueller should refuse to say anything about the investigation of Trump and his campaign beyond what is already in his report.
• 
The long tradition of the Justice Department – backed by important policies, including the presumption of innocence for anyone suspected of wrongdoing – is that law enforcement officials should only comment if someone is charged with a crime.
• 
If a decision has been made not to charge someone with a crime, law enforcement officials should never comment beyond stating that simple fact.
• 
Mueller should refuse to go beyond his report and should not express any opinion in his congressional testimony regarding possible criminal conduct by President Trump – no matter how hard Democrats try to get him to do so.
• 
This is true whether or not Mueller believes that a sitting president can or cannot be charged with a crime under Justice Department policy.
• 
It is not the job of a prosecutor to decide guilt or innocence.
• 
That is the job of a jury or judge, after hearing and seeing all the evidence – including that presented by the defense.
• 
Any prosecutor – including a special counsel like Mueller – hears only one side.
• 
Based on that one-sided review only of evidence unfavorable to the accused, the prosecutor must decide whether that evidence – if believed – constitutes probable cause that a crime was committed by the person under investigation.
• 
Of critical importance, the prosecutor does not decide whether the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 
A decision that there is enough evidence to prosecute a person does not erase the presumption of innocence that we are all entitled to under the Constitution.
• 
Nor should a special counsel undercut the presumption of innocence by suggesting that a person who he has decided not to prosecute may possibly be guilty.
• 
The irony of the Democratic subpoena directed at Mueller is that while he may not properly answer the kinds of questions Democrats would like him to answers – namely regarding possible evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump – the former special counsel can properly answer the kinds of questions Republicans would like to ask him, so long as this doesn't require the disclosure of classified or other privileged information.
• 
The Republican questions could involve the so-called Steele dossier – a report making unproven charges about Trump written by a former British spy and funded by the Clinton campaign.
• 
Republicans could also ask about possible misrepresentations made by federal officials to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that allowed the initial FBI investigation of the Trump campaign to begin, along with other issues that were not the subject of the Mueller investigation or report.
• 
So Democrats should be careful about what they're asking for.  It may turn out that Mueller's House testimony will backfire against the Democrats and help the Republicans.
• 
The real victims of the Democratic attempt to politicize the criminal justice system are ordinary Americans.
• 
If House Democrats can demand that Mueller testify about his investigation, then any congressional committee can subpoena any prosecutor who declines to prosecute any ordinary American.
• 
This would establish a terrible precedent that would undercut the rule of law.
• 
For these reasons, Democrats and Republicans alike should oppose all efforts to undercut the long tradition of prosecutorial silence when a decision has been made not to prosecute.
      The deconstruction and breakdown of US education: AOC as a product  (INN 06/19/2019)
• 
... let us shift to a tenured college professor in political science.  He / She / It / Ze basically can say whatever the moment feels like.
• 
Tenured college professors cannot get fired, no matter how incompetent, deathly boring, and intellectually stale, as long as they (i) do not say the "N word," and (ii) do not sexually violate a student.
• 
So a tenured college professor can tell a class that the Soviet Union was a model of freedom, that Stalin is completely misunderstood because he really was as kind as Mother Theresa, that AmeriKKKa is the center of fascism and Nazism, that up is down, in is out, and Trump is a Nazi.
• 
If you take a smart mind and teach it nonsense, it will spout forth nonsense for many years until the sheer experience of life itself ultimately teaches otherwise.
• 
There is a reason that all polls find that voters become more conservative as they mature.
• 
If you go through four years of Columbia University without ever learning American history, after not having it learned it through the prior twelve years, you will not know it.
• 
If — even worse — you do not learn from objective books but instead from the jaundiced lectures of life-tenured Marxist professors of "soft sciences" like political science, sociology, philosophy, and "Identity Studies" — tenured professors who call themselves "Socialists" but actually are "Marxists" or "Communists" — then you come out learning what they teach you to memorize and to spout back to them on final exams and in term papers. 
• 
Less than she is a person, Ocasio-Cortez is a Specimen.  (AOC, if you are reading this, a "Specimen" is not someone who flies to the moon.)
• 
The Left Media and their Democrat patrons make a grave error when they present O-Cortez as a person of thought.  She is not an original thinker.
• 
Rather, she is a metaphorical Laboratory Rat who demonstrates repeatedly what happens when someone born with a mind that seems capable of operating properly emerges from the present-day American university system.
• 
Thus, she is not an "idiot" or "moron" in the objective sense — not unless she truly has come up with all her "ideas" on her own, a highly doubtful proposition.
• 
Having observed O-Cortez's public communications for a year, I am more convinced than ever that she simply is the product of a broken education system that deconstructs facts and reality, teaching instead that there are no facts at all.
• 
Rather, I have "My Truth," and you have "Your Truth."
• 
Because she got good grades, she clearly reflects the "education" she received.  ... Her grades mean that she absorbed the pablum she was spoonfed.
• 
Thus, in one apparent self-parody, her revealing PBS interview with Margaret Hoover, O-Cortez condemned Israel — one of the Five Basic Food Groups of American College Education (along with condemning Trump as a Nazi, berating America as the World's Perscutor, prasing Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as "Misunderstood," and recognizing that "Gender Is Fluid").
• 
Ms.  Hoover probed gently beyond the college slogans, asking O-Cortez to explain her "thoughts."
• 
Dead silence.  Crickets.  Deer in the headlights.
• 
And then The Hyphen found the words that a college professor had pre-programmed in her years earlier: Y'know, uh, the Settlements, whatever.
• 
... Thus, in one apparent self-parody, her revealing PBS interview with Margaret Hoover, O-Cortez condemned Israel — one of the Five Basic Food Groups of American College Education (along with condemning Trump as a Nazi, berating America as the World's Perscutor, prasing Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as "Misunderstood," and recognizing that "Gender Is Fluid").  Ms.  Hoover probed gently beyond the college slogans, asking O-Cortez to explain her "thoughts." Dead silence.  Crickets.  Deer in the headlights.  And then The Hyphen found the words that a college professor had pre-programmed in her years earlier: Y'know, uh, the Settlements, whatever.
• 
Thus, there is something going on with O-Cortez that transcends "stupid." Rather, she is so very much like so many tens of thousands of young Americans who now receive an education that costs families $40,000-$60,000 per year and yet fails to teach:
• 
1.  How to think logically
• 
2.  The imperative of checking facts before pronouncing them to audiences
• 
3.  The skill of thinking critically and incisively, transcending the surrounding Groupthink and Mass Media Hysteria
• 
4.  The courage to disagree with Common Wisdom and to challenge Totalitarian Indoctrination
• 
If college professors can spout any foolish, false narrative they wish, safe in the knowledge that their life tenure grants them a safe harbor to mislead, to lie, and to brainwash their defenseless minions who must get good grades in their courses, it is not surprising that O-Cortez emerged as she did.
• 
She can string sentences together coherently when she speaks.  She can communicate in 140 characters.
• 
Her problem is not that she is "stupid" per se but, rather, that she is emblematic of too many peers among a generation that spouts nonsense as "My Truth," peers who do not know what they are talking about, and — much worse — lack the humility to recognize that they do not know that they do not know what they are talking about. 
• 
Her latest trick in the Rat Laboratory came this week when The Hyphen commented on the humane and lawful facilities in which the United States temporarily detains people who brazenly defy America's laws and break into the U.S.  illegally, overwhelming all available resources.
• 
America provides the Illegals with food, shelter, and health care at taxpayer expense.  The Illegals are held only a few days before being released.
• 
Suddenly, amid such madness, temporary shelters for Illegals become denominated as "concentration camps."
• 
I wonder what The Hyphen will say when she learns they have showers in them.
• 
Donald Trump gets called a Nazi.  Police and other protective "First Responders" are called Storm Troopers.
• 
And in such an insanely deconstructed reality, I guess Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becomes Anne Frank.
• 
... The Hyphen demonstrates what American university education now is producing: Young people who are utterly ignorant beyond tears, have no concept of historical reality, are unable to compare and contrast reasonably, and yet who are all-too-willing to pontificate "Their Truth" on any bullhorn or into any cable camera that will provide the makeup, the lipstick, the wardrobe, and the hair-arranging needed.
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that US runs ‘concentration camps’ is absurd and insulting  (Fox 06/19/2019)
• 
Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's claim Monday and Tuesday that the U.S.  government "is running concentration camps on our southern border" is obscene, shockingly ignorant, and an insult to the memory of the 6 million Jews and millions of others murdered by the Nazis.
• 
The comparison is also a terrible insult to the dedicated men and women in U.S.  law enforcement agencies enforcing our immigration laws, likening them to Nazi mass murderers and war criminals.
• 
And the comparison insults every American who fought in our military in World War II – including the more than 400,000 killed and nearly 700,000 wounded – to defeat Nazi Germany and its allies Japan and Italy.
• 
President Trump's policy of cracking down on illegal immigration on the border with Mexico and detaining some migrants is certainly a legitimate topic of debate.
• 
The conditions under which the migrants are being held can be debated as well.
• 
But comparing U.S.  detention facilities operating today to the Nazi concentration camps where millions of innocent men, women and children were tortured, starved, beaten and murdered during World War II in the Holocaust is breathtakingly absurd.
• 
During World War II, Nazi concentration camps were death camps where innocent Jewish men women and children were murdered or died of disease or starvation.
• 
The camps were an integral part of the Holocaust and Hitler's "final solution" to kill every Jew on Earth.
• 
Fast forward to today.  No American with a heart is satisfied with the disastrous situation on our southern border.
• 
Unquestionably, migrants are suffering.  But they are not being murdered by the millions, their bodies then turned to ashes in crematoria.
• 
Like his policies, President Trump is open to legitimate criticism.
• 
Every president is and should be in our democracy, where we have the freedom of speech and free elections.
• 
But calling Trump a fascist and implying he is following in the footsteps of Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler has no basis in reality.
• 
Before others join the chorus proclaiming that President Trump is a Nazi bent on murdering millions of migrants, they would do well to brush up on what actually took place in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
• 
"I saw heaps of clothes in front of the building with bad – German for bath – painted on the door, the shower heads that pumped deadly gas instead of water, the room filled halfway to the ceiling with naked bodies and the room with ovens for burning the bodies."
• 
"There was an entire trainload – hundreds of emaciated bodies – on a nearby rail spur.  Evidently they had starved to death on the train."
• 
The truth is that the burgeoning disaster at our southern border is not the result not of a monstrous plot by President Trump to build concentration camps, but of a real humanitarian crisis overwhelming the federal immigration bureaucracy and a deep and toxic national political divide.
• 
One sure way to guarantee more political gridlock, more innocent people needlessly suffering and perhaps even more children dying in custody at our southern border is to falsely accuse the Trump administration of unspeakable Nazi-like actions.
      The false god of Drag Queen Story Time for our children  (INN 04/16/2019)
• 
The leaders of what is nominally called an American Jewish institution ... recently invited a group, Drag Queen Story Time to come into the center and read to our children.
• 
This group does this activity all over the country from what I understand.
• 
It is, they argue, intended to widen the understanding and openness of our kids to their views on human sexuality.
• 
On their website they announce their vision is to "give kids unabashedly queer role models.  The kids are able then to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real."
• 
it is an unabashed attack on the foundations of our American culture.
• 
It's also an attack on our kids, their innocence and their delicate and vital world of figuring out what it truthfully means to be a boy or girl, father or mother, friend or acquaintance, husband or wife.
• 
The bottom line is that it is basically an attack on the God of the Bible.
• 
It is the worship, instead, of the God of Leftism. 
• 
Look all around us.
• 
Look at what has happened over a century as this false religion from Marx, Rousseau, Hegel, Woodrow Wilson, and now Barak, Bernie and AOC washed over Europe and now invades America with its value system.
• 
Read their poison like, "there is no such thing as Truth or God."
• 
The distinction between good and evil is gone in this new religion.
• 
Here, there are only narratives.
• 
To the man of the radical Left, there is no distinction between the morally good Israel and the Arabs intent on completing the Final Solution — each simply have their own subjective stories to tell.
• 
The distinction between man and animal — gone.  The 4 inch fish ... has as much right to water in the central valley of California as the poor farmer. 
• 
The distinction between adult and child — trashed.  It's why men of the Left call for voting rights from our clueless 16 year olds.
• 
It's why large numbers of American kids assault our teachers in school and mouth off to our wonderful police on our city streets.
• 
The distinction of one married man and one woman forming a family and raising a child — poof, gone for the progressive liberal Left.
• 
It's no wonder millions of our poor fatherless boys are growing up with such lack of control and virtue, giving us 50 murders over a typical weekend in the Leftist diocese of Chicago.
• 
How about the distinction between elevated and vulgar language?  — gone too, with these worshippers of this false God.
• 
That's why our public space is now wretchedly polluted with the most vile language spewing from adults.
• 
How are we doing there with the likes of the Robert DeNiros and crowds at the California Democrat convention, all shrieking "F** Trump!"
• 
Then there is the rejection of distinction regarding national borders.  ... We have utter anarchy at our sovereign borders with millions of people flooding into our American home...
• 
How about the distinction of private versus public property — constantly attacked by the adherents of this false religion?
• 
As Barak, AOC and Bernie have said, after a certain point you've made enough and the rest belongs to me, one of the enlightened Priests of the Leftist Temple on Capitol Hill.
• 
How is that Venezuelan collapse- drama going to play out in America?
• 
All of us understand there are similarities between men and women, that both deserve equal rights and opportunity, but there are also essential, deep and radical differences.
• 
We have learned from experience, our Biblical and Western heritage, history, science and common sense that embracing such distinctiveness is vital to maintain a healthy society and produce happy healthy men and women, boys and girls and families.
• 
Breaking or blurring the distinction is destructive. 
• 
Because of the disrespect for such distinction we essentially have society-sanctioned child abuse going on.
• 
Our kids are being told the lie that they are not girls or boys.  They are told they will decide that at some point later in life.  Before they can even figure out what a Mom and Dad, marriage and creation of families are all about, they are told to celebrate that there are 51 or 52 genders on FaceBook.
• 
Pre-pubescent children, doing what many kids naturally do, namely question their sex, are being encouraged to "transition," sometimes even being offered life-altering medicines or surgery by their lost and brainwashed parents.
• 
Our poor young men and women are bewildered and befuddled at the meaning of masculine or feminine.
• 
A guy channeling his God-given nature to be strong, assertive, physical, gentlemanly — to be a provider or protector, is now medicated with Adderall for his presumed ADD or reviled for his "toxic masculinity."
• 
Our poor young women, trying to exhibit femininity with modesty in dress and sexual matters, or pursuing natural inclinations like getting married, bonding to a man, having kids and building a marriage and home are told they are succumbing to the male patriarchy.
• 
And so no wonder we are left with the utter foolishness and harm perpetrated by these American Jewish teachers and leaders welcoming into our schools men attired in dresses and lipstick to read to our kids.
• 
In so doing they defy healthy and vital norms, boundaries and distinctions that have taken millennia in the West to refine and produce.
• 
They are proud it, but in so doing they defy science, logic, wisdom, knowledge, experience and the God-based ideas and values of the great American and Judeo Christian civilization that resides here on our shores.
• 
Shame on them and their assault on our culture and especially on our children.
• 
It's also the 75th Year Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion and its heroes.
• 
Embrace the blessing of our nature, your distinctiveness as men — not the falsehoods and destructiveness of the God of Leftism with its lack of distinctions and "gender fluidity".
• 
We may once again need you to charge down some new beaches with your unique male nature and abilities.
• 
See related It's OK (Sean Delonas, 02/24/2017) cartoon from Adult picture album
      Douglas MacKinnon: What do Democrats have against poor working-Americans?  (Fox 06/13/2019)
• 
There is no doubt, that many of these illegal immigrants are going through very tough times and should and do illicit our sympathy.
• 
But again, shouldn't our charity begin at home?  What about the hundreds of thousands of poor legal citizens in California and the millions across the rest of our nation?  Isn't their desperate plight even more worthy of our sympathy?
• 
What did these poor American citizens ever do to these liberal and far-left politicians to be forsaken in such a way?
• 
Wouldn't the ultimate act of charity for all concerned be to take a fraction of the billions spent every year in tax dollars on illegal aliens and use it to build a real wall on our southern border?
• 
A wall that would force Mexico and the countries of Central America to take care of their own citizens.
• 
A wall that would ultimately benefit the poorest of our citizens by expanding their job market, decreasing drugs in their neighborhoods, and increasing security for them and their children.
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      The left complains that Trump is lawless, but they are attacking the fabric of society  (Fox 06/13/2019)
• 
One thing you can say about the left, they do get high marks for message discipline.
• 
Some functionary in the propaganda department comes up with a talking point and immediately, the entire herd — from senior Democrats in the United States Senate to weekend anchors on MSNBC and everyone in between — all of them shamelessly repeat in verbatim, like it's an original thought.
• 
The president, Democrats will tell you again and again, believes he is "above the law."
• 
"No one is above the law," they thunder.
• 
Except, of course, the more than 20 million foreign nationals currently living in our country illegally, all under the care and the protection of the Democratic Party. 
• 
Drug dealers, too.  They are suddenly above the law as well, according to the left.
• 
So are people who defecate on sidewalks and people who spraypaint overpasses, and people who shoot up in subway stations and leave dirty needles in parks.
• 
And this category is growing, thanks to the activist left.
• 
"When we talked about the right to vote, that right should exist to people who are currently in jail."
• 
"That is a right we must protect because we know the history of this country.  We know that women didn't have the right to vote.  We know that African-Americans didn't have the right to vote."
• 
So unless murderers and rapists can elect politicians from behind bars, we're back to slavery. 
• 
What you're watching from the left is really an attack on society itself.
• 
The basic bargain in any society is straightforward: People who follow the rules get rewarded, people who don't get punished.
• 
If you get rid of that standard, then everything inverts.
• 
Suddenly, power flows to the worst people in your society, the most ruthless and aggressive.
• 
Decent law-abiding people, meanwhile, are mocked.  They're just suckers who can be exploited by everyone else.
• 
That's where we're heading, by the way and fast.  It's pretty obvious when you look around.
• 
The threads are frayed.  It's coming apart - hundreds of years of hard work and self-discipline designed to create what we used to call "civilization" before the term civilization was deemed racist.
• 
The people doing this to us won't have to live with the consequences of it.  That's their guess.
• 
They are decadent morons who've never lived in a tough neighborhood.
• 
Unfortunately, they're now in charge of an entire political party.
• 
So we have no choice but to live under their rule.
      Alan Dershowitz: 'The Mueller report should never have been written'  (Fox 06/12/2019)
• 
"Prosecutors have a right to say only one thing: We have concluded there's no evidence sufficient to charge the president with Russian collusion or obstruction of justice, period.  I'm taking no questions, I'm making no public report.  I'm giving my findings to the attorney general."
• 
"No prosecutor should go beyond that."
      Steve Hilton: Trump proves that tariffs work.  Here are the lessons we should learn  (Fox 06/10/2019)
• 
Last week we saw proof that tariffs work.  President Trump threatened tariffs on Mexico.  Their leaders came to negoitiate, and we got concrete results.
• 
"In the course of a week, Mr.  Trump managed to get Mexico to agree to two things that months ago would have seemed unlikely: Militarizing Mexico's crackdown on migrants by deploying National Guard troops and expanding the ‘remain in Mexico' plan for asylum seekers."
• 
Everyone agrees we have a crisis at the southern border.  Two weeks ago, 1,000 illegal immigrants literally just walked into the country, in El Paso, Texas.
• 
Our immigration system is not just broken; for all practical purposes, it doesn't exist.
• 
But there is one person, it seems, who is actually trying to fix it: President Trump.  That's why he resorted to his tariff threat.
• 
It was a new approach, so of course, the establishment lost their minds.  And the Republican establishment hated it, too.
• 
... the way they were talking, tariffs on Mexico would be the end of our economy.  They let ideology get in the way of the facts.
• 
Even though Mexico is our biggest trading partner, it's still a tiny part of our economy.  Imports from Mexico make up just 1.8 percent of our economy.  And exports to Mexico are only 1.4 percent.
• 
It's like the critics didn't even look at it as a practical policy question.  For them it was an article of faith — tariffs are bad.
• 
It was the same thing with all the nodding dogs on TV, spouting the same line about American consumers.  "Tariffs are a tax." "It will overwhelm the consumer."
• 
Companies don't just sit there and take it when tariffs are imposed, they respond.
• 
"The people aren't going to have to worry about paying the tax because the companies are going to move back into the United States.  There won't be any tariff."
• 
Companies are moving away from countries hit by the Trump tariffs.  Especially China – and in a big way.
• 
Just think about that for a moment.  There is a massive policy lesson here.
• 
For decades the establishment looked on impotently as American manufacturing went to China.
• 
President Trump comes in, imposes tariffs, and you see an immediate private sector response: "We'll design China out."
• 
Trump's tariffs, derided by the snooty know-alls in the establishment, are turning out to be the most consequential - and positive - economic policy mechanism we've seen in decades.
• 
And it's not just companies moving out of China.  We're seeing them move back to America, just as the president said.
• 
President Trump's use of tariffs is an example of creative, entrepreneurial and above all, successful policy making.
• 
This was the whole point of Trump — to do things differently.
• 
To stand up to all the useless bureaucrats and naysayers bogged down in the status quo.
• 
The establishment idiots who condemn him for it care about style, not substance.
• 
As long as you behave the right way, say the right things, do it the way it's always been done, they think you're great, regardless of your actual results.
• 
That's why they all loved Obama.  He went along with it.  He behaved the way the establishment expects.
• 
Trump doesn't.  That doesn't make him bad; it makes him good.
• 
It's the status quo that's bad.  The establishment is obsessed with Trump and his tweets, but he's obsessed with you and your life.
• 
The final big lesson of this week is, of course, what's not happening.  The president shouldn't be having to pressure Mexico the way he did.
• 
It should be our own government, not a foreign government, that fixes our immigration crisis.
• 
And here we turn to the Democrats.  Isn't it sickening to see them on their high horse about the moral stain of Trump's border policy?
• 
Nancy Pelosi has said, "A wall is an immorality.  It's not who we are as a nation."
• 
Not who we are?  Well, who are you then, Nancy?  You're actually the one standing in the way of the changes that would help prevent the exact things you complain about.
• 
The Democrats are blocking common-sense immigration reform purely to score political points.
• 
It's you, Nancy Pelosi, who's exploiting desperate migrants for political gain.
• 
You are the person who is actually standing in the way of solving this problem.
• 
See related Dreamer (Glenn McCoy, 09/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Pelosi, others want to see Trump ‘in prison.’ Will the left ever stop weaponizing government?  (Fox 06/10/2019)
• 
"I don't want to see him [Trump] impeached, I want to see him in prison."
• 
To see the speaker of the House of Representatives call for the imprisonment of a sitting president is truly remarkable and terrifying.
• 
This is especially true in light of the fact that after more than a year of investigations costing millions of dollars, the Mueller team chose not to recommend a prosecution of the president and never once said it has enough evidence of any crime, including obstruction of justice, to prosecute Trump.
• 
... apparently, Speaker Pelosi doesn't care about due process or the fact that all Americans, including Trump, are innocent until proven guilty.
• 
Clearly, Pelosi isn't interested in justice.  She's too busy trying to settle political scores.
• 
Like most Democrats in Congress, it seems Pelosi still hasn't gotten over the fact Trump beat Hillary Clinton — who, by the way, did most likely collude with a foreign government (Ukraine) during the 2016 election.
• 
Pelosi isn't alone, either.  Weaponizing government to target conservatives has seemingly become the norm for the left.
• 
"Please, keep it coming Jr – it's definitely a ‘very, very large brain' idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.  Have fun!"
• 
In 2016, Democratic state attorneys general from across the country called for the prosecution of organizations and businesses that are skeptical of the theory humans are causing a climate change crisis.
• 
Later in 2016, Democrats voted to add to their official platform a provision calling for the prosecution of businesses that allegedly "misled ... the public on the scientific reality of climate change."
• 
From 2010 to 2013, the Obama-led Internal Revenue Service unjustly targeted and harassed conservative organizations.
• 
And let's not forget the Russian collusion investigation began under incredibly suspicious circumstances, with the Obama-controlled Justice Department choosing to rely on the Steele intelligence dossier, which it knew had been funded by Democrats and was authored by a biased, foreign source relying on questionable, at best, information.
• 
Some might argue that these efforts compare to Trump's calls to "lock her [Hillary Clinton] up" during the 2016 campaign, and, to a small degree, they do.
• 
No government official (or candidate for office) should call for the imprisonment of anyone without due process.
• 
However, it's worth noting that when Trump did become president, he chose to not prosecute Clinton — even though he could have ordered the Justice Department to reconsider the entire investigation.
• 
It's also important to remember Trump's Justice Department has never once abused its power in the same egregious way the Obama Justice Department did when it launched the Russian collusion investigation in the midst of a presidential election.
• 
If new evidence emerges showing Donald Trump — or anyone in Washington, D.C., for that matter — committed a crime, then the government has a responsibility to investigate and hand down charges, when appropriate.
• 
But politicians' use of government to destroy their political enemies is more than a little troubling; it represents an existential threat to liberty and the preservation of our representative republic.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump proven right again, as tariff threat prompts Mexico to act against illegal immigration  (Fox 06/08/2019)
• 
President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico if it didn't change its border policies.
• 
In the short period between Trump's threat and his deal with Mexico announced Friday night to crack down on illegal immigrants in Mexico, headlines all but screamed: "Avocados will get more expensive if Trump taxes Mexican imports."
• 
Apparently, some Americans were expected to buckle on that pressure.
• 
Indeed, the world remembered D-Day this week, and the thousands who gave their lives.
• 
Part of that war effort also saw Americans withstand rationing of essentials such as gasoline, butter and sugar.
• 
It was a sad commentary that today's Americans are unwilling to sacrifice higher avocado prices for a greater good.
• 
Meanwhile, President Trump proved his doubters wrong once again.
• 
While the Democratic Congress refused to fund serious border protection, Trump went his own way and crafted a deal.
• 
While conservatives, many Republicans and even some on the left, excoriated the president for supposedly abandoning the holy grail of free trade by threatening tariffs on Mexico, Trump went about his business and did what other politicians refused to do.
• 
He found a promising way to decrease illegal immigration.
• 
The real story here is not that Trump made a deal.  That was predictable.
• 
Mexico has a vulnerable economy and the U.S.  economy is far, far stronger. 
• 
The reaction to Trump's potential tariffs, on the other hand, raises a serious question.
• 
Are any Americans willing to suffer any inconvenience at all for the sake of American foreign policy or a greater American good?
• 
If we had a world without tariffs, economic activity would substantially increase and standards of living would rise around the world.
• 
That is good for everyone and may even reduce war as some nations open their societies up to economic freedom.
• 
The pursuit of free trade, however, is not the only policy consideration our country faces.
• 
Indeed, the United States is constantly beset with foreign policy considerations that require us to use economic levers that run contrary to the pursuit of free trade.
• 
Short of a military response, the U.S.  imposes economic sanctions after diplomacy alone does not work.
• 
Are the Trump tariff objectors really demanding, in the name of free trade, to remove free trade reducing economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool?
• 
Wouldn't that reduce our choices to just two: diplomacy or war?
• 
And wouldn't that increase the possibility of war and loss of life – not to mention increased spending and taxes?
• 
... trading on terms that increase our long-term problems by enriching those who mean to do us harm at least warrants a discussion.
• 
There's much more at stake than the horrifying cost of avocados.
• 
See related Border Avocados (Gary McCoy, 04/02/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Generations (Michael Ramirez, 06/05/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
      Law enforcement, media have changed standards for Trump  (JWR 06/05/2019)
• 
Without evidence to prove any of the dossier's most serious allegations, a new standard of proof emerged: The allegations were legitimate because they had not been proven untrue.
• 
"(I'm) aware of nothing in the Christopher Steele dossier that has been shown to be false," said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.
• 
"So far with this dossier, nothing yet has been proven untrue," said Chuck Todd, host of NBC's "Meet the Press."
• 
It's not surprising that commentators, especially those with partisan motives, would adopt such a low standard.
• 
It was surprising when ... Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller upended the justice system's traditional norms by declaring that his investigation, while not accusing the president of committing a crime, also could not exonerate him.
• 
"...  while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
• 
"If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
• 
Since when do prosecutors hand out certificates of exoneration to the people they investigate?  (Answer: They don't.)
• 
Since when has "not exonerated" been an accepted legal outcome — as in, "How does the jury find the defendant?  We find him not exonerated." (Answer: Never.)
• 
Mueller, like Feinstein and Tribe and Todd before him, changed widely accepted standards, casting the shadow of guilt on Trump without formally accusing him of wrongdoing.
• 
Except Mueller, unlike the senator, the law professor and the journalist, wielded the prosecutorial power of the United States.
• 
Given the length and thoroughness of his investigation, Mueller's no-exoneration verdict carried a lot of weight in the public debate.
• 
Except that it didn't mean anything, while at the same time it suggested to the public that the president had committed some unspecified offense.
• 
Trump's critics often accuse him of violating the norms that make our society and government work.  Yet in their discussion of the dossier, some of those critics violated essential norms of fairness and accuracy.  And in Mueller's no-exoneration gambit, a storied figure in American law enforcement abandoned one of the most important standards of justice.
• 
The damage done could last a long time.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Van Hipp: Roosevelt's D-Day prayer still resonates – All Americans should read it this week  (Fox 06/05/2019)
• 
My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation.  It has come to pass with success thus far. 
• 
And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:
• 
Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. 
• 
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. 
• 
They will need Thy blessings.  Their road will be long and hard.  For the enemy is strong.  He may hurl back our forces.  Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. 
• 
They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won.  The darkness will be rent by noise and flame.  Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war. 
• 
For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace.  They fight not for the lust of conquest.  They fight to end conquest.  They fight to liberate.  They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people.  They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home. 
• 
Some will never return.  Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
• 
And for us at home — fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas — whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them — help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice. 
• 
Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer.  But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer.  As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts. 
• 
Give us strength, too — strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces. 
• 
And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be. 
• 
And, O Lord, give us Faith.  Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade.  Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled.  Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose. 
• 
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy.  Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies.  Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men.  And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. 
• 
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
• 
Amen.
      After Mueller’s ‘last word’ many voters are going to think Trump is being persecuted.  Are they wrong?  (Fox 06/04/2019)
• 
... Mueller said this about indicted Russian hackers who attempted to influence the outcome of the 2016 election: "These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant.  Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."
• 
Moments later, Mueller said about President Trump and allegations (mostly by Democrats and the media) that he obstructed justice: "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.  We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime."
• 
So it's innocent until proven guilty for the Russians, who are never going to be tried in the United States, and an insinuation of guilt until he proves himself innocent for the president of the United States?
• 
... Attorney General William Barr said he believes Mueller could have come to a conclusion as to whether the president obstructed justice.
• 
When he didn't, Barr said he concluded he did not, based on the evidence.
• 
That Mueller had nothing to say about what Trump dismisses as the "phony" Steele Dossier, which led to a FISA warrant allowing the FBI to spy (Barr's word) on the Trump campaign, or the role of Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party in paying for the dossier, further corrupts the law and establishes a double standard as the only standard by which some politicians and members of the establishment live.
• 
... most of the attorneys on his team were registered Democrats.  A handful donated money to Clinton's 2016 campaign.
• 
Just how much confidence should be placed in a report put together by such people can be answered by asking about the confidence one might place in a report about a Democratic president and a team of Republican lawyers.
• 
Additional information is likely to be forthcoming from U.S.  Attorney John Durham, named by Barr to investigate the origins of surveillance of the Trump campaign.
• 
This is likely what the left and the media fear most.
• 
While they are unable to counter the good economic news, their only hope to keep Trump from being re-elected is to remove him from office on charges of obstruction and corruption, or drive down his approval numbers in hopes of defeating him.
• 
In his farewell remarks, Mueller said his more than 400-page report is the last word.
• 
Some in Congress from both parties want him to testify.
• 
Mueller said he has nothing to add to the report, but there is more to say and Mueller should be required to say it.
• 
House Democrats may not want to have Mueller appear because Republicans will ask tough questions.
• 
Could this be why they are desperately trying to change the subject by seeking Trump's taxes and bank records dating back to before he became president?
• 
At some point, many voters are going to look at this as persecution of the president, which can only add to his prospects in 2020.
• 
See related The Torch Has Passed (Antonio Branco, 05/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Steve Hilton: Mueller revealed his true self - a partisan establishment swamp lawyer  (Fox 06/03/2019)
• 
Populism is about fighting a corrupt establishment.
• 
With his bizarre new doctrine of "not not guilty," he overturned the presumption of innocence.
• 
Then, with his unsubtly coded call for the impeachment of President Trump, he revealed his real aim: Overturning the 2016 election.
• 
Mueller was hired to be a neutral arbiter, to bring a clear conclusion that the country could unite behind.
• 
But on Wednesday, he ripped off the mask of neutrality and showed himself for what he is: A partisan in the fight between the populists and the establishment.
• 
We shouldn't be surprised — Mueller is the establishment.
• 
That's the establishment code: You protect each other.  Always.
• 
And you take down any and every threat to your power.
• 
That's how to understand last week's extraordinary intervention by Mueller.
• 
It was the establishment's final stand against their mortal enemy - Trump, and the peasant's revolt he led in 2016.
• 
They tried to stop him getting elected by clearing Hillary Clinton.
• 
They tried to bring him down by manufacturing a Russia collusion scandal.
• 
And when all that failed, last week Robert Mueller played the obstruction card.
• 
Strip away all the tortured legalese and intellectual incoherence, it all boiled down to one thing - Mueller saying, "I can't prove he did it, but [wink] he did it."
• 
He talked about "another process," and with that weak, pathetic attempt to hide the explosive nature of what he was really saying, Mueller called on Congress to impeach the president.
• 
Impeach him for what?  He didn't plot with Putin to steal the election.
• 
Mueller found no evidence for that crazed establishment fantasy, despite two years of trying.
• 
The president didn't obstruct justice.  Mueller found no evidence of that, either, as he himself admitted in a clarification put out later that same day.
• 
Let's be really clear about that: Robert Mueller — yes, the straight-shooting man of integrity, Robert Mueller — lied from the podium last Wednesday.
• 
He lied to cover up the fact that he didn't find evidence of obstruction to justify a criminal charge.
• 
What did he he find?  Stories about the president losing his temper.
• 
Of course he lost his temper!
• 
If a totally manufactured conspiracy theory about you being a traitor to your country and colluding with an enemy power derails your presidency for years, wouldn't you be annoyed about it?
• 
This was eruption, not obstruction.
• 
What, we're going to impeach a president for venting, now?
• 
... Robert Mueller wants "an impeachment inquiry to charge Donald Trump with obstructing an investigation that wasn't obstructed into a conspiracy that didn't exist."
• 
Mueller the straight shooter?  With that bumbling, malicious press conference, he shot himself straight in the foot.
• 
His reputation is destroyed, and he has no-one to blame but himself.
• 
Now it's time to fight back against the establishment.
• 
It's good that the origins of the plot against President Trump are now being investigated.
• 
But let's not leave it there.
• 
What Mueller did at his press conference wasn't justice.
• 
It wasn't the rule of law.
• 
It was a smear — false statement designed to cause material harm to President Trump, delivered with malice.
• 
You know what that is?  The legal standard for defamation.
• 
President Trump should sue Robert Mueller for libel.
• 
Next: Let's open a corruption investigation into the business dealings of Mueller and Comey in their swampy trips around the revolving door.
• 
Was there personal financial corruption?  Let's investigate.
• 
After all, what's that phrase we've been hearing these last couple of years, "we need to get to the bottom of it."
• 
If Mueller and Comey have done nothing wrong, they've got nothing to fear from a corruption investigation.  Right?
• 
And let's take the fight to the ridiculous Never-Trumpers, too.  ... They say they're defending democracy.
• 
Excuse me?  They are literally attacking democracy, trying to overturn the democratic election of a president they despise.
• 
They talk about decency and honor and morality.  What morality do they bring to the table, by the way?
• 
Their demented ideology sent millons to their deaths in Middle East wars and cost our country trillions of dollars.
• 
Their dinner party decadence brought the authoritarian despots of China to the brink of world domination.
• 
And their craven genuflection to big business destroyed the American Dream for middle class families.
• 
They think they can kick out Trump and take back power.
• 
Do not let them.  It's time to fight them.  It's time to defeat them.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Since Trump won, NY Times, Washington Post have virtually declared war on him  (Fox 06/03/2019)
• 
In 2016 the nation's top two newspapers responded to Donald Trump's election with arrogant new slogans, virtually declaring war on him.
• 
The New York Times aired TV ads proclaiming "Truth: It's more important now than ever." Apparently, truth hadn't been that important when Barack Obama or Bill Clinton were president.
• 
The Washington Post chose a new motto that is now published on its masthead every morning: "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
• 
Look out!  Trump was going tyrannical and by God, the Washington Post was going to stop that. 
• 
We embrace the notion of a free press as a hallowed institution essential to the democratic process, providing checks and balances to our system of government.
• 
But no such honor exists in the industry today.
• 
There is no system of checks or balances when the Democrats are in charge; however, once Republicans are in office, their idea of "balancing" power is to savage them mercilessly.
• 
Underneath all their "war on the press" outrage, the media are suggesting that no one has the right to check or balance them.
• 
To resist the "Resistance" is somehow undemocratic.
• 
They paint themselves as dangerously "under siege" when their political agenda is exposed and their commitment to "the truth" is questioned.
• 
Donald Trump mocks them energetically as "Fake News" factories, and they're horrified that anyone would dare treat them so.
• 
In their minds America has entered an "authoritarian" phase and the ignorant deplorables just don't see it.
• 
So critics of the press – which includes him – were fueling mass murders?
• 
Does that mean that the relentless criticism of Donald Trump as a democracy-killing authoritarian could be endangering his safety?
• 
Perhaps it's time for those in our Fourth Estate to blather less about criticism of the press and start shining some light on the numerous vicious attacks against pro-Trump and conservative Americans coming from their own ranks.
• 
Because democracy dies in darkness, you know.
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related He Hit Back! (Glenn McCoy, 07/07/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Jewish political intelligence is an oxymoron  (INN 06/02/2019)
• 
Their support for Democrat candidates who are outright Jew haters in inexplicable.
• 
They show no common sense nor desire to build up whatever portion of the brain that functions as a road map to survival.
• 
I'm downright serious when I say that if Adolph Eichman were alive today and running on the Democrat ticket, he would get their votes.
• 
"Look, time heals all wounds and let the past remain in the past.  He's our party's choice." they would say. 
• 
Barely 75 years after the end of the Holocaust in which nearly one half of the world's Jewry was slaughtered, Jews appear to have no interest in finding ways to prevent such a cataclysm from reoccurring. 
• 
Democrat Jews hold 8 seats in the Senate and 32 in the House.
• 
They have enough to form their own Jewish Congressional Caucus as the blacks and Hispanics do to fight for their respective causes.
• 
But there is no such Jewish organization.  And we see the reason for this.  They have no allegiance to the needs of their Jewish constituents.
• 
And just where do they stand today with the likes of newbie Democrat Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her sister colleagues, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, both radical Muslims, all of whom are outspokenly Israel/Jew haters?
• 
Their silence says it all.  They are political whores who have sold their souls to the party that is inching toward overtly stating they are sliding dangerously close to an anti-Israel platform for their 2020 presidential campaign.
• 
The upcoming 2020 elections will tell the story of whether American Jewry will be threatened by the now open Jew-hating being promulgated by the Democrat Party.
• 
Will Jews finally wake up to this fact and utilize their votes and $$$ to defeat their enemies or will they finally get it and support the party that supports them?
• 
See related Putting into Context (Michael Ramirez, 05/15/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      William Barr determined to unravel truth behind Russia lie  (NYP 06/02/2019)
• 
"So it was bogus, this whole idea that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus."
• 
"It's hard to read some of the [FBI] texts and not feel that there was gross bias at work, and they're appalling."
• 
"The use of foreign-intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign to me is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed."
• 
"The media reaction is strange.  Normally the media would be interested in letting the sunshine in and finding out what the truth is."
• 
"One of the ironies today is that people are saying that it's President Trump that's shredding our institutions.  I really see no evidence of that ... From my perspective the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him and you know, really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring."
      James Jay Carafano: Why is Trump snubbed on most American campuses?  (Fox 06/01/2019)
• 
This week, a prestigious American university proudly turned its graduation podium over to the leader of — Germany.
• 
Harvard's preference for the Teutonic tones of Chancellor Angela Merkel over the New York English of President Trump reflects the sad state of how our nation converses — and how we represent ourselves to the world.
• 
... it's not just home-grown liberal activists trying to squelch "unacceptable" voices.
• 
There is an alarming trend of foreign Chinese students on American campuses organizing campaigns to silence speech unfavorable to their country.
• 
Conservatives and others who value free speech and open inquiry find these developments concerning.
• 
The president is so concerned, he has issued an executive order to protect free speech on campuses.
• 
It's a sensible move, but one unlikely to make him many more friends in the faculty meetings.
• 
The academy complains that Trump poorly represents America to the world.
• 
But increasingly, American universities are the national embarrassment.
• 
They are more concerned about Trump's tweets than serving as a national beacon of free, inclusive and diverse speech.
• 
The real tragedy here is that the great universities are in danger of drifting away from the center of America's public square.
• 
They are losing their relevance to the rest of us.
• 
Increasingly, elite liberal colleges look more like a sinkhole of student debt, and ground zero for the greedy and intolerant face of education corporatism.
      Mueller vs.  Trump — America’s the real loser and Russia, Iran, China look like big winners  (Fox 06/01/2019)
• 
For the past two years, special prosecutor Robert Mueller has been sitting on a political powder keg; in an eight-and-a-half minute statement on Wednesday, he decided to light the fuse.
• 
By giving Congress the green light to impeach Donald Trump, he has detonated a political explosion that will continue to rock Washington and the nation for the next decade, and far beyond the 2020 election.
• 
And watching it all, and celebrating it all, will be the men who govern the worst and most oppressive regimes in the world. 
• 
Today America confronts a trio of revision powers – Russia, Iran, and above all China – determined to shove America into the shadows.
• 
They have joined forces to support the world's most oppressive and dangerous dictators from North Korea and Syria to Venezuela.
• 
Only America has the resources to stop them.
• 
The danger we now face is that an America trapped in a perpetual political crisis, and a chief executive hobbled by a bitter impeachment battle, won't have the will or strength to prevent this new Axis, like its pre-World War Two predecessor, from creating an authoritarian world order.
• 
The shame is that Mueller could have used his statement on Wednesday to defuse that political crisis.
• 
He could have simply said, "Everything we have to say is contained in our report.  We had to conclude there's no evidence of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election; my team, which included top Hillary supporters and leading Trump haters, could find no probable cause to make the case President Trump obstructed justice, either.  For our nation's future, it's time for all of us to move on, as I have."
• 
Unfortunately, that sort of nobility of spirit was beyond Bob Mueller.
• 
Instead, he took one last swipe at the president he despises, as he urged Congress to continue to look for crimes the facts say didn't happen – and the law says can't be proved.
• 
Thanks to Mueller, impeachment by a Democrat-led Congress is almost certain; the defeat of impeachment in the Republican-dominated Senate is just as certain.
• 
This process will satisfy no one; it will leave us more divided than ever, with an ever-diminishing faith in our governing institutions to secure justice or to handle a national crisis.
• 
On the world stage, however, this leaves America in a far worse state.
• 
China, in particular, will see America's weakness as their opportunity to checkmate Trump's trade and foreign policy initiatives, which are aimed at stopping China's drive to displace the United States as the world's superpower.
• 
A weakened Donald Trump will play directly into Beijing's plans.
• 
Even more insidiously, perpetual turmoil in Washington reinforces China's propagandistic campaign to the world that it, not America, has found the secret to democracy in the 21st century.
• 
Beijing routinely touts the so-called China model, i.e.  a top-down system where the communist party recruits and rewards an elite drawn from all classes of society while excluding and punishing those who resist the party line, the true "democracy" of the future. 
• 
Chinese party leaders extol their version of democracy as embodying stability and predictability, compared to the uncertainty and chaos of American democracy – a contrast which we're managing to confirm.
• 
Democrats and NeverTrumpers will never stop believing Trump's election was a swindle and the triumph of bigotry and hate.
• 
Trump supporters will continue to believe that impeachment is a swindle, and the triumph of the other side's lies and corruption.
• 
Bob Mueller had his moment in the limelight to suggest this head-on collision isn't the only option for America.
• 
He let it pass; he even did his level best to inflame the passions on both sides.
• 
America, not Donald Trump or the NeverTrumpers, is going to be the big loser in what's coming.
• 
And America's enemies are looking like big winners.
      Mueller tries desperately to continue bogus Russia collusion narrative against Trump  (Fox 06/01/2019)
• 
Mueller was insinuating that President Trump has not been exonerated of wrongdoing, while refusing to explicitly declare the president guilty of any crime.
• 
Dershowitz rightly pointed out that Mueller "went beyond the conclusion of his report and gave a political gift to Democrats in Congress who are seeking to institute impeachment proceedings against President Trump."
• 
Mueller's report said there was no evidence President Trump broke the law.
• 
Mueller's mouth said there was no proof Trump didn't.
• 
The problem is, Mueller's verbal statement distorted the role of a prosecutor and flipped a core concept of the American justice system on its head – the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty.
• 
Dating back to John Adams's principled defense of British soldiers against an incensed public after the Boston Massacre, Americans have held that proving the burden of guilt falls on the state.
• 
And the bottom line is: After a nearly two-year investigation consisting of 15 lawyers, many millions of taxpayer dollars, and interviews of more than 500 witnesses, everything in Mueller's 448-page report leads to the conclusion that President Trump is not guilty of any crimes.
• 
Mueller had said that "it is important that the office's written work speak for itself," but then he kept talking.
• 
"Mueller's report was released to the public by Attorney General William Barr nearly six weeks ago.  The entire report, minus limited redactions required by law, has been publicly available, pored through, and dissected...  If it's important for the work to speak for itself, then why did Mueller schedule a press conference in which he would speak for it weeks after it was released?"
• 
Mueller is making the political suggestion that President Trump should be impeached on allegations of obstruction of justice for which Mueller and his team of hot-shot lawyers found no proof.
• 
This is a clear example of a prosecutor who is trying to get an outcome regardless of evidence.
• 
In a desperate pursuit to keep the bogus Russia collusion narrative alive, Mueller is turning to Soviet-style tactics.
• 
The foundations of our justice system have served us well for 243 years.  We should not abandon them now.
      The Mueller Investigation Was Always an Impeachment Probe  (NR 05/31/2019)
      Corporations, not voters, are in charge now and want to boss you around for the activist left  (Fox 05/31/2019)
• 
A few weeks ago, Georgia lawmakers passed what they called a "heartbeat bill."
• 
It bans abortion after the first few weeks of pregnancy when a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
• 
Now you may agree with the law or you may not agree with the law, but you can't call it illegitimate.
• 
Voters in Georgia elected lawmakers who represent their values, and that's exactly how democratic systems are designed to work.  That's the point.
• 
You'd think the people who claim to be defending our democracy from the Russians would understand that.
• 
But of course, they don't understand it.  They don't care to understand it.
• 
They believe democracy is when a tiny group of rich people imposes its values on everyone else by force.
• 
Bob Iger is the CEO of Disney.  He doesn't live anywhere near the State of Georgia.  He made nearly $66 million last year.
• 
Therefore, he believes he can control what happens in the State of Georgia.
• 
"Well, I think if it becomes law, it'll be very difficult to produce there.  I rather doubt we will.  I think many people who work for us will not want to work there and we'll have to heed their wishes in that regard."
• 
Got that?  The company that brought you Minnie Mouse and Goofy and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" now demands that you approve of abortion, or they'll punish you.
• 
This is all a remarkable change in American life in a very short period of time.
• 
It wasn't that long ago that it was citizens who boycotted companies they disagreed with.
• 
Now, it's corporations who boycott citizens.
• 
What happened?  It's not hard to figure out what happened.
• 
For generations, consumers and voters held the real power in this country, but not anymore.
• 
Now corporations are in charge, and they're happy to boss you around on behalf of the activist left.
• 
They'll lie about it, of course, and tell you it's all a matter of conscience.
• 
Right.  As if they had consciences.
• 
Family shrinks or disappears entirely.
• 
Women are free to devote their lives to the company — reliable little worker bees.
• 
Corporations get to expand their labor pool, lower wages and increase profits, all while delivering pious lectures about how they're giving women opportunities.
• 
Somewhere in the late 1990s, corporate America realized this.  They learned that if they did the bidding of the left on social issues, they would get a pass on everything else.
• 
They could freeze wages.  They could destroy the environment.  They could strangle free speech.  They can eliminate privacy.
• 
All the while, they could get richer than any class of people in human history, and nobody would say anything.
• 
So that's exactly what they did, and they're still doing it.
• 
Last year, Citigroup announced it would not allow stores that sell semi-automatic weapons to use their credit card services.  That's where we are today.
• 
But it's not hard to match what it might be like tomorrow.
• 
What if, for example, America — corporate America — decided to punish gun owners in addition to gun sellers?
• 
You've got a firearm at home, so you could no longer buy car insurance.  Okay, you can't use Facebook.  You can't open a checking account.  You can't have a credit card.  You can't stay in hotels.
• 
Well, libertarians will tell you that's just fine - just the free market at work.  If you don't like it, open your own credit card company.
• 
But you'd have to be a moron to believe them.
• 
In fact, that would be the end of the Second Amendment.
• 
The words would remain in the Bill of Rights, but they would be entirely symbolic.
• 
Big companies would have rendered them meaningless.
• 
It's not a right if you can't exercise it.
• 
And that's where we're heading.  It's not far off.
• 
Conservatives have been trained to see government as the only real threat to human freedom.
• 
And for much of the last hundred years that may have been true.  It's not true anymore.
• 
The tyranny of "woke" capital is real, and it is terrifying.
• 
Just because they're selling you products, doesn't mean it's not a dictatorship.
      Mueller’s been showboating – Time for Senate Judiciary Committee to ask him these questions  (Fox 05/31/2019)
• 
As a prosecutor who styles himself detached, dispassionate and above reproach, Robert Mueller has become a political bomb thrower.
• 
There is no other way to describe his behavior.
• 
As a 12-year FBI Director, Mueller must have had indigestion when he uncovered gross FBI malfeasance at the top, starting with his friend James Comey.  The impulse to look the other way must have been strong.
• 
... when Mueller realized no collusion existed – or sufficient evidence to charge obstruction – a sense of purposelessness must have weighed down his team.
• 
Perhaps, that is when another idea surfaced.
• 
If they had to report findings, they could use the report to vindicate the FBI, more from institutional than personal loyalty.  Forced to justify a $30 million-dollar inquiry, they could also set the congressional spike, especially after Democrats won control of the House.
• 
They arranged the testimony from 500 witnesses, 3,500 subpoenas and warrants, and a million freely-produced administration documents – to tell a story.
• 
The story was long and selective, leaving just enough to the public imagination to create what they thought would be an inevitable conclusion – all breadcrumbs led to dinner, all roads to Rome, all insinuations, ambiguities and prevarications to impeachment.
• 
Only something strange happened on the way to the table, coliseum and impeachment.
• 
Neither the attorney general nor deputy thought Mueller's findings warranted further discussion.
• 
The report, redacted to protect grand jury material, effectively cleared the president.
• 
In a world where innocence prevails until guilt is proven, the story was over.
• 
This was not the end Mueller thought he had written.  He could have done that in 10 pages.
• 
Instead, he rolled out a 448-page report with unstated assumptions, unverified inferences, uninvestigated counter-inferences, and what he thought was the case for impeachment.
• 
When the attorney general, majority of the legal community and public concluded otherwise, Mueller could not stay silent.
• 
He wrote a letter to the attorney general re-arguing his case and boldly leaked it to the media.
• 
When that tactic failed and House Democrats demanded the un-redacted report with protected grand jury material, Mueller could have issued a one-liner defending the attorney general and 200 years of American jurisprudence.  He did not.
• 
Then Wednesday, sensing his report's impeachment message was getting lost, the narrative getting cold, Mueller conducted a press conference backhandedly suggesting impeachment, despite the report's empirical failure to support that call.
• 
He took no questions – and perfunctorily left.
• 
Not so fast ... In the context of post-report showboating, Mueller should be asked some hard questions, like:
• 
If you knew there was no collusion early on, why did you continue the investigation? 
• 
If you thought there was no obstruction, why did you lay out a case for it?
• 
If you knew your prosecutorial colleagues were conflicted by strong support for the Clinton campaign, why did you hire them? 
• 
Other questions burn: If you knew the former FBI Director, Deputy Director, and other senior FBI personnel were compromised by poor judgement, illegal leaks, prejudice and passing sensitive information to cut-outs – if not worse – why did you not investigate them?
• 
Why did you write a report which appears to consciously overlook, forgive or remain silent on these misdeeds?
• 
Why, if you knew the predicate for FISA warrants was tainted, and these formed the basis for your own investigation, did you not end the inquiry – right there?
• 
Why did you not investigate the false basis for those FISA warrant applications?
• 
Why did you not address a miscarriage of justice at the highest levels?
• 
And if you knew a presidential campaign had been illegally surveilled, using a foreign government to backchannel information, why did you not investigate that?
• 
Why did you not investigate intelligence reports behind the unmasking of some 300 innocent Americans by the Obama White House?
• 
In short, Mueller, how is it that your report omits inquiry into origins of collusion allegations you were commissioned to investigate?*
• 
And how do you explain your recent behavior – which appears aimed at clearing the FBI and intentionally encouraging impeachment?
• 
Average Americans would like to know – what's behind this show?
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: The two faces of Robert Mueller, and Trump's presumption of guilt  (Fox 05/29/2019)
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has peddled two different stories.  Only one can be true. 
• 
In his final act before resigning his position, Mueller told the gathered media on Wednesday that his non-decision decision on whether the president obstructed justice was "informed" by a long-standing opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.
• 
"We were frankly surprised that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction and we asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this.  Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting, in response to our questioning, that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC opinion he would have found obstruction."
• 
Barr said there were others in the meeting who heard Mueller say the same thing – that the OLC opinion played no role in the special counsel's decision-making or lack thereof.
• 
"We specifically asked him about the OLC opinion and whether or not he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the OLC opinion.  And he made it very clear several times that was not his position."
• 
Yet, on Wednesday Mueller was telling a different tale.
• 
He seemed to argue that he could not have accused the president of obstruction because he was handcuffed by the OLC opinion.
• 
Mueller did not abandon the OLC opinion in this case because he surely knew the facts and evidence did not support the law of obstruction.
• 
Instead, in his 448-page report, he implied presidential obstruction in a remarkable achievement in creative writing.
• 
He set forth in luxurious detail "evidence on both sides of the question."
• 
But this is not the job of any chief prosecutor, anywhere.
• 
He was hired to investigate potential crimes arising from Russian interference in a presidential election and make a reasoned decision on whether charges were merited.
• 
Mueller's actions were not only noxious but patently unfair to Trump.
• 
The special counsel publicly besmirched the president with tales of suspicious behavior instead of stated evidence that rose to the level of criminality. 
• 
This is what prosecutors are never permitted to do.
• 
Justice Department rules forbid its lawyers from annunciating negative narratives about any person, absent an indictment. 
• 
How can that person properly defend himself without trial?
• 
This is why prosecutors like Mueller are prohibited from trying their cases in the court of public opinion.
• 
If they have probable cause to levy charges, they should do so.
• 
If not, they must refrain from openly disparaging someone that our justice system presumes is innocent.
• 
... Mueller shrewdly and improperly turned the law on its head.
• 
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
• 
... "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
• 
Prosecutors are not, and have never been, in the business of exonerating people.  That's not their job. 
• 
An experienced federal prosecutor, Mueller certainly knew this.
• 
It appears he had no intention of treating Trump equitably or applying the law in conformance with our criminal justice system.
• 
... Mueller managed to reverse the legal duty that prosecutors have rigidly followed in America for centuries.
• 
Their legal obligation is not to exonerate someone or prove an individual's innocence.
• 
Nor is any accused person required to prove his or her own innocence.
• 
Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence.  It is the bedrock on which justice is built. 
• 
Prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 
To bring charges they must have, at minimum, probable cause to believe that a crime was committed. 
• 
The special counsel took this inviolate principle and cleverly inverted it.
• 
He argued that he could not prove the president did not commit a crime.
• 
Think about what that rationale really means.  It is a double negative.
• 
Mueller was contending that he can't prove something didn't happen.
• 
What if this were the standard for all criminal investigations?  Apply it to yourself.
• 
The special counsel created the impression that Trump might have engaged in wrongdoing because he could not prove otherwise. 
• 
The consequential injustice and harm that inevitably follows is what happens when we reverse the burden of proof and abandon the innocence standard that are revered in a democracy as fundamental rights. 
• 
Yet, this is what Mueller did.  He improvised a new standard that applies only to Trump — presumption of guilt.
• 
Under this novel "guilty until proven innocent" paradigm, it is up to the president to prove the allegations are false. 
• 
Barr told Congress that he was forced to correct Mueller's mistake.
• 
"I used the proper standard.  We are not in the business of proving someone did not violate the law – I found that whole passage very bizarre."
• 
Our system of justice in America is designed to protect the innocent.
• 
Mueller was well aware of this.  In the "introduction" to Volume II on obstruction, he recited the duty of prosecutors to be fair by refraining from comment.
• 
In the case of a sitting president, wrote Mueller, "The stigma and opprobrium could imperil the President's ability to govern."
• 
Ironically, the special counsel then proceeded to ignore his own warning.
• 
He produced his own "dossier" on Trump that was filled with suspicions of wrongdoing.
• 
He refused to make a decision to charge the president in a court of law but was more than willing to indict him in the court of public opinion. 
• 
His report was a non-indictment indictment.  It was calumny masquerading as a report.
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Robert Mueller's abuse of our legal system continues – He didn’t need to speak Wednesday  (Fox 05/29/2019)
• 
Mueller has always known there was never a case against President Trump involving collusion with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.
• 
When Mueller became special counsel there was no such evidence or insufficient evidence, as Mueller now says.
• 
To this day, there is no such evidence.
• 
However, that has not stopped Mueller from abusing the American legal system.
• 
In America, prosecutors do not exonerate people.  They charge people or they do not.
• 
If they do not, in America that means you are innocent.
• 
Innocent until proven guilty is a core principle of our legal system, as opposed to Russia's.
• 
Mueller's statement Wednesday that he did not exonerate Trump, and Mueller's use of that standard, are profound abuses of our legal system – especially given the context of his actions.
• 
There has never been a reason for Mueller to write a report or to speak.
• 
No law requires it.  No one asked him to do it.
• 
This is Mueller's James Comey moment.  ... Mueller would make allegations against President Trump but not actually recommend charging him with anything.
• 
So, Mueller produced a report over 400 pages long.  But that was not enough.
• 
Mueller's statement Wednesday was his second Comey moment.  That conduct is an abuse of the legal system.
• 
Mueller put people in solitary confinement and used SWAT teams.
• 
Solitary confinement is meant for disruptive inmates and has been criticized for its negative psychological effects.
• 
SWAT teams are meant to take on the violent. 
• 
Mueller's use of those tactics is an abuse of our legal system. 
• 
Of course, Mueller is no stranger to abuse of our legal system.
• 
According to Alan Dershowitz: "I think Mueller is a zealot ....  He's the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years in order to protect the cover of Whitey Bulger as an FBI informer .  .  .  and that's regarded in Boston as one of the greatest scandals of modern judicial history.  And Mueller was right at the center of it."
• 
Sounds like an abuse of the American legal system – doesn't it?
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Marc Thiessen: Julian Assange is a spy — WikiLeaks is not journalism  (Fox 05/29/2019)
      The real reason Obama intel officials don't want you to know how they spied on Americans  (Fox 05/29/2019)
• 
... Comey explains that whatever surveillance the Obama Justice Department conducted on the 2016 Trump campaign was entirely justified and within bounds — nothing weird about it at all.
• 
Yes, American citizens were monitored electronically without their knowledge, but it wasn't spying.
• 
Of course, it wasn't "spying." It was "investigating." It was done for your own good.
• 
And if you don't like it, you're unpatriotic and possibly, mentally ill.  That's Comey's position.
• 
Comey is a bitter partisan with a long history of shading the truth.
• 
But he suggests you've got to trust him anyway.  It's your duty to trust him.
• 
... well, here's another idea.  We could see for ourselves exactly what happened in 2016.
• 
We could declassify all the relevant information and then make it public.
• 
That way, we wouldn't have to take anyone's word for what happened — Comey's word, President Trump's word, or anyone else's word.
• 
The president has suggested doing just that.  The left is outraged by the idea.
• 
"Trump has every reason to believe Barr will use his new powers to aid the President's anti-deep state propaganda efforts."
• 
"Trump giving Barr unilateral authority over classification is just a huge deal in the world of Intelligence agencies.  Barr will be able to override other agencies' independent classification determinations.  And the goal of all this here seems pretty clear.  It's basically to give Sean Hannity material for his television show.  So the plan, as it appears now, is essentially a kind of purge of the ideologically suspect members of the intelligence apparatus."
• 
It's a purge, like Joseph Stalin!  Unless we stop the release of this information, people will die!  That's what they're telling you.
• 
... is using his position as a public advocate to argue against giving the public more information.
• 
These are not military secrets, by the way, or the names of U.S.  agents working undercover overseas.
• 
The information in question is about how the FBI spied on Americans while investigating crimes that we now know did not occur.
• 
So what could possibly be the justification for keeping all of that secret?
• 
Really, the only justification would be to protect the intel agencies from embarrassment.
• 
That's what they fear.  And that's exactly why the former director of the CIA, John Brennan, and so many others are anxious to preserve the veil of secrecy.
• 
"I think it's critically important that the counterintelligence professionals continue to carry out their responsibilities and resist these unwarranted and very, very irresponsible efforts to try to undermine what they're doing."
• 
So John Brennan thinks it's risky, unwarranted, "very irresponsible" to let American citizens know whether their law enforcement agencies abused their power.
• 
What if we applied the same standards to John Brennan himself?
• 
You know that after leaving the White House, Brennan was allowed to keep his security clearance, and that clearance increased his value as an employee once he entered the private sector.
• 
It allowed him, among other things, access to classified information, which he could then selectively leak to his colleagues at MSNBC.
• 
So how does giving classified information to John Brennan help American national security?
• 
Well, it doesn't.  It helps only John Brennan.
• 
Keep in mind, this is a man who has accused his political enemies of treason, a death penalty offense.
• 
"This is nothing short of treasonous, because it is a betrayal of the nation," he said of Trump last year.
• 
"He is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  Treasonous is defined as a betrayal of trust, as well as aiding and abetting the enemy.  And so that was the word that came to my mind."
• 
That was for Trump's "crime" of holding a press conference with Vladimir Putin last summer in Finland.
• 
John Brennan is exactly the sort of person who should not have a security clearance.
• 
... the president announced that he was revoking John Brennan's security clearance.
• 
That was July of 2018, almost a year ago.  What happened next?  Well, pretty much nothing.
• 
Apparently, as of Tuesday night, John Brennan still has a security clearance.
• 
... the president's order was "hampered by aides who slow-rolled the president and by Justice Department officials who fought Mr.  Trump on it."
• 
This seems to be happening a lot recently.
• 
... the former National Economic Council director, prevented the president from pulling out of a trade deal simply by stealing the relevant order off his desk when he wasn't looking.
• 
The president ordered troops out of Syria last December, but that order has not been laid down.  It's been delayed and mitigated again and again.  Now, it looks like troops will stay in Syria indefinitely.
• 
John Brennan, among others, is calling for the bureaucracy to ignore the order.
• 
Think about that.  Like so many on the left, Brennan is doing precisely what he accuses others of doing.
• 
"You're undermining democracy!" they screamed, even as they work to do just that.
• 
How are they doing it?  Well, to recap civics at its most basic level, all authority in representative democracy flows from voters.
• 
The president and the vice president are the only elected officials among the millions who work in the executive branch of government.
• 
If you subvert their policies ratified by voters, you are subverting democracy itself.
• 
Brennan obviously knows that.  He doesn't care.
• 
But the rest of us should care.
• 
      Republicans behave like they’re dealing with the same old Democratic Party – They are so wrong  (Fox 05/28/2019)
• 
Do you get the sense nowadays there are two Americas?
• 
That there's the America the left wants, and then what's left of actual America?
• 
A major evolution has taken place within the American left in our time.
• 
Yesterday's liberals are all but gone now.  They have been replaced by today's leftists.
• 
Here's the real difference between yesterday's liberals and today's leftists.
• 
Yesterday's liberals wanted government to permit you to do stupid or immoral things.
• 
Today's leftists want government to command you to do them and then punish you if you won't.
• 
Yesterday's liberals believed in multi-cultural diversity.  Today's leftists believe in statist conformity.
• 
Yesterday's liberals were suspicious of authoritarianism.  Today's leftists seek to ruthlessly wield it.
• 
For your own good, of course.
• 
Yesterday's liberals believed in freedom of speech so much they fought to protect even obscenity.
• 
Today's leftists find it obscene you challenge their views, and want you no longer protected to do so.
• 
Yesterday's liberals wanted all the kids to read books like "Catcher in the Rye" that encouraged or inspired contrarian thinking and behavior.
• 
Today's leftists don't want you reading that, because that may encourage or inspire you to have views contrary to theirs.
• 
Yesterday's liberals believed in softening societal norms.  Today's leftists believe in replacing them altogether.
• 
Yesterday's liberals viewed themselves as champions of dissent.  Today's leftists vow you will be made to care if you dare to dissent.
• 
This is the whole point of political correctness, to shutdown dissenters by immediately labeling them as beneath contempt.
• 
And racists, misogynists, xenophobes, and homophobes don't deserve rights, don't you know.
• 
Leftists believe in the mantra you can't lose an argument if you never allow it to happen in the first place.
• 
Yesterday's liberals believed in global cooling.
• 
Today's leftists believe in global warming, and that if you don't celebrate Earth Day — a holiday started by a dude who murdered and composted his girlfriend — you're a "science-denier."
• 
Yesterday's liberals rallied to political dissidents in totalitarian countries.
• 
Today's leftists create dissidents by throwing the likes of Kim Davis in jail, bankrupting families like the Kleins, and taking the chaste nuns at the Little Sisters of the Poor all the way to the Supreme Court demanding they violate their vows.
• 
What was once a pro-immigration party is now an open borders one.
• 
What was once a pro-middle-class party now takes jobs away from the middle class because of what the temperature might be 10,000 years from now.
• 
What was once a "government should do for people what they can't do for themselves" party is now a government should tell you what you can and cannot do party.
• 
What was once a religiously pluralistic party is now an irreligious one.
• 
What was once a left-of-center political party is now a neo-Marxist one.
• 
... Democrats can't come together to make any deals in Washington, no matter how much Republicans bend over backward to make it so.
• 
The only deal Democrats in Washington will make with Republicans is to politically slit their throat, or for Republicans to do it themselves.
• 
... Republicans are behaving as if they're still dealing with the Democrats of yesteryear.
• 
That's why they always end up negotiating with themselves.  However, that era is gone. 
• 
The Democratic Party has become a vehicle of iconoclasm, where the goal is to tear down Western civilization altogether.  Literally, nothing is sacred.
• 
Its radical mouthpieces, once relegated to liberal cable news networks, academia and Hollywood, are now embodied by Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep.  Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Ocasio-Cortez.
• 
The party has gone so far left that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., of all people, often finds herself attempting to babysit her own would-be Che Gueveras.
• 
When Pelosi is your party's voice of moderation, you've lost the meaning of the word.
• 
See related Try Living with It... (Michael Ramirez, 04/20/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Green New Deal (Gary Varvel, 03/16/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Hall of Extinction (Glenn McCoy, 04/05/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump’s High-Wire Act of Reestablishing Deterrence without War  (NR 05/28/2019)
      Colluders, Obstructionists, Leakers, and Other Projectionists  (05/26/2019)
• 
"There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections," Obama said in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.
• 
Obama was anxious that the sure-to-be-sore-loser Trump would not blame his defeat on voting impropriety in a fashion that might call into question Clinton's victory.
• 
How ironic that Russian "collusion" was used as a preemptive charge from those who actually had colluded with Russians for all sorts for financial and careerist advantages.
• 
The entire so-called Uranium One caper had hinged on ex-President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their Clinton Foundation uniting with Russian or Russian-affiliated oligarchs to ease restrictions on the sale of North American uranium reserves to a Russian company with close ties to Vladimir Putin.
• 
Coincidentally what followed were massive donations from concerned Russian parties to the foundation, as well as a $500,000 honorarium to Bill Clinton for a brief Moscow speech.
• 
Had Donald Trump been caught, as President Obama was in Seoul in March 2012, on a hot mic assuring the Russians that he would be more flexible with Russia after the 2012 election ("On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved — but it's important for him [Putin] to give me space") he would likely now be facing real impeachment charges.
• 
Imagine the cries of outrage ... had Trump inadvertently blurted out to the world that he was willing to warp U.S.  security interests to fit his own reelection agenda.
• 
(Remember: "This is my last election ... After my election, I have more flexibility.")
• 
The locus classicus of Russian collusion, however, is Hillary Clinton's effort in 2016.
• 
The facts are not in dispute.  Using the three firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign paid a foreign national, British subject Christopher Steele, to compile a smear dossier against Clinton's then-opponent, Donald J.  Trump.
• 
Steele then bought Russian and Russian-related sources to produce supposed dirt on Trump.
• 
None of these Russian-generated smears would ever be verified.
• 
In fact, almost immediately most slurs proved to be outright lies and completely made up in their details — if not the stuff of a Russian disinformation campaign.
• 
Nonetheless, Steele seeded his contracted dirt during the 2016 election, and later during the Trump transition and presidency, among the highest Obama Administration officials at the Justice Department, FBI, and CIA.
• 
... we now know Clinton used Russian fake sources both to generate damaging anti-Trump media stories and to prompt government investigations designed to hamstring his governance.
• 
Again, if there is such a thing as "Russian collusion," then Hillary Clinton is its font.
• 
Mueller spent more than $34 million and wrote over 440 pages to inform the American people that Trump could not realistically be indicted for obstructing justice, mostly because the underlying crime — "collusion" — never existed in the first place.
• 
Moreover, Mueller and other officials were never actually hampered in their investigations.
• 
No matter: "obstruction" was supposedly the key to destroying the Trump Administration after collusion imploded.
• 
But what exactly would real obstruction of justice look like it?
• 
It might be a deliberate effort by government officials to mislead and impede the proper conduct of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in an effort to spy on an American citizen deemed useful in proving "collusion."
• 
... top FBI and Justice Department officials deliberately obstructed and essentially destroyed the normal protocols necessary to protect the sanctity of legal surveillance, during the election, the Trump transition, and the early Trump presidency.
• 
Or maybe obstruction would be defined as the efforts of a recused attorney general like Loretta Lynch, who had stepped aside from the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton's emails, to have met secretly on an airport tarmac with the spouse of the target of her department's investigation.
• 
Or would obstruction be classified as Lynch supposedly ordering the FBI not even to use the word "investigation" when it was investigating Clinton?
• 
Or would obstruction constitute deliberately destroying more than 30,000 emails under subpoena, in the fashion that Clinton ordered her aides to "bleach bit" her correspondence and destroy mobile communication devices?
• 
Or would obstruction be classified as deleting emails germane to an investigation of the collusion scam in the fashion of Nellie Ohr erasing emails received from her husband's government email account, or perhaps in the manner of Mueller team staffers who wiped clean the mobile phones of the fired Lisa Page and Peter Strzok?
• 
Or would obstruction characterize the brag of the anonymous New York Times guest editorialist?
• 
He preened in a ... column that he was an unnamed high administration official and NeverTrump Republican who, along with like-minded "resistance" leaders, was trying his best to disrupt his own president's governance.
• 
What would anonymous's obstruction entail — deliberately ignoring legal mandates?
• 
Failing to follow new federal guidelines?  Trying to subvert nominations?  Illegally leaking to the press?
• 
Obstructing anything he did not like, whether in legal or illegal fashion?
• 
What then would be a classical definition of a Logan Act violation?
• 
Perhaps the ongoing efforts of former Secretary of State John Kerry fit the bill.
• 
During the lead-up to the Trump's Administration's cancelation of the Iran deal and in its aftermath, private citizen Kerry met with high Iranian officials and purportedly advised them how to obstruct or at least survive the ramifications of Trump's new Iranian policies.
• 
In other words, the ex-secretary of state and, again, now private citizen Kerry met secretly with an Iranian foreign minister to brainstorm about how the elements of their deal might survive his own country's current policies.
• 
Thornton seems to be advising the likely veneer of the Chinese apparat and government to stall out the Trump Administration and thus wait to find a more familiar and compliant America that would follow past protocols.
• 
... Brooks would reassure her foreign friends and kindred Democrats at home that Trump most certainly could be stopped after just a few days in office — if only the right people began the right adoption of her tripartite strategy of either impeachment, removal under the 25th Amendment, or an outright military coup (e.g., "The fourth possibility is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders.")
• 
"For the first time in my life, I can imagine plausible scenarios in which senior military officials might simply tell the president: ‘No, sir.  We're not doing that,' to thunderous applause from the New York Times editorial board."
• 
... what would dangerous and illegal leaking consist of?
• 
James Comey leaking to media conduits classified, private-one-on-one presidential conversations to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor?
• 
Andrew McCabe feeding the media self-serving hoaxes about collusion?
• 
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seeding to CNN the private Comey briefing with President Trump — and then deploring such illegal leaks, as he leveraged that scoop to land himself a future CNN analyst billet?
• 
FBI sources planting stories of pre-election "collusion" with Yahoo and Mother Jones?
• 
Or how about leaks to tip off the media about the timing Roger Stone arrest?
• 
Or periodic Mueller team "walls are closing in" and "noose is tightening" leak-lies to the obsequious media?
• 
#The zeal to remove Trump by any means necessary justified colluding with Russians, obstructing justice, undermining his administration abroad, and chronic leaking.
• 
... these deep-state and media elites are narcissistically delusional.  So inured are they to deference that they really believed they should have the power, indeed the right, to subvert democracy, to overturn a U.S.  election on the justification that the wrong voters had voted for the incorrect candidate and both needed to be corrected by the right people.
• 
Real coups against democracies rarely are pulled off by jack-booted thugs in sunglasses or fanatical mobs storming the presidential palace.
• 
More often, they are the insidious work of supercilious bureaucrats, bought intellectuals, toady journalists, and political activists who falsely project that their target might at some future date do precisely what they are currently planning and doing — and that they are noble patriots, risking their lives, careers, and reputations for all of us, and thus must strike first.
      The Great American Pastime — Social Engineering  (JWR 05/24/2019)
• 
So here's the deal, we have a split country right now.  Half left, half right.
• 
Generally speaking, the right half upholds traditional American values, morals and ideals, while the left half wants the country to become more socialist and socially progressive.
• 
The two sides of American society can't be even-handed when the left half has a corner on academia, the mainstream press, movies, television, social media, and publications.
• 
And the left uses all these platforms to continually propagandize their messages.
• 
Much of what the left believes in is social engineering; the idea that any part of what has been traditional (and in many cases biological) norms throughout human history can be altered to suit the leftist agenda.
• 
A case in point is that many colleges and universities today teach that being male and female is not biological; it's simply a life choice.
• 
No American can fully escape the progressive messaging within our culture, the constant bang of the left-wing drum in our schools, in our entertainment and in our news reporting.
• 
The one place without political messaging used to be sports but no more.
• 
First it was football's "take a knee" against the national anthem, but in the past few years social progressivism has even crept into baseball.
• 
"The Los Angeles Dodgers will play host to their seventh annual LGBT Night at Dodger Stadium..."
• 
The irritating thing about this is that the left has convinced themselves that most of society is totally accepting to all forms of sexual deviation.
• 
Just as the case is closed regarding Global Warming (either you accept it or you're a crazy denier), progressives assume that everyone in the country has embraced the idea that homosexual, lesbian, transgender, and what-have-you are just as normal and desirable as male and female.
• 
They have no qualms, no hesitation in having an "LGBT Night" at the ballpark.
• 
It would never occur to them that some people might not celebrate the whole LGBT thing; that some people might actually be offended by it.
• 
It would never occur to them that there actually might be some of us that still believe in the traditional teachings of the bible; that some of us may actually still believe in the true biological science of male and female sex.
• 
It's a smug arrogance, a sanctimonious attitude that the left displays when it pushes their agenda into the faces of everyone else.
• 
I can have understanding, empathy, and friendship toward those who, for whatever reason, are different from most of us.
• 
But don't tell me that it's normal and don't force me to celebrate it.
• 
Would the Dodgers organize a Christian Heritage Night or a Jewish Heritage Night as readily as they have LGBT Night?
• 
How about a Pride in American History Night?  Or a night to honor our Founding Fathers?
• 
Don't wait for any of those.
• 
You're more likely to see an Undocumented Aliens Night first.
      Pete Hegseth: I’m with the warfighters — Count me out of second-guessing our heroes  (Fox 05/23/2019)
• 
Modern war is defined by ambiguity.  The enemy never wears uniforms.  And those wearing uniforms could be friend or foe.
• 
The enemy uses women and children as shields — daily.  And decisions of life and death are made at a moment's notice — impacting lives forever.
• 
We send men to fight on our behalf, and too often second guess the manner in which they fight.
• 
I've been on the battlefield and that's why I feel so passionately about this issue.
• 
I'm not talking about massacres or sheer recklessness.
• 
None of us ever contemplated the killing of women and children for sport.  We didn't shoot innocent civilians for fun.
• 
There may be a few deranged combat troops, and they will get their due.
• 
Yet, too often, when warfighters come home they are second-guessed.
• 
Prosecuted by lawyers who never left their air-conditioned offices or politicians with ulterior motives.
• 
Lives ruined, reputations destroyed, families broken — all because they were willing to do things other Americans can barely fathom.
• 
They are heroes, every one of them.
• 
If any of us had been captured, our heads would be chopped off.
• 
We play fair, they play dirty.
• 
We safeguard life, they expend it.
• 
We tell the truth, they lie.
• 
We play by old, conventional rules — and they exploit them.
• 
And then we wonder why wars take decades, ISIS re-emerges, and we end up negotiating with the Taliban.
• 
From Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher to Green Beret Matt Golstyen to 1st Lieutenant Clint Lorrence.
• 
We presume these men guilty before trial, or lock them up and throw away the key.
• 
Since my tours, I've thought a great deal about rules of engagement, "war crimes," and the way we fight wars.
• 
My experience is that — if we want to win this long war — we need to back our warfighters, to include rewriting our rules.
• 
The enemy laughs at us when we trade killers for traitors, release the "American Taliban" early, and lock up our own.
• 
Our boys did their job, it's time for us to have their backs.
      The left doesn't think MS-13 is a problem because Trump thinks they're 'animals'  (Fox 05/24/2019)
• 
Our leadership class has decided to downplay the threat of MS-13.  Why?  Because Trump attacked MS-13.
• 
Therefore, in the demented zero-sum calculation of permanent Washington, MS-13 must be virtuous.
• 
The enemy of Donald Trump must be my friend.  That's how they think.
• 
It all started almost exactly a year ago when the president said, "So when the MS-13 comes in, when the other gang members come into our country, I referred to them as animals.  And guess what?  I always will."
• 
Keep in mind, MS-13's motto is "kill, rape, control." They routinely torture and murder high school students.
• 
They bring drugs across the border and into our neighborhoods.  They're the deadliest criminal gang in America.
• 
And yet, once Trump attacked them, the left decided that worrying about MS-13 was a greater threat to our values than the gang itself.  Anyone who criticized MS-13 was denounced as racist, if not a tool of Putin. 
• 
Today, criticizing MS-13 would mean asking questions about the party's orthodoxy on immigration.
• 
It would expose Nancy Pelosi's absurd lie that every single immigrant is impressive and must be allowed to stay in the country, no questions asked.
• 
Nobody in the left wants to talk about any of this.  So instead, they just defend MS-13.
• 
"I do think there's a serious problem with the president dehumanizing any group of people in the United States, even if they are hardened criminals."
• 
Got that?  Saying rude things about MS-13 is a "serious problem," unlike, say, abortion up to the moment of birth, which is liberation and not a problem at all.
• 
But criticize a Central American gang member with a face tattoo, and she will give you a long lecture about God.
• 
"We're all God's children.  There is a spark of divinity in every person on Earth.  And so when the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, 'These aren't people, these are animals,' you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity, the dignity and worth of every person?  Every day that you think you've seen it all, along comes another manifestation of why their policies are so inhumane."
• 
That's today's lecture on Christianity from Nancy Pelosi.  The media, of course, dutifully amplified Pelosi's message.
• 
Vox.com produced an entire video designed to explain that, actually, MS-13 members are just like your kids.
• 
That kind of propaganda, where powerful people are lying right to your face again and again and again, it happens a lot.
• 
And it would be pretty funny, actually, if the stakes were lower.
• 
The left defends MS-13 because they can't acknowledge a downside to the open borders they've given us.
• 
Once we start talking about all of this, who knows where it might end?
      So instead, they lecture us about dignity while high school kids get  ()
      And for them, that's a small price to  ()
      Gutfeld on the release of the 'American Taliban' scum  (Fox 05/23/2019)
• 
The creep known as the "American Taliban" is out of jail. 
• 
Three years early.  Due to "good behavior."
• 
In all the time he was behind bars, he didn't behead anyone.
• 
Who knows what this loser would've done if he wasn't in jail?
• 
Actually, we do know.  In 2015, the traitor said ISIS did a "spectacular" job.
• 
He knew what ISIS was doing.  They were killing people who had been guilty of nothing more than "good behavior."
• 
They dropped videos of terrified people about to be beheaded, burned alive, or drowned.
• 
So while innocent people were killed, he cheered.  That's what you call a monster.
• 
Now, this could've ended differently.  Treason was once punishable by death.
• 
Back when adults ran this place.
• 
But we're better than that now.  More enlightened.
• 
So prepare for the second wave of media analysis.
• 
He'll be the victim; you'll be the perp.  No – he was a political prisoner!
• 
They'll be lining up to give him that first interview.
• 
Asking him if he's healed from the trauma of terrorizing people.
• 
Then a speaking engagement at Columbia University.  A book deal.
• 
And so, as always, America is the land of second chances.
• 
Even for scum who don't deserve a first.
      Congress is not above the law when it comes to impeachment – Don’t weaponize the Constitution  (Fox 05/23/2019)
• 
The mantra invoked by those Democrats who are seeking to impeach President Donald Trump is that "No one is above the law."
• 
That, of course, is true, but it is as applicable to Congress as it is to the president.
• 
Those members of Congress who are seeking to impeach the president, even though he has not committed any of the specified impeachable offences set out in the Constitution, are themselves seeking to go above the law.
• 
All branches of government are bound by the law.
• 
Congressmen, presidents, justices, judges must all operate within the law.
• 
All take an oath to support the Constitution, not to rewrite it for partisan advantage.
• 
It is the law that exempts presidents from being prosecuted or impeached for carrying out their Constitutional authority under Article 2.
• 
The Constitution, which is the governing law, precludes Congress from impeaching a president for mere "dereliction" of duty or even alleged "corruption."
• 
Under the text of the Constitution, a president's actions to be impeachable must consist of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
• 
Yet Democrats who are now seeking to impeach the president, despite the absence of impeachable offenses, are trying to do precisely what the Framers of the Constitution forbade them from doing: mainly exercising control over a president that is not authorized in the Constitution itself.
• 
"Impeachment is about whatever the Congress says it is.  There is no law that dictates impeachment."
• 
The Framers of the Constitution did not want a weak president subject to the political control of Congress.
• 
Members of the Constitutional Convention explicitly expressed that view in rejecting criteria for impeachment short of criminal conduct.
• 
In the absence of the specified criminal conduct, the remedy for a non-impeachable president lies with the voters, not the Congress.
• 
Unfortunately, we live in a time of extreme partisanship, and no one seems interested in nonpartisan truth or in measures that help all Americans rather than only one party.
• 
The time has come to stop weaponizing the Constitution and our legal system for partisan advantage.
• 
Impeachment would be a lawless response to undertake, as is the use of partisan committees to obtain an electoral advantage.
• 
No one is above the law, but no one is beneath the legal protection of the law as well.
• 
Both parties should operate within the law for the benefit of the American people.
      Gutfeld on socialism’s deadly appeal  (Fox 05/21/2019)
• 
The fact is that people who really know what socialism is – those who fled socialist countries, who fought the wars to prevent the spread of socialism, who buried family members – are getting old.
• 
Many are dying.  The knowledge of such horror goes to the grave.
• 
Socialism's victims are being replaced by the lowest form of life allowed on campus without a leash – socialist professors.
• 
These tenured misinformation gatekeepers keep socialism from being understood the way its sober survivors remember.
• 
And really – why would socialists admit that their grim, losing team killed millions of people?
• 
Instead, these ghouls shifted emphasis to the so-called oppression of Western civilizations, hoping their assembly line of trivial outrage drowns out the horrors of the past.
• 
It's working.  We have socialists running for office.
• 
Some even win – touting a system that makes grandmothers from the Old Country weep.
• 
It used to be said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
• 
No – the greatest trick is convincing the world socialism didn't happen.
• 
It's no longer viewed as a vanquished, murderous ideology.
• 
It's seen as a cute and fuzzy thing that gets you free stuff.
• 
All ends, no means.
• 
Thanks to academia and the media, we've witnessed one helluva makeover – Charles Manson is now Santa Claus.
      Pete Hegseth: Graduates, it's time to unlearn college  (Fox 05/17/2019)
• 
‘Tis the season of commencement addresses.
• 
You know, those lengthy, vapid, and self-important speeches that conclude the collegiate experience.
• 
The vast majority of graduation speakers are leftists and Democrats, predictably extolling diversity, globalism, identity politics, gender empowerment and – of course – climate change.
• 
Most graduates hungover and bored, absorb the platitudes.
• 
After the speech, a degree in hand, the indoctrination is complete.
• 
I simply want to highlight three stark realities that students and parents should know, rather than accept the onslaught of advice from liberals, leftists, and Democrats.
• 
First, you just wasted a lot of time and money.
• 
Plenty of students drift through four-year colleges because, well, that's what you do.
• 
Now you have a degree you didn't really need, and mountains of debt to boot.
• 
A better option for many students is a non-ideological, private-sector vocational or trade school.
• 
Predictably, Democrats want to destroy private-sector higher education in favor of their existing network of cash-machine indoctrination camps.
• 
The mafia of higher education – just like government-run public high schools – seeks to demagogue and destroy all competing educational opportunities and choices.
• 
Even the "good schools" with shiny new buildings and small classroom sizes are infected with liberal indoctrination.
• 
Assume nothing.  Watchdog everything.
• 
Public, government-run institutions are P.C.  indoctrination camps.
• 
Our only hope is private sector schools and vigilant private citizens.
• 
Second, most of what you just learned is garbage.
• 
How much time during your education did you study civics, U.S.  history, or the Constitution?
• 
Did you learn about how our founding generation viewed human nature and government, or just that they were slave owners?
• 
Did you ever study the Bible (the textbook of Western Civilization) – or just deconstruct academic skepticism about the life of Jesus?
• 
Or, instead, were you required to take courses on gender studies, ethnic studies, and the lost art of underwater basket weaving?
• 
The problem is that most students leave college (and middle school!) with a strong sense of America's sins, and very little idea of why America is the freest, most fair, most tolerant, most just, most prosperous, and most powerful country in human history.
• 
The American "experiment" has worked... if we teach it.
• 
The perfect example of the listlessness of higher education today comes from Harvard Law School – the so-called gold-standard of law schools.
• 
Law students who matriculate there are not required to take a class on... wait for it... the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
We are now looking at a generation of high-powered lawyers who may or may not understand the greatest political document in human history.
• 
It's lunacy, and very dangerous.
• 
Finally, your real education starts now.
• 
No more safe spaces or trigger warnings.
• 
Your debt needs to be paid off, the world doesn't care about your feelings, and your parents' basement is embarrassing.
• 
You have your life in front of you – and a country that needs you.
• 
Get to work, follow your passions, and – if necessary – get the skills somewhere else that you actually need to achieve the American dream.
• 
You may have wasted a lot of time and money in college, but so did everyone else.
• 
Now is the time to open up your Bible, pick up a history book, and get a job.
• 
History is not over, and you can choose to be a part of it.
• 
We're hiring: Patriots wanted!
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Alan Dershowitz: McCarthyism comes to Harvard — Why this should alarm us all  (Fox 05/14/2019)
• 
Many troubling arguments have been offered in defense of the decision not to renew Sullivan's role as Dean of Winthrop house.
• 
The most common – and dangerous – is that students feel "unsafe" around a lawyer who is representing Weinstein.
• 
Feeling "unsafe" is the new mantra for the new McCarthyism.
• 
It is a totally phony argument not deserving of any serious consideration.
• 
Any student who feels unsafe in the presence of two distinguished lawyers doesn't belong at a university.
• 
They should leave and not force the firing of the professor.
• 
No credence should be given to the argument, especially since the students apparently did not feel "unsafe" when Sullivan was representing a convicted double murderer.
• 
If Sullivan was prosecuting instead of defending Weinstein, these same hypocritical students would applaud him.
• 
Harvard College should be ashamed of itself for giving into irrational, bigoted, unprincipled and dangerous arguments instead of using Sullivan's representation of Weinstein as an educational moment to teach student both the benefit of the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution as well as tolerance for differing views.
• 
Tragically, this decision is a symptom of the times in several ways.  First, it shows a complete lack of leadership by those in charge and willingness to pander to students no matter how irrational their arguments.
• 
It also reflects an unwillingness to accept the presumption of innocence.
• 
The presumption of innocence is real and important.
• 
It cannot be invoked selectively only for certain crimes.  If you reject it for one, you reject it for all.
• 
Third, the decision reflects a lack of appreciation for due process – indeed of any process – when it comes to certain alleged crimes.
• 
We cannot know whether a person is guilty or innocent without a fair process.
• 
I will continue to consult with and represent accused criminals as well as victims of all crimes.
• 
Finally, the decision reflects a sense that the Truth, with a capital T, is knowable, simply based on identity politics – i.e., who is the accuser and who is the accused.
• 
Men and women both tell the truth and lie.  There is no gender-linked gene for truth-telling.
• 
Now is the time for Harvard itself to be subjected to a process of review and academic oversight by an institution, such as the Association of University Professors.
• 
Were Harvard a public university, this benighted decision would be subjected to a constitutional challenge.
• 
In any event, it is subject to challenge in the court of public opinion by students, faculty, administrators, and alumni who disagree with Harvard's decision.
• 
The firing of Dean Sullivan may be the most severe violation of academic freedom I have witnessed in my 55 years at Harvard.
• 
It cannot be allowed to stand.
      Politics is front and center for Russiagate probe — and the farce has reached new heights  (Fox 05/11/2019)
• 
Desperate to project the illusion of cover-up in the utter absence of cover-up, Democrats proceeded against the attorney general even though (a) Barr did not owe Congress a single comma in the report because federal law calls for it to be confidential (i.e., between the prosecutor investigating the case and his supervisor, the attorney general); (b) Barr nevertheless gave Congress about 95 percent of the report; (c) congressional Democrats did not avail themselves of the opportunity to read other unredacted portions to which he gave access; (d) all of the unsavory information about President Trump – i.e., the stuff in the report that Democrats truly care about – has been disclosed; and (e) Barr only withheld grand jury information which it would be illegal to disclose – meaning: Democrats put the AG to the untenable choice of violating the law or being held in contempt.
• 
Oh, and about that grand jury secrecy rule ... it is Congress's own law.
• 
Democrats could easily get the information by just passing a two-line amendment to federal criminal procedure rule 6(e), so that grand jury material could henceforth be disclosed to Congress in special counsel investigations.
• 
With the Trump administration trying to show it is being transparent, the Senate would surely pass such a House amendment, and the president would sign it.  But Democratic legislators are not taking any legislative action (you know, their job) because they don't really want the information.
• 
They want the issue.
• 
They are straining to create the appearance of Watergate, even as Barr has turned over an Everest of information.
• 
But that is just a sideshow compared to the Mueller report itself.
• 
The bottom line is that the special counsel not only found no collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.
• 
It appears that the FBI's investigation was opened on false pretenses...
• 
The high likelihood is that, after taking over the investigation in May 2017, Mueller knew early on that there was no "collusion" case against the president.
• 
That allegation was largely built on the "Steele dossier," the Clinton campaign-sponsored opposition research screed, which was based on anonymous sources and multiple levels of hearsay, and which the government is now investigating on suspicion that it may have been Russian disinformation.
• 
The last warrant of four 90-day warrants would have lapsed in September 2017.
• 
But Mueller, who by then had been on the case for four months, opted not to go back to the FISA court to seek a new warrant.
• 
That suggests that investigators no longer stood behind the dossier and its sensational, uncorroborated claim that Trump was in cahoots with the Kremlin.
• 
Of course, that raises a big question: Why did Mueller allow the "collusion" investigation to continue for well over a year after it seemed obvious that there was no case?
• 
Much of the presidential misbehavior that prosecutors portray as possible obstruction happened after it appears they must have known Trump had not "colluded" with Russia.
• 
Why was there no interim report announcing that?
• 
Why did investigators continue to lead the country to believe that the president might be an agent?
• 
Democrats turned up the noise and the heat on Attorney General Barr once he announced that he would investigate the origins of the Russiagate probe.  Are they trying to destroy the messenger before he can deliver the message?
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
      Newt Gingrich: THIS is the greatest threat to a free society  (Fox 05/08/2019)
• 
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher taught conservatives that "first you win the argument, then you win the vote."
• 
Faced with positions that cannot win a majority of the American people, the left is increasingly trying to crush the debate rather than win the debate.
• 
The left's efforts to propagandize the American people into believing falsehoods and disbelieving truth have deep roots.
• 
Remember the scale of the left's hostility to America and its desire to impose an unpopular system by manipulating the rules and just plain lying.
• 
The next two years really matter in determining if their radical values, big lie campaign can impose on America policies which Americans overwhelmingly oppose.
• 
This is the Big Picture behind all the small stories and noise.
      China tried to influence our elections in 1996 – there are lessons for us today  (Fox 05/08/2019)
• 
History teaches lessons.  We forget them at our peril.
• 
As has been widely reported, in 1996 the Chinese Government tried to influence U.S.  elections – in favor of the Democrats.
• 
The Chinese gave money to the Democratic National Committee, spent money on congressional races and donated to the re-election campaign of President Bill Clinton.
• 
Americans refused to divide.  The lesson is worth remembering.
• 
The Justice Department investigated.  Congress held hearings.
• 
Republicans and Democrats disagreed on whether Clinton decisions favoring China were linked to the Chinese efforts to influence our elections.
• 
Key facts dating back more than 20 years are worth reviewing.
• 
The word "collusion" was not in play in the late 1990s, but investigations – including by the Justice Department – came to worrisome conclusions.
• 
The plot thickened when President Clinton reversed State Department policy and allowed American satellites to be launched on Chinese rockets.
• 
"President Clinton said today that reported political campaign contributions from China to the Democrats had not influenced his foreign policy, but he welcomed further investigation into decisions that made it easier for China to launch American satellites and possibly obtain sensitive technology."
• 
The Justice Department found Chinese intelligence had attempted to help Democrats running in 1996.
• 
Clinton's policy reversal favoring China left questions.  Still, Congress accepted the Justice Department's assessment.
• 
The conduct of congressional Democrats today in dealing with President Trump is absurd in historical perspective.
• 
The Democrats are melting down; eviscerating congressional process, procedures, and traditions; shutting down Republicans in committee; threatening impeachment of President Trump and Attorney General William Barr; and saying the president is guilty of crimes.
• 
Evidence of Chinese intent and influence was far stronger in 1996 than any Russian influence in 2016, yet Republicans did not seek to impeach Clinton on this matter.
• 
The evidence was so strong that then-Democratic Sen.  Joe Biden of Delaware asked whether the Chinese had received a "quid pro quo" from Clinton.
• 
Still, no impeachment based on the China link.
• 
All this is ancient history, but relevant.  Five lessons flow from this period.
• 
First, while Congress conducted inquires, they were largely viewed as political and led absolutely nowhere.
• 
In the current environment, unless the Democratic House jumps on impeachment – for which there is no basis – further inquiries will go nowhere.
• 
Second, evidence was stronger in 1996 for Chinese direct influence on elections and policy, yet an independent prosecutor was shut down by Attorney General Janet Reno.
• 
No one sought to impeach her.  Separation of powers was respected.
• 
In 1996, leaders at the Justice Department and high-integrity FBI Director Louis Freeh actually favored an independent counsel.
• 
But since the attorney general refused, there was no independent counsel and no report to Congress.
• 
In this context, making much of the Mueller report seems to be making much of nothing.
• 
Third, despite endemic partisanship, Republicans did not shut down Democrats in the 1996 hearings, or ignore standing rules or due process.
• 
They did not threaten the attorney general with contempt, subpoena her for not appointing an independent counsel on China, or excoriate her for not producing a report.
• 
Fourth, members of Congress acknowledged that a foreign power – then China – had interfered and tried to influence the 1996 elections.
• 
Members recognized China's prime aim was to disrupt our democracy and create doubt in American minds about the veracity of our system.
• 
Congress did not fall for the trick.
• 
Finally in the 1990s all actors – from Clinton's White House, the Justice Department, the FBI and members of both parties in the House and Senate – kept their heads.
• 
They did not do what the Chinese wanted – morph into senseless attack dogs that chewed up each other, our democratic institutions, the rule of law and the public trust.
• 
In 2019, as a Democratic-controlled House continues to snarl and accuse the Trump White House and Justice Department of anything the Democrats can think of, members might want to remember the past.
• 
Sometimes less is more.
• 
If leaders in a democracy lose their heads on partisan grounds, they can end up doing just what the adversary wanted – dividing the American democracy on itself.
• 
History teaches lessons.  Staying one nation is a lesson worth remembering now.
      Deployment of strike group to Iran is necessary to protect US servicemen and women  (Fox 05/07/2019)
• 
In the last three years, Iran has solidified its control over much of Iraq, threatening the balance of power in the region and building a land bridge to Jordan.
• 
President George W.  Bush's neocons who sought democracy in Iraq failed to strategically wargame the second-order impacts of removing the other criminal on the street corner with Iran, Hussein.
• 
The obvious result of a weakened Iraqi military coupled with a Shi'a government has manifested itself in strengthened Iranian influence and presence throughout Iraq and Syria.
• 
Instead of countering the growing threat and reading the strategic miscalculation in Iraq for what it was, the Obama administration exacerbated the situation by normalizing Iran's terror ties and regional ambitions, as well as their hatred of the U.S.  and Israel.
• 
Obama and Secretary of State Kerry peddled Iran's terrorist appendages of Hamas and Hezbollah as social groups and ignored Iran's longstanding designation as a state sponsor of terror.
• 
Obama's naivete coupled with that of sycophants in then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, led to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal that pumped the brutal Persian regime flush with cash.
• 
Today, Iran is poised for hegemony in the Middle East and especially armed to spread its wings.
• 
However, the Trump administration's new sanctions and powerful approach to Iran has the country feeling the economic pinch.
• 
Iran realizes that its time to act is now.
• 
President Trump is responding to specific threats against our 5,000 military personnel in Iraq and against our allies in the region, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
• 
Having recently spent a week with the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza, Galilee, and the Golan Heights, it is clear to me that this week's attacks by Hamas are a harbinger of more violence to come and as is obvious, are a part of a larger Iranian plot in the Middle East.
• 
Politicians in the United States such as Reps.  Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib who support Hamas and Hezbollah need to either visit Israel to witness the precarious geopolitical position of our chief ally in the region, or they should leave Congress to support our enemies and those of our allies.
• 
Until then, they should not as representatives of the United States Congress be supporting terrorists.
• 
The deployment of the Lincoln Strike Group is necessary to protect U.S.  vital interests and our servicemen and women should have the full support of Congress behind them in their efforts to defend our liberties.
      The establishment wants to stay focused on Russia because Mueller didn't give them want they want  (Fox 05/06/2019)
• 
"What do Democrats need to do to keep the focus on the Mueller report?"
• 
And that's it, right there.  What do they need to do to keep the focus on Russia?
• 
They don't want to talk about the economy because it's booming.
• 
They don't want to talk about their policies because they're increasingly loony.
• 
They just want to talk about Russia - and divide America in the process.
• 
Remember that as you hear them endlessly, pompously pontificating about threats to our democracy.
• 
Clinton once said the following: "We want very much to have a strong Russia because a strong, confident, prosperous, stable Russia is, we think, in the interests of the world."
• 
President Obama, when explaining why he was soft on Putin over Ukraine, said, "The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia, no matter what we do."
• 
Now the establishment is frothing at the mouth over President Trump not raising 2016 election meddling with Putin on their call this past Friday.
• 
But hang on a second.  Didn't the meddling happen under Obama, who was told about it at the time? 
• 
By contrast, it's Trump who put tough sanctions on Russia who expelled diplomats who armed the Ukrainians and above all, who totally changed America's energy policy in a way that Russia hates.
• 
Oh, and who was it who launched an actual cyber attack on Russia over election meddling?  No, not the craven Obama, but Donald Trump.
• 
So, let's get real.  None of this is about substance or national security or even election meddling.  It is pure politics.
• 
This fuss is all because the Mueller report didn't give the establishment what they wanted.  So now they're trying to keep the Russia nonsense going by saying the whole thing is a cover-up by the attorney general, who a somewhat unhinged Nancy Pelosi called a liar.
• 
As usual, Democrats are projecting, accusing others of the very thing that they do all the time.
• 
Another establishment tactic is pretending this was never really about collusion.
• 
But perhaps the most deranged claim from the establishment is that William Barr is running a cover-up.
• 
Okay, so now publishing something is covering it up?
• 
According to the deranged establishment, the cover-up was revealed by Mueller's complaint letter.
• 
The aim of Mueller was to investigate Russian interference and any coordination by the Trump campaign, plus obstruction.
• 
That's exactly what Barr addressed in his original letter.  No indictment on any of it — that is the substance.  It's just that the establishment doesn't like it.
• 
The aim of Mueller was to investigate Russian interference and any coordination by the Trump campaign, plus obstruction.
• 
That's exactly what Barr addressed in his original letter.
• 
No indictment on any of it — that is the substance.
• 
It's just that the establishment doesn't like it.
• 
The big divide here is not between Republicans and Democrats, but between the establishment and populism, between insiders and outsiders.
• 
This whole Russia-mania is about the establishment fighting back.
• 
They lie about the attorney general being a liar.
• 
They accuse Trump of being Putin's puppet when they're the ones helping Putin divide America.
• 
They condemn talk of "Deep State" spying as a smear, even though there's plenty of evidence for it, while they spent the last two years smearing the president as a Russian agent with absolutely no evidence at all.
• 
They are the ones, these establishment sycophants, who scream about Trump undermining democracy and the rule of law when it's all them.
• 
That's what this is about, all of it.
• 
An arrogant and entitled ruling class that cannot believe the peasants have taken power away from them. 
• 
      Andrew McCarthy: The big lie that Barr lied  (Fox 05/04/2019)
• 
The claim that Barr gave false testimony is frivolous.
• 
That is why, at least initially, Democrats and their media echo chamber soft-pedaled it — with such dishonorable exceptions as Mazie Horono, the Hawaii Democrat who, somehow, is a United States senator.
• 
It's tough to make the perjury argument without any false or even inaccurate statements — though my Fox News colleague Andrew Napolitano did give it the old college try.
• 
As recounted by The Hill, he twisted himself into a pretzel, observing — try to follow this — that the attorney general "probably misled" Congress and thus "he's got a problem" ... although this purported dissembling didn't really seem to be, you know, an actual "lie" so ... maybe it's not a problem after all.
• 
Or something.
      John Stossel: There's nothing wrong with inequality.  Here's what IS wrong  (Fox 05/04/2019)
• 
Socialists like Bernie Sanders tell us that "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer."
• 
That's a lie.
• 
Yes, rich people got absurdly rich.  Last year ... "the wealth of the world's billionaires increased (by) $2.5 billion a day."
• 
I say, so what?
• 
The poor did not get poorer.  Sanders' wrong about that.  The poor are much better off.
• 
Over the past 30 years, more than a billion people climbed out of extreme poverty.
• 
Thanks to capitalism, more than a billion people no longer struggle to survive on a few pennies a day.
• 
Sanders is correct when he says that the wealth gap between rich and poor grew.
• 
In America over the last 40 years, the richest people got 200 percent richer, while poor Americans got just 32 percent richer.
• 
But again, so what?
• 
Gaining 32 percent is a very good thing (all these numbers are adjusted for inflation).
• 
Everyone's better off, despite the improvement not being even.  It never is.
• 
The media claim in America there's "a lack of income mobility" — that people born poor are likely to stay poor.
• 
Some do.  It's true that people with rich parents have a big advantage.  But it's a myth that Americans are locked into their economic class.
• 
Economists at Harvard and Berkeley crunched the numbers and found most people born to the richest fifth of Americans fell out of that bracket within 20 years.
• 
Likewise, most born to the poorest fifth climb to a higher quintile.  Some make it all the way to the top.
• 
"Three out of four Americans will hit that top 20 percent at some point in their lifetime."
• 
You see America's income mobility on the Forbes richest list.  Most of the billionaires are self-made.  They didn't inherit money.  They created their wealth.
• 
Still, the very rich are ridiculously rich.  The Forbes billionaires have more money than the bottom 64 percent of the U.S.  population.
• 
It's "threatening to tear us apart!" says New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio.
• 
It might if people come to believe that inequality itself is evil.
• 
But one question: Why is that true?
• 
Forget money for a moment and think about how impossible it would be to make everyone equal.
• 
I'll never sing as well as Adele or play basketball like LeBron.  The best athletes, singers, dancers, etc., are just physically different.
• 
"I have two kidneys.  There are people out there who need one, don't have one that functions.  Should the government take my kidney because somebody else needs it?"
• 
Certainly, it's wrong if the government makes rules that create inequality.
• 
Racist laws forbidding some ethnic groups to do business where they please or restricting where they live are evil.
• 
So are government subsidies to rich people and well-connected corporations.
• 
But allowing people to be different from one another, to employ their unique talents and succeed or fail by them, to rise as high as the market will bear — that's an important part of freedom.
• 
We won't all end up in the same place, but most of us will be more prosperous than if the government decided our limits.
• 
And we will be freer.
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump is not a dictator, Nadler is.  Our political system is being weaponized against itself  (Fox 05/03/2019)
• 
After Attorney General Bill Barr did not show up for his hearing on Thursday because Nadler wanted to question the A.G.  in a manner reserved for inquests and investigations, Nadler then called the president a "dictator."
• 
I understand that Nadler is upset about the refusal of the A.G.  to participate in some kind of show trial he was arranging after 5 hours of Barr's testimony before the Senate, but to the extent anyone is acting like a dictator here it's unfortunately Nadler.
• 
He has lost all perspective.
• 
Nancy Pelosi then piled on as well calling the Attorney General a criminal.
• 
You may or may not like Barr's demeanor, answers or his summary of the Mueller report, but he is no criminal nor does he deserve this kind of unrestrained disrespect.
• 
It's really hard to understand why Nadler or Pelosi believe this kind of personal vitriol will be rewarded at the ballot box.
• 
Nadler, representing a safe district without any serious challenge, is acting like someone anointed him king, and that all executive branch officials should bow down and kowtow to his ever-increasing demands.
• 
Legislative oversight is not a specifically enumerated power in the Constitution — it's a limited power implied from the "necessary and proper" clause and subject to privileges, separation of powers, and the need for a legitimate legislative purpose.
• 
It's not an open-ended power but bounded by the checks and balances of our constitution.
• 
The Mueller report should have closed down investigations of the president, not opened them up.
• 
It unambiguously cleared the president of any conspiracy or collusion with the Russians, ending two or more years of undermining the president and his family with unfair and unjust criminal investigations.
• 
There is nothing more distracting for an administration than to be under independent counsel investigation and I should know, I was there in 1998 when President Clinton was impeached.
• 
Instead, Nadler‘ s response has been to begin a coordinated plan with other Democratic committee chairs to subpoena every tax, business and other records of the president, his family, and his businesses and associates.
• 
Now that kind of inquisition is exactly what dictators do, especially when they are trying to use their power to destroy their political opponents.
• 
No matter how good our Constitution, it requires people to operate out of good faith.
• 
Hillary Clinton ... joked that if the Russians were helping Trump that the Chinese should now help the Democrats.  ... Clearly, she forgot that the original foreign-help scandal was in fact Chinagate in 1996-8 in which China poured millions of dollars into the DNC to help the Democrats.
• 
I'm all for a good political fight over the issues, but the politics of personal destruction is hindering our democracy; the lack of respect for opponents across the aisle is furthering the deep divisions in this country.
• 
Our political system is being weaponized against itself.
• 
Our elections have to settle our differences not exacerbate them and investigations have to have an end not be endless.
      If Mueller wants to judge Trump's 'intent,' Americans should take a moment to judge Mueller  (Fox 05/01/2019)
• 
If you read Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, you know that Mueller and his crew judged President Trump's intent based on his actions.
• 
As we wait for Mueller's date with Congress, it's a good time to consider Mueller's own intent.
• 
Based on his actions, the report card is not good.
• 
First, it must be said that Mueller's investigation did not take place in a vacuum.
• 
The country was more divided at the start of a presidency than any time since Lincoln.
• 
Second, one thing cannot be repeated enough: the core conclusion of the Mueller report was that there was no evidence of collusion.
• 
There was no conspiracy by any American to work with Russia to undermine our election process.
• 
After two years of investigating anyone and everyone around Trump, Mueller concluded there was no such evidence.
• 
By definition, you know what that also meant?
• 
It meant that there was no evidence of collusion on the day Mueller took the job in May 2017, and no evidence any day between then and the filing of his report.  None.
• 
That was the state of affairs when Mueller took the job, and he was either well aware of it or oblivious to the obvious.
• 
Knowing that that evidence of collusion never existed, at any time, we can now properly judge Mueller and his actions during this fragile moment in U.S.  history.
• 
The correct course of action, the one he should have taken, was simple:
• 
1.  Double check the work of the Department of Justice, the FBI and other intelligence services;
• 
2.  Develop new information based on actual facts; and
• 
3.  Do no harm to the American legal or constitutional system in the process.
• 
Unfortunately for America, Mueller failed miserably on these issues.
• 
He started his investigation by undertaking several prosecutorial abuses:
• 
First, he hired a partisan staff — people of whose political affiliation he was well aware — including one who was counsel for the Clinton Foundation.
• 
Second, he visibly brought the full weight of the government down on Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn even though the nation knew (a) Flynn committed no crime, ... and (b) Flynn had been set up by Mueller's friend James Comey.
• 
... Mueller squeezed Flynn, got no evidence of collusion, and then forced him to capitulate to a charge unrelated to collusion.
• 
He did that knowing there was no evidence of collusion and that it was apparent to many, and known to Mueller and his employees, that Trump was illegally targeted.
• 
Those actions also served notice to everyone Mueller called as a witness, some 500 people, that innocence and justice were not on the table.
• 
It didn't matter that Trump was illegally targeted.  It didn't matter that the witnesses knew there was no collusion.
• 
Meuller took down Paul Manafort as if he was a hardened drug dealer and put him in solitary confinement.
• 
Ask yourself, how many tax cheats go into solitary confinement?  Another message sent to prospective witnesses.
• 
He bullied Jerome Corsi.  He brought in a swat team to take care of Roger Stone.  More messages sent.
• 
Almost from the beginning, he created a palpable sense of fear that was known and felt by the 500 witnesses he had interrogated.  It was a fear that, despite no underlying crime, their potential errors, made under great duress for which they were not trained, could cost them their freedom.
• 
At the very least it saddled them with attorney's bill in excess of $100,000 and more.
• 
Again, all along, Mueller did that knowing there was no collusion.
• 
For his final act, despite knowing that Trump had been set up all along, it was time to set a perjury trap for a president.
• 
After all, he had done it with everyone else of significance from the beginning in the total absence of collusion.
• 
Why not again?  Only Trump and his lawyers finally said no to an interview. 
• 
In the end and for two years, Mueller made the country more politically divided.
• 
He rototilled the Fourth Amendment and held Republicans captive to an investigation that likely cost them House seats.
• 
Then Mueller wrote a 200-page report laying out his case for obstruction of justice — even though no law says the report had to be written.
• 
Do you still need to ask yourself why he did that?
• 
All of these actions represented Mueller's intent.
• 
The only real, nonpartisan question that remains is whether we will ever be so misguided as to let it happen again.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Press suck up to power instead of defending the First Amendment at WH Correspondents' Dinner  (Fox 04/30/2019)
• 
All presidents deeply despise the news media, but they make themselves go.
• 
They have no choice.  It is a hostage situation.
• 
Dumb people are so self-confident.  Have you noticed that?
• 
It's almost like there is a self-esteem confidence reverse access.
• 
Anyway, they are telling us that going to your own events instead of our event is a form of harassment.
• 
We are seeing misinformation masquerading as news, they are telling us — and actually, they are right.
• 
We have seen a lot of that recently.  How about the last two years of Russia coverage on CNN, for example? 
• 
The New York Times, the Washington Post both won Pulitzers for what turned out to be misinformation masquerading as news.
• 
Last Saturday night would have been a perfect moment, actually, to apologize for that debacle and return the prizes they won.
• 
But no.  Nobody apologized.  Nobody returned a Pulitzer.
• 
Instead, they celebrated themselves.  No surprise there.  That's what they do.
• 
What was odd, though, was hearing them talk about free speech.
• 
The First Amendment is, in fact, under ferocious attack, really more than any time in the last 50 years, at least, and yet the people in that room at the White House Correspondents' Dinner didn't seem to notice.
• 
Their job, they say, is to hold the powerful to account.  But when given the chance to push back against the truly powerful — the actually powerful, the we-are-not-even- kidding-powerful — Google, Amazon, Facebook, PayPal — do they say anything?  Ever?
• 
No.  Of course not.  They suck up every single time.  They suck up to power.
• 
Because that's who they are — dutiful toadies to the powerful, defending class interests and pretending it is principle.
• 
Fine.  That's who they are.  Just don't lecture us about free speech, please.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Carol Roth: Calling socialism 'democratic' is like putting lipstick on a pig  (Fox 04/27/2019)
• 
They can call it "democratic socialism," but socialism is so awful and flawed that no modifier can make it palatable — garbage by any other name still stinks.
• 
Socialism is a system set up for failure by design.
• 
The true definition of socialism is the government owning the means of production and having a few people — those aforementioned political elite — decide what's in everyone else's best interest.
• 
It stands in stark contrast to free markets, which give everyone individual choice and free choice to make those decisions for themselves.
• 
Supposing you had the smartest people around (which is not usually something associated with politicians) with perfect and trustworthy moral intent (also not something associated with politicians), the structure of having a small number of people decide how to allocate resources is still an impossible task.
• 
It's why countries like India have seen famines during times where they had plenty of food in the country; they lacked the right incentives to get the product to the people who needed it.
• 
It's also why pure socialism has failed every single time it has been tried with horrific consequences and isn't known for amazing innovations, either.
• 
In his quest to soften socialism, Sanders has tweeted that "Democratic Socialism means democracy."
• 
But, the "democracy" descriptor is no picnic either.
• 
Our founding fathers intentionally created a federal republic (or constitutional republic or whatever similar phrase you prefer) and not a democracy, because of democracy's inherent flaws.
• 
As Ben Franklin so aptly described it, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."
• 
Mob rule doesn't make something a good, right or moral idea.
• 
Good intentions often lead to poor outcomes.
• 
What we all know as "North Korea" brands itself as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (which also boldly claims on its website is where "all the people are completely liberated from exploitation and oppression").
• 
Germany prior to German reunification was known as the German Democratic Republic.
• 
Though I can't speak for Sanders, hopefully, the rest of us can all agree these are not exactly the types of regimes we want to be emulating.
• 
... when Sanders tweets, "My definition of democratic socialism is creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on top," what he is advocating for is exactly that type of control where "what is in everyone's best interests" is decided by the handful of elite politicians that comprise our government.
• 
Our country was founded on the concept of individual rights, including property rights and freedom.
• 
The government's job was to protect those rights and our freedoms; and that's it.
• 
Movement towards free markets creates prosperity and movement towards socialism thwarts it.
• 
We must come together to reject socialism by any name — in whole or in part — and work to find advocates who will undertake the difficult task of taking away power, decisions and actions from the elites in government and returning it to the people and the markets where it rightly belongs.
• 
Sanders and his ilk are dead wrong and as history demonstrates, any socialism — democratic or otherwise — will be entirely at our own loss.
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Mueller's report and Kavanaugh's confirmation battle – The one dangerous thing they share  (Fox 04/26/2019)
• 
... for the average American, the most important aspect of the Mueller investigation is one dangerous attribute shared with the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation battle last fall – the upending of the burden of proof and the practice of making the accused prove his innocence before any proof of wrongdoing is offered.
• 
For centuries in British/American legal practice, the party prosecuting a case, whether it be the district attorney or a civil plaintiff, has borne the burden of proving what the accused did wrong, and must produce evidence meeting varying levels of proof, depending on the charge.
• 
Until the specific evidentiary burden is met, the accused is innocent and bears no burden to prove otherwise.
• 
What's so concerning about the Kavanaugh and collusion episodes is, despite their not being strictly legal proceedings, the alarming extent to which, and speed with which, some politicians and their media allies abandoned these important standards in service of short-term political goals.
• 
... no accuser produced any evidence supporting the accusations, but still put the burden on Kavanaugh to disprove them.
• 
To many, Kavanaugh was guilty or disqualified simply because he was accused.
• 
Kavanaugh produced his handwritten high school calendar, testimonials from high school friends, and other evidence.
• 
It was enough to win confirmation, but it sent the wrong message about how we treat those accused of wrongdoing.
• 
Similarly, the Russian "collusion" investigation was plagued by the same flaw.
• 
Before Mueller was appointed, then-FBI director James Comey refused, despite President Trump's pleading, to state publicly what was known within the FBI and Justice Department – that President Trump was not under investigation.
• 
Instead, Comey wrongly disclosed the existence of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, a dangerous announcement that fueled by false media narratives and the bogus Steele dossier (paid for by the Democrats), suggested the FBI was investigating the president or his campaign.
• 
Next, after Comey was fired and Mueller appointed as special counsel, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General overseeing Mueller, never, as he was required by the special counsel regulations, provided any evidence of any crimes by Trump that justified the special counsel's appointment in the first place.
• 
This further added to the perception that Trump had to prove his innocence before evidence of any wrongdoing was produced.
• 
And finally, when Mueller's report was released, it concluded there was insufficient evidence of an obstruction offense, but also that the investigation did not "exonerate" the president.
• 
If there was insufficient evidence of obstruction, Mueller should've stopped there.
• 
It isn't a prosecutor's job to "exonerate" anyone: If there's insufficient evidence to charge a crime, no charges are brought.
• 
Knowing the attorney general (Bill Barr) would likely, though not required to, publicly release his report, Mueller gave House Democrats enough material to keep the obstruction issue alive for the foreseeable future, which shifted the burden to the president to prove he did not obstruct justice, despite Mueller's conclusion there was insufficient evidence to prove the same.
• 
Why does this matter?  First, this burden flipping threatens our social fabric and institutions.
• 
This is not how we want to do relationships; people should be given the benefit of the doubt and should not be forced to defend themselves from unproven charges.
• 
Also, it undermines our system of justice because it trains people to internalize the wrong procedure.
• 
And, it makes society and politics more accusatory if all that is needed to undermine an idea or a person is a baseless accusation.
• 
Moreover, it dissuades political participation.
• 
Our institutions and practices are more important than any one president or political goal, and no short-term political win (e.g., possibly impeaching a president) is worth throwing out one of our most cherished procedural safeguards.
• 
There is simply too much at stake.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Bernie Sanders' cynical move — When pols try to win over terrorists, drug dealers, look out  (Fox 04/25/2019)
• 
His insistence that even terrorists and rapists should have a say in who governs us is an affront to the values that hold this nation together.
• 
Voting is an important right of American citizens, but it's predicated on the commitment we all make to the social compact.
• 
Just like freedom is only guaranteed when you don't break the agreement, as defined by our laws.
• 
The moment you decide our laws, and the compact, do not apply to you, neither do certain rights accorded to law-abiding citizens, like personal freedom and the right to vote.
• 
Make no mistake: This has nothing to do with democracy and principles and everything to do with expanding the Democratic voting base.
• 
And like most Democratic Party positions, the result will be a disaster for the country and our political process.
• 
"Does this mean that you would support enfranchising people like the Boston Marathon bomber, a convicted terrorist and murderer?"
• 
"Do you think that those convicted of sexual assault should have the opportunity to vote for politicians who could have a direct impact on women's rights?"
• 
Sanders, after first commenting on the issue of voter suppression, then went on to say, "... But I do believe that even if they're in jail, they're paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy."
• 
He then went on to speciously argue that stopping maniacs in prison from voting was a "slippery slope" because "Republican governors all across the country" are trying to find ways, to "come up with all kinds of excuses why people of color, young people, poor people can't vote."
• 
In other words, you have to let terrorists vote because otherwise evil conservatives will stop young people from voting.  Or something.
• 
Moreover, one of the main concerns for all of us involves the behavior of politicians.  During elections, politicians appeal to voting blocs of constituencies.
• 
Imagine a voting bloc of criminals in prison so large that politicians will necessarily try to appeal to them as they do other constituencies who have particular interests.
• 
All of us should be concerned about what politicians, on both sides of the aisle, would feel compelled to promise and offer to those who have not had our best interests in mind and who have taken action to harm the people of this nation.
• 
What could go wrong when politicians try to win the support of terrorists, murderers, rapists and drug dealers?
• 
Keep in mind, very often Democrats will propose a ridiculously extreme position, like allowing terrorists and serial killers to vote from prison, and then the "compromise" becomes the actual dynamic they were seeking.
• 
Democrats laugh when they suggest we take five steps toward the cliff and Republicans chime in, insist on "compromise," arguing for taking just two steps toward the cliff.
• 
That's a win, we're told.
• 
Is it?
• 
See related He's the Future (Michael Ramirez, 03/05/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      John Stossel: The Green New Deal and the one thing no one ever wants to talk about  (Fox 04/24/2019)
• 
"That's a goal you could only imagine possible if you have no idea how energy is produced."
• 
"Renewable is so inconsistent.  You can't just put in wind turbines and solar panels.  You have to build all this infrastructure to connect them with energy consumers."
• 
"You have to mine materials for batteries.  Those mines are environmentally hazardous.  Disposing of batteries is hazardous."
• 
"Batteries are a lousy way to store energy.  ... You have to consume 100 barrels of oil in China to make that battery pack.  Dig up 1,000 pounds of stuff to process it.  Digging is done with oil, by big machines, so we're consuming energy to ‘save' energy — not a good path to go."
• 
The dream of "green" causes us to misdirect resources.
• 
Even after billions in government subsidies, solar still makes up less than 1 percent of America's energy — wind just 2 percent.
• 
And even that energy isn't really "clean."
• 
"We use billions of tons of hydrocarbons to make the windmills that are already in the world, and we've only just begun to make them at the level people claim they would like them to be built."
• 
"Pursue a path of wind, solar and batteries, we increase how much we dig up and move by a thousand-fold."
• 
"You gotta clear-cut the forest.  These machines kill a lot of birds."
• 
"I agree that we should bring down our carbon emissions ... but we should also make sure we're spending money on stuff that really works."
• 
There is one energy source, though, that efficiently produces lots of power with no carbon emissions: nuclear.
• 
"The Chernobyl plant design was idiotically bad." ... They don't make nuclear plants like that anymore.
• 
What about Fukushima?
• 
"Fukushima helps prove how safe nuclear power really is.  No one was killed."
• 
"A dam breaks, and hundreds of thousands of people die.  Nuclear plants, their safety, ironically, is actually evident in their accidents!"
• 
"More people have fallen off of roofs installing solar panels than have been killed in the entire history of nuclear power in the U.S.."
• 
If a Green New Deal is ever implemented ... it would rob the poor by raising energy costs, while "giving money to wealthy people in the form of subsidies to buy $100,000 cars, to put expensive solar arrays on their roofs or to be investors in wind farms."
• 
See related Green New Deal (Gary Varvel, 03/16/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Cal Thomas: Democrats remain undeterred in their pursuit to evict Trump from the White House  (Fox 04/23/2019)
• 
Objectivity ... long ago left the building in Washington and so the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is being read and interpreted through mostly biased eyes.
• 
Democrats, who had counted on Mueller to prove that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, were initially as crestfallen as they were on election night 2016.
• 
Still, they are undeterred in the pursuit of their ultimate goal: evicting the president from the White House in a political coup unprecedented in American history.
• 
The special counsel was established to investigate collusion, though not by Trump's political opponents during the 2016 presidential race, who allegedly funded the infamous Steele dossier, which purported to describe Trump cavorting with prostitutes and other sick behavior during a visit to Moscow.
• 
After more than two years of investigations, subpoenas, witness testimony and millions of dollars wasted, Mueller's report concluded, "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."*
• 
As for obstruction of justice, how does one obstruct something that is not a crime?*
• 
Predictably, Democrats are not satisfied.  Out of desperation and exasperation, some are alleging a cover-up by Attorney General William Barr.
• 
Others want to immediately begin impeachment proceedings.  For which high crime and misdemeanor?*
• 
... the fallback position for some on the left: "Forget collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice."
• 
Say what?  "The most concrete takeaway from the 448-page Mueller report is its damning portrait of the Trump White House as a place of chaos, intrigue and deception, where aides routinely disregard the wishes of a president with little regard for the traditional boundaries of his office..."
• 
Maybe so, but bad behavior and disobeyed presidential orders are not impeachable offenses.  Let voters decide.
• 
Imagine how President Trump must have felt.  Not only the establishment, which includes Democrats and Republicans, but the major media were constantly assaulting him starting before the election and ever since.
• 
Some critics have accused him of paranoia, but as the saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." And out to get Trump they are.
• 
"President Trump has every right to feel liberated.  What the (Mueller) report shows is that he endured a special counsel probe that was relentlessly, at times, farcically obsessed with taking him out."
• 
"It is increasingly clear that the only scandal here is the Obama administration's repeated failure to act against Russian cyber meddling, and instead, how they prioritized spying on a political opponent — the Trump campaign — and used a phony DNC-funded dossier as justification."
• 
When President Obama was asked about Trump's charge that the 2016 election might be rigged against him, Obama responded: "No serious person out there ... would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections."
• 
Add this "witch hunt" to the long list of reasons many Americans hate Washington.
• 
The left doesn't want Americans to focus on the administration's successes, because they are incapable of doing better.
• 
They can only repeat their familiar scenario of higher taxes, bigger and more controlling government and "free stuff" for all.
• 
The president and his allies have threatened a counterattack to expose corruption at the Justice Department, which created this fiasco.
• 
They should begin immediately.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
      Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing: J'accuse: Donald Trump is Alfred Dreyfus  (Fox 04/23/2019)
• 
The time for an accounting has arrived for former senior members of the FBI and Intelligence Community.
• 
They aided and abetted in propagating a false narrative about the Trump campaign colluding with Russians, accused the President of the United States of being a "traitor," and misled the American people.
• 
They made Donald J.  Trump the Alfred Dreyfus of the 21st century: a completely innocent man, framed by his own government because of who he was (Dreyfus, a Jew, was the victim of French anti-Semitism) and not what he did.
• 
Dreyfus was framed of spying for the Germans based on a forged document.
• 
Trump was framed by a fraudulent dossier.
• 
Worse, the framing was done as a distraction to cover up for those who weaponized our law enforcement and intelligence tools against a political opponent.
• 
Punishment for the former FBI and intel officials should include removal from boards, sinecures, speaking gigs, and TV.
• 
They denied this country a president-in-full for two years, not just as a political vendetta but also to conceal what some of them had done.
• 
Their offense was compounded by the fact that they used the uniqueness of their law enforcement and intelligence community former high-level positions to make it appear they knew more than they did.
• 
These folks cast guilty aspersions without any basis, as evidenced by the fact that after two years, $25 million, and many threats by Mueller's team to get witnesses to testify falsely, no "conspir[acy] or "coordinat[ion]" could be "establish[ed]." ("Collusion" is not in the U.S.  criminal code.)
• 
If these former heads of intelligence could be so wrong, what kind of intelligence product did they produce for the presidents they served?
• 
These "formers" pleaded with Americans to join in their craven quest.
• 
Numerous law professors did so.  Former U.S.  Department of Justice appointees did so as well.
• 
These lawyers committed a grave disservice to our profession by pretending that they were rendering legal opinions when in fact they were rendering political opinions about Russian collusion facts.
• 
How do Brennan and Clapper respond to the special counsel's finding that there was no evidence of conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians?
• 
They do not apologize.  They double down.
• 
Shortly before the Mueller report was made public, Brennan confidently predicted on MSNBC that he "smell[s] more indictments" of a number of people whose names are quite familiar.
• 
Apparently, his nose was congested.
• 
Clapper claimed if there was not "active collusion" then there was "passive collusion," a meaningless, contradictory term because it takes action to collude.
• 
These people led the charge to misinform the American people and sew discord in our country.
• 
It is not President Trump who has acted treacherously, it is they.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Lee Edwards: THESE are the most telling failures of socialism  (Fox 04/23/2019)
• 
Some conservatives may be discouraged by the latest surveys confirming that nearly one-half of millennials are receptive to living under socialism and regard capitalism as a captive of greed.
• 
In fact, they present us with a golden opportunity to educate all Americans about the manifold failures of socialism and the miraculous advances the world has made under free enterprise.
• 
For example, the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson revealed at a Heritage Foundation event that between 2000 and 2012, "the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by 50 percent."
• 
That is, "the poor in the world are getting rich at a rate that is absolutely unparalleled in all of human history."
• 
All the broadcast networks, leading newspapers and magazines exist in a shrinking market with dwindling margins of profit.
• 
To attract attention they are turning to an old journalism axiom: "If it bleeds, it leads."
• 
The news media obsess over the latest school shooting and bloody street riot.
• 
And yet, Dr.  Peterson pointed out, the rates of violent crime in the United States and in most places "have plummeted in the last 50 years."
• 
Conservatives must step forward to tell the truth about capitalism: the better life it has brought to billions of people, the diversity and freedom of choice it celebrates, the individual responsibility it encourages, the continuing miracle of Adam Smith's "invisible hand," its rejection of government planning that always leads to dictatorship.
• 
Which brings us to the urgent task of exposing the chimera that socialism is just another political system.
• 
... socialists carefully omit any mention of the principles laid down by Karl Marx, the founding father of Socialism, such as the abolition of private property and the centralization of the means of production and of decision-making.
• 
But make no mistake: there are radical socialists waiting in the wings to promote these extreme initiatives.
• 
Socialists promise a classless society but create the prison camps of the Gulag and the Isle of Pines.
• 
They assure peace but engage in wars of national liberation.
• 
They abolish private property but depend upon the underground economy.
• 
They stamp out religion but worship Big Brother.
• 
They bring down corrupt dictators but institute a dictatorship of the Party.
• 
One, socialism has never succeeded anywhere, including the Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union, the National Socialism of Nazi Germany, the Maoism of Communist China, the Chavez-Maduro socialism of Venezuela.
• 
Two, Karl Marx has been wrong about nearly everything he predicted.
• 
The nation-state has not withered away.  Capitalism didn't break down as a result of the Industrial Revolution.  Workers haven't become revolutionaries but capitalists.  The middle class hasn't disappeared; indeed, it has expanded exponentially around the world.
• 
Three, socialism denies the existence of an essential human trait – human nature.
• 
The socialist state established by Lenin tried for seven decades to create an entirely new human being – Soviet Man.
• 
In December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev gave up trying and dissolved the world's most spectacular failure in human engineering.
• 
Four, socialism depends not upon the will of the people but on the dictatorship of the Party to remain in power.
• 
"I doubt where in any country in the world – not even in Hitler's Germany – have the mind and spirit ever been less free, more bent, more terrorized and indeed vassalized than in the Soviet Union."
• 
This is the truth about socialism: It is a pseudo-religion founded in pseudo-science and enforced by political tyranny.
• 
See related Socialism (Antonio Branco, 07/10/2018) cartoon from General picture album
• 
See related Socialism Illustrated (Mike Lester, 07/26/2007) cartoon from General picture album
      Steve Hilton: Democrats and the establishment media will never stop trying to crush Trump  (Fox 04/22/2019)
• 
The Democrats, the establishment media, the Never-Trumpers - all of them are dividing America.  They will never stop.
• 
They care only about themselves and their power.
• 
All of them — Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler — and their establishment media allies, Rachel Maddow, Chris Cuomo, Chuck Todd, Nicolle Wallace — they're prepared to do anything - divide america, undermine faith in democracy and the rule of law - anything, if it helps take down President Trump, the insurgent populist they despise.
• 
They are a modern aristocracy.  They think they are born to rule.
• 
They consider it the most appalling impertinence that the American people kicked them out in 2016 and installed an outsider in the Oval Office.
• 
They see it as a peasant's revolt, and they've been trying to overturn it ever since.
• 
That's what this is about, all of it — whether it is demands for more information, or more testimony, or the underlying evidence for impeachment or whatever the hell is the latest thing is.
• 
It's all about one thing really - the establishment's fury at the populist revolution and their implacable determination to crush it.
• 
      Newt Gingrich: Caught up in the Mueller media madness  (Fox 04/19/2019)
• 
This madness is crippling the country, maximizing partisan divisions and absorbing so much time and energy that it's keeping the U.S.  from coming to grips with dangers that could destroy it.
• 
Mueller reported after a nearly two-year effort which involved 19 lawyers, 40 staff, more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants and roughly 500 witnesses.  The investigation spent more than $25 million.
• 
If the Mueller team could have found President Trump guilty, it would have.
• 
After all, Mueller recruited as his legal team – 14 Democrats, 12 of whom have contributed to Democrats.
• 
Of these lawyers, seven were Clinton donors, one attended Clinton's election night party, and one represented the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton herself.
• 
Far from being innocent of bias, two of the Mueller team's lawyers met with Christopher Steele, the author of the discredited dossier, before the 2016 election.
• 
When almost two years of digging by this anti-Trump wolfpack could produce no signs of guilt, it is reasonable to conclude that was because there were no signs of guilt.
• 
However, the anti-Trump news media has too much invested in hating Trump to give up just because two years of work by 14 highly motivated, aggressive Democrat lawyers found no laws broken.
• 
Just watch: Reporters who were totally wrong will interview Democratic politicians who were totally wrong, and they both will focus on the next phase of the anti-Trump cycle.
• 
It doesn't matter how much Democratic congressmen or senators were wrong, they will just launch a new attack on President Trump.
• 
The fascinating thing is President Trump's ability to ignore the madness and focus on leading the country.
• 
Through all the hysteria, he has been able to focus on getting conservative judges on the federal bench, cutting regulations, tax cuts, job creation, North Korea, the Middle East, Venezuela, China, and trade negotiations with multiple countries – even with 92 percent negative news coverage and Democrats attacking him every day.
• 
Now President Trump is liberated from the dark cloud of the Mueller investigation.
• 
After 448 pages, the conclusion was no collusion of any kind with Russia and no proof of obstruction of justice strong enough to warrant prosecution.
• 
Given the ongoing hostility and negativity with this positive report, imagine what would have happened if President Trump had received the kind of judgment Ken Starr rendered on President Bill Clinton.
• 
In the Starr Report, Clinton was found to be guilty of breaking the law 11 times.  Seven of those charges included acts of perjury (some multiple times), and five were explicitly obstruction of justice (including the ninth charge of witness tampering).
• 
Imagine where we would be today if Robert Mueller had used the word guilty on 11 different counts involving President Trump.
• 
Imagine where we would be if the Mueller Report had said President Trump was guilty of five counts of obstruction of justice.
• 
That is where the left, the news media, and the Democrats had hoped Mueller would end up.
• 
They were counting on a definitive finding of guilt – just as they were counting on Hillary Clinton to win on election night 2016.
• 
The 2016 disappointment led the left to invent the Russian collusion explanation because they could not bring themselves to tell Hillary it was her fault she lost.
• 
Meanwhile, the reality of the Trump presidency – and the renewed strength of President Trump as a vindicated innocent man – will continue to change America in a direction the country likes and the left hates.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump's 'unprecedented cooperation' with Mueller probe being weaponized for 'political purposes'  (Fox 04/19/2019)
• 
"Not only was there was no obstruction, there was cooperation."
• 
"Did the president want to cooperate?  No.  Did he like Bob Mueller in the whole thing?  He hated it.  Well, guess what?  Bill Clinton hated me and hated the investigation."
• 
"There is a difference between having thoughts and this is another dimension that really did surprise me, how open and frank the conversations are with the president of the United States that then become disclosed and are now in the public domain."
• 
... the president didn't invoke executive privilege on the conversations "that are now, obviously, embarrassing to the president and being seized upon for political purposes."
• 
"But, there was no obstruction here.  The 10 obstructive acts don't add up to be an obstruction of justice in the criminal sense."
• 
"The law cares about what is done, not what is thought and what is said.  And so the president's instincts were very aggressive.  He knows how to fire people and he fires people.  But, guess what?  He may have come to the brink but he didn't walk across that as it were a red line."
• 
"He showed wisdom at the end.  I wish the president didn't foment so much.  He is sometimes his worst enemy.  Fomenting is not a crime and lashing out is not a crime.  Totally understandable.  Let's put ourselves in his situation.  We might have said some naughty words as well."
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Lauren Appell: Are universities finally standing up to the PC bullies?  (Fox 04/16/2019)
• 
In a shocking and recent twist, college administrators are showing they won't be ruled and intimidated by the politically correct mob.
• 
They're sending a clear message to the snowflake generation that people have different ideas and opinions in the real world and you have to learn to be — wait for it – tolerant.
• 
The president of Taylor University in Indiana didn't back down last week after students melted down when it was announced that Vice President Pence would be the commencement speaker at the private Christian college this year.
• 
Their grievance with the vice president speaking at graduation?
• 
They claim it makes everyone associated with the university "complicit in the Trump-Pence administration's policies, which we believe are not consistent with the Christian ethic of love we hold dear."
• 
Puh-lease, you're listening to him give an inspirational speech for roughly 45 minutes about all the opportunities that lie in front of you, you're not being nominated for a Cabinet position.
• 
The ringleader and Taylor alum behind the petition was a former Obama staffer — shocking.
• 
I suppose if Obama was the speaker, nobody would be complicit in anything and everyone could just "coexist."
• 
Isn't that one of the pre-approved choice words of the PC crowd?
• 
"Had Taylor invited former President Barack Obama, the decision would have been a gesture toward reconciliation."
• 
Of course it would have been.  That's because liberals define coexisting as existing together with their like-minded friends.
• 
Freedom of speech, there's a novel idea.  For the politically correct mob who drive around with their "Coexist" bumper stickers, take note: this is what coexisting actually looks like.
• 
Respectful dialogue and discourse even with people with whom you don't agree.
• 
To its credit, Taylor is standing its ground, and in an original statement the university's president Dr.  Paul Lowell Haines said, "Mr.  Pence has been a good friend to the University over many years, and is a Christian brother whose life and values have exemplified what we strive to instill in our graduates."
• 
They either attack him because he's too Christian or not Christian enough.  Take your pick.  They can't decide, they just know it's the politically correct thing to do.
• 
College was never meant to be a politically correct bubble where anything other than radical liberalism is censored, shut down and shut out.
• 
After all, college is supposed to prepare you for the real world, not shield you from it.
• 
We need to stop being so triggered by identity politics that our gut reaction is to silence what we don't like, don't agree with or don't understand.
• 
Everyone has the right to respectfully express their thoughts and ideas.
• 
It's called freedom, and while it may be too soon to tell, if last week is any indication, clearer heads may be starting to prevail and it may be making a comeback.
• 
These administrators are reminding their students that a campus is a safe space for freedom.
• 
The question is will their actions start a trend and embolden more college administrators to stand up to the mob of bullies who want to silence speech?
• 
Or are these instances simply exceptions to the mob rule that threatens to reign over our universities? 
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      As Trump soars higher, Dems reach their lowest point yet  (NYP 04/13/2019)
• 
Against an enormous army of antagonists, political and cultural, academic and judicial, Donald Trump is enjoying some of the best days of his presidency. 
• 
Meanwhile, Democrats and the left, including the media, have suffered one crushing blow after another.
• 
Their recent confidence that Trump was not long for the Oval Office is suddenly morphing into a panic that he could win a second term.
• 
There was no collusion with Russia, Mueller found, and no obstruction of justice, Barr determined.
• 
The momentous victory for Trump vindicated his claims of innocence.
• 
The fog of accusations that he was an illegitimate president was destroyed by a news flash that left no room for ambiguity.
• 
To grasp the significance, imagine the consequences if the report found he was probably guilty of one or both charges.
• 
... Barr's stunning comment that "spying did occur" on Trump's 2016 campaign and that Barr was obligated to review "the conduct of the investigation."
• 
"Spying on a political campaign is a big deal," Barr said matter-of-factly.
• 
Barr's promise touches on the holy grail for those of us who believe there was an outrageous abuse of government power to try to tip the election to Hillary Clinton and then to topple Trump.
• 
If Barr keeps his word, the sunlight of transparency soon will shine on the rancid corruption of the Justice Department, the FBI and the intelligence agencies under Barack Obama.
• 
Turning the tables on the conspirators is absolutely necessary to hold accountable those who tried to rig the election.
• 
That accountability, if it is seen as honest and evenhanded, will prevent a repeat and begin to restore public trust.
• 
How did the unprecedented FBI probe of a presidential candidate get started if the allegations were instigated and paid for by the opposition?
• 
Who leaked scores of misleading investigative tidbits to the media in ways that suggested Trump's guilt was all but certain?
• 
It's no exaggeration to say that Barr's promise to investigate the investigators sets the stage for fundamentally changing the narrative from the one the media fed the nation for two years.
• 
Many are furious with Barr, with some hysterics saying they want to remove him from office, as if somebody must be impeached.
• 
CNN, NBC and others are accusing Barr of doing Trump's "dirty work" by daring to use the "spy" word, as if straight talk is too much for their tender sensibilities.
• 
They are so in the tank against Trump that they denounce the search for truth because the truth might favor the president.
• 
Those with the most skin in the game are the most at risk, starting with Jim "The Snake" Comey.
• 
James Clapper and John Brennan, the intelligence chiefs under Obama who came out of the closet as naked partisans, added their two cents of shock.
• 
"Stunning and scary," Clapper said of Barr's plans, and Brennan accused Barr of sounding like a "personal lawyer" for Trump.
• 
The economy continues to roar and the crisis on the border that Dems said didn't exist clearly does.
• 
Trump is at least searching for solutions while Dems have closed their eyes and ears to a security and humanitarian nightmare.
• 
Trump was also a winner in the Israeli election, with his support of Bibi Netanyahu helping to lift the prime minister to victory.
• 
Finally, Rep.  Ilhan Omar is proving to be a one-woman wrecking crew for the party as well as for the image of all American Muslims.
• 
On top of her anti-Semitism, Omar's dismissive description of 9/11 as "some people did something" marks her as a heartless ingrate to the nation that rescued her family from civil war and possibly death at the hands of other Muslims. 
• 
The only question is whether party leaders will have the courage to stand up against her.
• 
Sen.  Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are usually camera hogs, but ducked questions about Omar's 9/11 reference and her claim that criticisms of her are anti-Muslim.
• 
They did, however, find time to criticize Barr's plan to investigate the investigators, thus proving again that Democrats have the leaders they deserve.
      How to become rich like Socialist Bernie Sanders  (INN 04/13/2019)
• 
It is good to be a Socialist in America... where you can complain about the sins of capitalism while living it up and raking in all that dough.
• 
Did he win the lottery?
• 
No, books, he says, and I quote: "I wrote a bestselling book.  If you write a bestselling book, you can be a millionaire, too."
• 
Those are books written by people who can't write for people who can't read – or for suckers who think a cynical self-serving political memoir is great literature.
• 
Don't blame real writers for resenting frauds like Bernie who come trampling on our territory.  There aren't enough readers to make everyone a "millionaire."
• 
Remember this – good readers are as rare as good writers... and that every time you hold a book in your hands, realize you hold the writer's life in your hands.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Christian Whiton: Lock up Assange and throw away the key  (Fox 04/11/2019)
• 
Americans who value our national security and the rule of law should cheer news that Julian Assange has been arrested in Britain and may be extradited to the United States.
• 
Beginning in early 2010, Assange collaborated with then-Army Pvt.  Bradley Manning in stealing hundreds of thousands of classified files from the U.S.  military and State Department and publishing them.
• 
Manning ... was convicted of six charges of espionage and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
• 
President Obama outrageously commuted the sentence in the final week of his presidency, setting Manning free.
• 
The public has no right whatsoever to this stolen property.
• 
... what Assange and WikiLeaks published were secret reports compiled by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as classified "cables" from the State Department that consist of reports on highly sensitive topics.
• 
The cables came from U.S.  diplomatic missions around the world.
• 
The military reports included information collected on the battlefield.
• 
A large number of these reports contain information and insight from people who are either named or whose identities can be discerned from context.
• 
We will never know the true human toll of the classified information compromised by Assange and Manning.
• 
How many Iraqis and Afghans named in reports for being helpful to U.S.  troops were later killed or abused for their cooperation?
• 
How many business people, reporters, or professors who took the time to meet with U.S.  diplomats lost their jobs when their willingness to talk and provide insight became publicly known?
• 
How many people around the world will hesitate to cooperate with American officials in the future, suspecting that their assistance might be exposed?
• 
The sheer number of stolen documents was immense: approximately 750,000 cables and military reports.
• 
... if an ordinary citizen stole a single classified document and provided it to one of our adversaries, even accidentally, he could expect the full weight of the government to come down on him.
• 
Assange and Manning intentionally stole hundreds of thousands of classified documents and gave effectively each one of them to all of our adversaries in the world.
• 
if an ordinary citizen stole a single classified document and provided it to one of our adversaries, even accidentally, he could expect the full weight of the government to come down on him.
• 
Assange and Manning intentionally stole hundreds of thousands of classified documents and gave effectively each one of them to all of our adversaries in the world.
• 
Furthermore, the Trump administration should get tough on WikiLeaks as an organization, including all of its past and present facilitators.
• 
The Obama administration was weak against the organization, apparently buying the fiction that is was some sort of new media organization.
• 
In fact, it is a political warfare organization that seeks to undermine the security of the United States and the information-gathering activities that are essential to stopping foreign threats and preventing war.
• 
Locking up Assange and throwing away the key will be a good start.
• 
See related Where You Can Stick... (Patrick Chappatte, 11/29/2010) cartoon from World picture album
• 
      Tucker Carlson: Here's why awful Ocasio-Cortez has a following - and it's not because she's...  (Fox 04/02/2019)
• 
The very same news outlet that spent two years lying to you about Russia brings you a 29-year-old former bartender to teach you about science.
• 
Unless, you do exactly what Dr.  Ocasio-Cortez says, the entire human race has only 12 years to live.
• 
"What we have to do to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change is to cut emissions in half in 12 years."
• 
"Twelve years.  That's the project we have been tasked with by the Earth.  Now has come a bold new policy proposal that might be the most controversial thing in American politics at the moment.  You've probably heard about it.  It's called the Green New Deal.  Some people call it a socialist monster; some people call it our only hope for survival here in the way of life that we hold dear."
• 
Did you hear what he said?  "Our only hope for survival." Holy smokes!  That is terrifying. 
• 
Well, the good news is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the cure for human extinction.
• 
All we have to do is obey her and be very, very good people.
• 
"In my framework, it is my belief that we do not just have a wealthy society, but that we have a moral society."
• 
Wait a second, you may be wondering.  How does a member of Congress who hasn't yet turned 30, someone who has never even raised children, get the right to lecture me about morality?
• 
Well, that's the difference between you and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  She is a highly decent person.
• 
This is how she explained how she doesn't resort to ad hominem attacks, unlike her enemies — who, by the way, are xenophobic, white supremacists.
• 
"We are actually talking about something substantive.  We are not calling anyone names.  People say, 'Tea Party of the left,' and I find this phrase very interesting.  Because the grounding of the Tea Party was xenophobia, the underpinnings of white supremacy."
• 
Yes!  Stop with the name-calling, you racist, white supremacist, xenophobe!
• 
So, it's official.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a moron and nasty and more self-righteous than any televangelist who ever preached a sermon on cable access.  She is not impressive.  She's awful.
• 
So how did she get so famous?  Why do people like her?  Well, if we are being honest, we've got to say it's because not everything she says is wrong. 
• 
See how, in this same town hall, Ocasio-Cortez takes a break from her idiotic climate theology to offer what turns out to be a fairly insightful critique of the American economy.
• 
"We have runaway income inequality.  We are at one of our most in-equal points, economically speaking, in American history."
• 
"We are dealing with a crisis of how our economy is even made up.  Our economy is increasingly financialized, which means we are making profits off of interest — off leasing your phone, off of doing all of these things.  But we aren't producing, and we aren't innovating in the way that we need to as an economy."
• 
Okay, you hate to admit it, given the source, but try to ignore the way she said.  Maybe, just print it out and read it.  A lot of it is basically true.
• 
No other party wants to talk about this.
• 
The Republicans are in fetal position; they just don't want to be unpopular anymore.  They will do anything not to be unpopular.
• 
The Democrats want what they have always wanted - total and complete control over you and this country.
• 
Neither party will say that our economy, at its core, is badly distorted.
• 
Any economy based on interest payments isn't really an economy.  It's a scam.
• 
Healthy countries innovate.  They make things.  They don't treat people like interchangeable widgets.  They don't worship finance.
• 
In a healthy country, bankers aren't heroes.  Private equity is not the highest paid profession.  Nobody brags about working at a hedge fund.
• 
In America right now, we have the opposite, unfortunately.
• 
And that's why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a constituency — not because she is impressive, she is not.
• 
But because she is one of the very few people who will say the obvious about growing corporate tyranny in this country.
• 
This doesn't mean she is right about anything else.
• 
Taking power from the banks and giving it to Ocasio-Cortez, as she proposes, would not solve our problems.
• 
It will just put an even dumber person in charge.
• 
But she is right about the financialization part.
• 
See related The End IS Near... (Michael Ramirez, 01/24/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Tax (Taylor Jones, 01/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Joe Bastardi: Climate change agenda is being driven by hysteria, not facts  (Fox 04/01/2019)
• 
Ocasio-Cortez's statements about adverse climate effects and policy proposals reflect a lack of knowledge about energy policy and the geopolitical and financial impacts of abandoning fossil fuels in a quick and reckless manner.
• 
"The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change," she said earlier this year – a statement clearly designed to elicit panic but hardly based on fact.
• 
In this age of political hysteria, we must all educate ourselves on the facts – the actual science.
• 
... climate science is being used as a political weapon, and the voices of scientists like me are being ignored or even vilified.
• 
I was under the impression that in the United States, all voices and arguments should be heard.  Climate science is not settled science.  If it was, why would there be a continuous flow of money to research it?
• 
For example, is AOC aware that in the fossil fuel era, in spite of a four-fold increase in population, deaths have plummeted?
• 
Or that personal GDP and life expectancy – true measurements of progress – have dramatically increased?
• 
Or that world prosperity is rising while poverty is falling?
• 
And does AOC know that in the geological history of the Earth, there is no apparent direct link between carbon dioxide and temperature?
• 
AOC is trying to capture the imagination of young people to exact a specific result – the adoption of policies that cripple our way of life and push us towards socialism.
• 
We should also ask why there is such a hurry to get there.
• 
For every current event that is used to whip up hysteria, there has been a past event that was even worse, but that people either ignore or are ignorant about in the first place.
• 
Extreme weather has always occurred and will inevitably continue.
• 
If climate alarmists do not know about the many arguments that question the credibility of their ideas, how is it even possible for their ideas to be seriously considered?
• 
Much of what is being proposed in the Green New Deal should not only cause skepticism, but should be considered draconian and even geopolitically dangerous.
• 
The migration towards cleaner, alternative energy needs to be done in a methodical, sustainable and intelligent way, otherwise, the consequences could be far worse than anyone can imagine.
• 
Perhaps we should pause and consider why none of the global warming models from two decades ago have come to fruition.
• 
Perhaps we should slow down and think about the consequences of allowing our adversaries to supply the world with cheap energy, because one thing is for sure – wind farms and solar panels won't get the job done.
• 
The objective reader should examine all sides of the climate debate and should ask himself: Are the consequences of acting hastily worse than not acting at all?
• 
I think many are skeptical of rushing forward.
• 
We must rein in the political hysteria and fear-mongering that is driving the climate change agenda.
      Doreen Denny: Don't be fooled ladies — the Equality Act is a threat to all of us  (Fox 04/01/2019)
• 
The Equality Act ... to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected characteristics, seeks to erase the understood binary definition of sex as male or female, and enshrine a new definition of sex that includes a person's perception of his or herself – not the actual chromosomal DNA that identifies his or her true sex.
• 
The bill would create a world in which women and girls are no longer recognized, protected or dignified as uniquely female.
• 
In jobs, education, sports, shelters or any public space, any biological man classifying himself as a woman according to his "gender identity" would have every claim to any women's program, scholarship, sports roster, competition, boardroom, executive office, women's shelter, bathroom, locker room or job.
• 
Privacy and safety for females in women's shelters would be cast aside as transgendered people claim rights of entry.
• 
Safety and privacy protections for girls in school bathrooms and locker rooms would also be entirely erased.
• 
Any man or boy identifying as a woman or girl has an unchallengeable claim to trump her privacy and safety.
• 
Redefining sex in federal civil rights laws to include gender perceptions totally denies the scientific, chromosomal fact that a male, no matter how many hormonal injections or surgical alterations, can never become female...
• 
The left's push for the Equality Act completely denies science.
• 
It's time to get honest about the real impact of the Equality Act, which proposes a seismic societal shift in the way we view civil rights.
• 
Elevating perception above biological fact as the basis for civil rights protections undermines the very foundations of our civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination based on undeniable, unchangeable traits.
• 
Don't be fooled, ladies.  These radical leftists are not standing for women in their support for the Equality Act.
• 
Decades of progress to promote opportunities for women and girls, our daughters and granddaughters, are on the line and in danger of being erased.
• 
See related Target (Glenn McCoy, 05/06/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
• 
See related Women and Children First! (Glenn McCoy, 04/25/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Justin Haskins: Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez keep lying about socialism.  Here’s the truth  (Fox 03/31/2019)
• 
... have amassed a huge following among millennials by propagating the myth that the only way to solve society's problems is to seize wealth and property away from law-abiding citizens so that the federal government has significantly more power over all of our lives.
• 
However, history has proven repeatedly that the collective ownership and management of property eventually leads to death, destruction, coercion, and tyranny.
• 
More than 167 million people have been killed, exiled, or imprisoned by socialist and communist regimes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
• 
That's comparable to more than 50,000 attacks as deadly as those that occurred on September 11, 2001. 
• 
Whenever socialism is tried, it fails miserably – whether it's in China, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, or Zimbabwe.
• 
Yet, despite the mountains of evidence against collectively owning and managing property, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez continue to allege that anyone who argues against socialism is nothing more than an untrustworthy right-wing propagandist and that all people like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez really want is to tweak the current system to make things better for the poor.
• 
... "do a better job maybe in explaining what we mean by socialism ... Obviously, my right-wing colleagues here want to paint that as authoritarianism and communism and Venezuela, and that's nonsense.  What I mean by democratic socialism is that I want a vibrant democracy."
• 
"Second of all, what it means ... is that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world we can provide a decent standard of living for all about [sic] people...  Health care for all can be done, and we can save money in doing it.  We can have a minimum wage which is a living wage, and I'm delighted to see that, you know, right now, five states already passed $15 an hour minimum wage."
• 
According to Sanders, socialism is nothing more than advocating for higher minimum wage, single-payer health care, and a "vibrant democracy" – whatever that means.
• 
Of course, this isn't what "socialism" is, and Sanders knows it.
• 
Socialism is the widespread collective ownership and management of property.
• 
In a truly socialist system, government controls most of the economy, in part to ensure that wealth is continuously redistributed.
• 
They don't care about private property rights, individual liberty, free enterprise, or, in many cases, even religious freedom.
• 
Their primary concern is one thing, and one thing only: taking property and wealth away from the people who have earned it.
• 
They don't support creating a truly free society, because they believe freedom leads to wealth gaps, and that can never be tolerated in socialism.
• 
They think the "rights" of the collective – which continuously shift and inevitably become whatever the majority of people in society wants – trumps all individual rights.
• 
Or, put more simply, socialists want to create a democratic tyranny of the majority.
• 
In socialism, whatever the majority wants, the majority gets – even if that means hurting others in the process or stealing their property simply because most voters think they would benefit from having it.
• 
They might spend a lot of time talking about things like increasing the minimum wage, but what they're really after is controlling our entire society.
• 
... socialism is, at best, well-intentioned tyranny.  Don't be a tyrant.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Education disaster?  Common Core has given us snowflakes instead of students  (Fox 03/31/2019)
• 
... while it's been a disaster academically, from an agenda-driven perspective Common Core has been a huge win for the politically correct propaganda being peddled.
• 
Want proof?  Look no further than any college campus over the past couple of years: the rejection of free speech and violent attempts to stifle it; the embrace of socialism out of pure ignorance by a generation who can't even define it; and the complete lack of tolerance and unwillingness to engage in a civil debate with those who embrace center-right ideas.
• 
All while running for the nearest "safe space" when something offends them.
• 
Common Core has given us snowflakes instead of students.  Screams and protests have become their coping mechanisms.
• 
A de facto degree in political correctness may earn you an honorary membership into the elite liberal "resist" movements of your choice, but you're in for some shock and awe when you leave your safe space for the real world.
• 
... President Obama promised it would "not only make America's entire education system the envy of the world, but we will launch a ‘Race to the Top' that will prepare every child, everywhere in America, for the challenges of the 21st century."
• 
For example, simple multiplication, addition and subtraction problems can no longer be learned from the back of flashcards.  You must now show how you arrived at the answer.
• 
... you'd be wrong unless you add fives and add threes and show why it's 15.
• 
Silly me, I always thought the whole point of multiplication was that it helped to circumvent endless addition.
• 
While student achievement is going downhill, here's what is on the rise thanks to Common Core — indoctrination.
• 
How on earth can screwing up basic math concepts possibly be linked to indoctrinating our kids?  Have no fear, they found a way.
• 
The mandatory taxpayer-funded conferences that teachers are required to attend now often include Common Core.
• 
However, rather than keeping their workshops focused on education, the platform has been used to promote politically correct propaganda.
• 
At a conference last year, UnboundEd CEO Kate Gerson reportedly told teachers, "If you are under the impression that there are good white people and bad white people, you're wrong."
• 
Fun fact: Gerson was an early creator of the Common Core-compliant curriculum that's now available all over the country.
• 
This is what happens when government is put in charge: 5x3 no longer equals 15 and good white people + bad white people = all white people bad.
• 
As with most things the government hijacks, this entire experiment began as a way for the government to ultimately have more control over not just our kids' education, but over our kids' thinking and ideals.
• 
We've been played.
• 
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Opt-out Movement (Adam Zyglis, 04/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Socialism is trending in America – Here's what the younger generation needs to know  (Fox 03/29/2019)
• 
... includes a government-guaranteed "basic income" for everyone, including all those "unwilling to work."
• 
Unfortunately, something-for-nothing socialist rhetoric has a strong appeal.
• 
A recent Gallup survey found more than half of America's young people have a positive view of socialism.
• 
Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried – from the former Soviet Union and to Mao's China – and killed tens of millions through violence and starvation in the process.
• 
Yet students get little of that history today.
• 
Instead, they are often taught the evils of capitalism – that it creates inequality, rewards the privileged few at the expense of the many, and is an engine of oppression and exploitation of the masses.
• 
This perverse indoctrination is echoed and amplified in the media.
• 
In truth, capitalism has done more to lift the world out of poverty than any other economic system ever devised.
• 
Over the last 25 years, the spread of policies that promote economic freedom has cut the global poverty rate by two thirds.
• 
And capitalism does more than "just" improve general prosperity.
• 
... economic freedom is also strongly correlated with greater individual freedom, better health, more educational options, and a cleaner environment.  In other words, all the things that socialism promises but can't deliver.
• 
But the younger generation isn't being taught these truths.
• 
Instead, they are instructed that free markets are tools of exploitation, run by greed-driven conservatives who place profits above all else.
• 
... we don't need to go so far afield as Venezuela or Cuba for modern proof that more government is not an effective remedy.  There is plenty of evidence here at home.
• 
Consider the Great Society programs ushered in under President Lyndon Johnson. 
• 
Rather than lift millions from poverty, our welfare system has trapped millions in poverty or near poverty, creating generations of dependence on government.
• 
Will the rising generation come to realize this, too?  There is reason to hope so.
• 
While they initially love the notion of free college, free health care, and a $15 an hour minimum wage, many turn against these ideas when given even a few details – what it would cost them in taxes, how their freedom and their options would be restricted, and how bureaucrats in far-off places would be making decisions for them.
• 
This tells us that, while conservatives have the right answers, we need to do a better job of communicating them.
• 
If we fail to break through the constant deluge of socialist claptrap, our future and theirs is in peril.
• 
We who cherish freedom must take on the false prophets of socialism and spread the truth that limited government, free markets, and a nation based on the rule of law are the surest ways to ensure freedom, prosperity and opportunity for all.
• 
See related Resistance's Response (Michael Ramirez, 02/01/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tammy Bruce: Not a witch hunt, but a Trump hunt  (Fox 03/28/2019)
• 
... many people are missing that the report does include an indictment — of those who fabricated a horrendous crime to be blamed on the duly elected president of the United States.
• 
And not just any wrongdoing, but action that would have constituted treason, a crime punishable by death.
• 
What Mueller concluded is clear: "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
• 
It was a massive investigation.  ... it was the largest federal investigation since the Sept.  11, 2001, attacks. 
• 
There are some people calling for everyone to move on, that we should use this exoneration as a way to just go back to "business as usual" for the country.
• 
That, of course, is absurd.
• 
If there was ever a time to look behind the curtain, it's when it becomes apparent that top federal law enforcement officials may have conspired to overturn a U.S.  presidential election.
• 
The good news is that most understand the imperative of addressing this as one of the most serious events confronting our nation.
• 
Some want to sweep it under the rug specifically because it's so shocking and even frightening to consider who was involved and what it means for our republic.
• 
But that is exactly why we have a duty to look.
• 
There are people in media behaving as though this investigation was legitimate from the start and followed a linear path to conclusion.
• 
We now know neither is true.
• 
It would be foolish to suggest Mueller was unaware of the attitude of his friends and colleagues toward Trump.
• 
For him to accept the appointment as special prosecutor at all and as a result of his fired friend, former FBI Director James B.  Comey, leaking classified notes about Trump to the press, on its face is troublesome.
• 
To have access to every legal mind in the Department of Justice but choose to appoint people like former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to his team is also revealing.
• 
Imagine what the Mueller report would have looked like if Strzok remained involved, the same man who promised his lover that he would not allow Trump to become president and assured her they had an "insurance policy" to keep that from happening.
• 
Mueller elevated him to a position where he could act on that promise.
• 
In the aftermath of the Mueller report, for those crowing about how "the system worked," think again.
• 
This is about how the system broke down the moment some in the American federal law enforcement infrastructure decided to target a duly elected president because they didn't get the electoral result they expected and wanted.
• 
We don't get to pretend that everything's fine because, in the end, the people attempting and facilitating a coup didn't succeed.
• 
They don't get to walk away because we exposed them and stopped them from prevailing.
• 
The only way to make sure that this does not happen again is to hold those who perpetrated this accountable and to be honest about the nature of what has occurred throughout this shameful event, no matter to whom this leads us.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Comey wrong to see obstruction in firing: Ken Starr  (Fox 03/28/2019)
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"It is so ill-conceived that one could think that firing James Comey somehow ended the investigation.  It launched the investigation."
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"There is no suggestion at all – in fact we have contrary suggestions – to the effect that Bob Mueller was able to carry out this investigation without any kind of obstacle or impeding from the Justice Department.  So I really think that that approach of Mr.  Comey, with all respect, is just absolutely wrong."
      Rachel Maddow and her mainstream media colleagues should be apologizing to the American...  (Fox 03/26/2019)
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This must be a day of reckoning for the media, for the Deep State, for people who abused power — and did it so blatantly.
• 
If we do not get this right, if we do not hold these people accountable, ... we will lose the greatest country God has ever given man.
• 
We now have 675 days, $25-plus million, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 witnesses, 500 search warrants, doors kicked down, pre-dawn raids, felony convictions for process crimes, screws turned to get people to lie to hurt the president.
• 
Other lives were ruined, legal bills mounted for so many Americans, many of whom are now facing bankruptcy, like Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn, a 33-year combat veteran.  That's how we repay him?
• 
And after a prior nine-month FBI investigation that found zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, after a bipartisan Senate investigation found zero evidence of collusion, after another investigation in the House found zero evidence of collusion, lo and behold, for the fourth time we learn over the weekend, Robert Mueller has found zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, according to Attorney General William Barr's summary findings of the Mueller report.
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"The special counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with, it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S.  presidential election."
• 
According to the attorney general "our determination was made without regard to and is not based on the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president."
• 
And he concluded, "generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acting with corrupt intent engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding."
• 
Anyone in the media who refuses to admit this truth is continuing the lying they've been involved in for two years.
• 
You can't obstruct an investigation into a crime you didn't commit.
• 
There was no collusion — there cannot be any obstruction.
• 
No charges will be filed.  The Mueller media witch hunt is finally over.
• 
Where do we as a country go from here?
• 
How do we prevent this unprecedented attack on a duly-elected president and an effort to then overturn the will of the American people from ever happening again?
• 
People with the highest levels of power abused that power to exonerate one candidate that we know should have been indicted, and to rig a presidential election, and then undo the results that they didn't like.
• 
You — we, the American people — were lied to over and over and over again.
• 
... there was the media's pack of lies about a grand scheme where Donald Trump and his team worked closely with Russia to steal the election.
• 
Literally breathless reporting, hysteria pushed week after week, every second of every hour of every day.
• 
"Nobody wants to hear this, but news that special prosecutor Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death blow for the reputation of the American news media."
• 
In reality, we know there will never be a mea culpa from any of these fake news outlets.
• 
They'll just move on to the next group of lies.  They'll never apologize.
• 
They'll never retract, their lies, their anonymous sourcing.  Their endless speculation.
• 
They are hopeless.
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See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Deep State perpetrators of the Russia hoax need to be exposed.  It’s not time to move on  (Fox 03/26/2019)
• 
President Trump and his administration have been vindicated.
• 
After 675 days, 500 witnesses and $25 million, Robert Mueller and his team of 20 attorneys concluded there was no collusion.
• 
They were victims of a leftwing mob — led by Democrats and goaded on by willing accomplices in the mainstream media.
• 
"It was all a malicious, preposterous lie given wall to wall media coverage despite zero evidence.  This should never again happen to an American president."
• 
Now is time to expose the Deep State perpetrators of the Russia Hoax.
• 
They tried to stage a coup to overthrow a duly elected president.
• 
Their actions were traitorous and they must be held accountable.  Justice will not be served until that happens.
• 
"It's a shame our country had to go through this.  It began illegally and hopefully somebody is going to look at the other side.  This was an illegal takedown that failed."
• 
Investigations should be commenced to determine who was responsible for perpetrating this great lie on the American people.
• 
The actions of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the rest of the Mainstream Media have brought great shame and disgrace to the journalism profession. 
• 
On the other hand – we should honor the journalists and talk radio hosts who refused to bow down to the angry leftist mob...
• 
Their names and reputations were dragged through the mud, subjected to all sorts of slander – but defiantly they stood.  They are a credit to their profession.
• 
The Democrats and the mainstream media tried to convince the American people that our president was a traitor — the most heinous of charges.
• 
So the least they can do is say, "I'm sorry."
• 
Those news agencies who refuse — should have their White House credentials revoked and their reporters expelled. 
• 
A message must be sent that the American people will not tolerate a fourth estate weaponized to take down their political enemies.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Trump-Russia 'collusion' was always a hoax — and dirtiest political trick in modern US history  (Fox 03/25/2019)
• 
There was never any evidence that Donald Trump "colluded" with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton.
• 
It was all a hoax.
• 
It constituted what is surely the dirtiest political trick in modern American history.
• 
The hoax was based largely on an anti-Trump "dossier" conjured from the fertile imaginations of two nefarious characters: ex-British spy Christopher Steele; and Fusion GPS Founder, Glenn Simpson.
• 
It was commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats, then peddled all over Washington to journalists, the FBI, the State Department and the Department of Justice.
• 
The premise of the ruse was as outlandish as the actions of those who advanced it.
• 
There were no credible facts when the FBI wrongfully launched its "collusion" investigation in July of 2016, violating its own regulations.
• 
There was still nothing remotely plausible in May of 2017 when fired FBI Director James Comey absconded with government documents and leaked them to the media for the sole purpose of triggering the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller.
• 
If you harbor any doubts about the "paucity" of evidence, read the closed-door testimony of FBI lawyer Lisa Page and Comey.  Their admissions will stun you.
• 
Along the way, the FBI obtained a wiretap warrant on a Trump campaign associate, Carter Page, by concealing vital evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and deceiving the judges.
• 
No one, as yet, has been held accountable for any of that.
• 
The last time I checked, perpetrating a fraud on a court is a felony.  Several of them, in fact.
• 
Oh, and undercover informants were dispatched by the FBI to infiltrate the Trump campaign. 
• 
Now, after an exhaustive 22-month investigation, we have finally learned from the new Attorney General, William Barr, that "the Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S.  presidential election."
• 
Trump did not hack the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations.
• 
Trump did not hatch a plot in the bowels of the Kremlin to win the election.
• 
The infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer was not a crime.
• 
Carter Page was not a spy after all.
• 
The list of false accusations that Trump has suffered are too numerous to recount here.  You'd need a calculator.
• 
To Democrats and most in the media such trivial things as evidence never mattered.
• 
They didn't care about that.  They treated facts as a mere nuisance.
• 
They allowed their political bias and personal animus toward Trump to blind them.
• 
Their obsessive belief in a nonexistent conspiracy with Putin consumed all common sense.
• 
As their hatred for Trump and his policies grew, they became more sedulous in propagating fictitious stories.
• 
Democrats convinced themselves that President Trump's election was misbegotten.
• 
They accepted "collusion" as a matter of faith driven by their own prejudices, and teased by hope out of ignorance.
• 
Will they ever apologize?  Of course not.
• 
They will conjure some vacuous excuse and move on to the next accusation.  They're already doing it.
• 
Many journalists were equally reckless and malevolent.  Most of them never bothered to examine the facts, evidence and the law.
• 
Will network brass take action to punish those who so egregiously exaggerated or, in some cases, even lied to Americans?
• 
Not a chance.  Network chiefs were complicit cheerleaders. 
• 
Without missing a beat, they are pivoting to obstruction of justice by parsing what Attorney General William Barr wrote in his summary letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
• 
"Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense."
• 
One of the reasons that led Barr and Rosenstein to their inexorable conclusion is that Trump had committed no underlying crime of conspiracy with Russia or, if you like, "collusion."
• 
In simplistic terms, it is difficult to argue that someone intended to obstruct a non-crime.
• 
This is exactly the question Trump has posed on more than one occasion when he asked, rhetorically, "Why would I interfere in something I didn't do?" Why, indeed.
• 
While Mueller was more than willing to conclude that Trump never "colluded" with Russia, he deliberately dodged rendering any decision on obstruction of justice.
• 
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
• 
This was a blatant cheap shot by Mueller, although thoroughly expected.
• 
It's very much like a prosecutor who loses a case and then claims to the media, "Well, the jury may have found the defendant not guilty, but that doesn't mean he's innocent."
• 
Technically, that's true.  But it's how losers try to justify the result they don't like.
• 
Mueller knew Trump did not obstruct justice in firing Comey.
• 
The president was constitutionally authorized to dismiss him for a stated reason or no reason at all.
• 
I suspect Mueller ducked his obligation to render a decision on obstruction and inserted the "exonerate" language in his report so that rabid Democrats in Congress would take up the anti-Trump cause as a pretext for impeachment proceedings.
• 
Sure enough, within minutes of Barr's letter ... "In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before the House Judiciary in the near future."
• 
The Russia Hoax begat the Witch Hunt... and Mueller has seen to it that the Witch Hunt is far from over.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      The Mueller report should be rejected and not believed – it's fatally flawed  (Fox 03/23/2019)
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally presented his report to Attorney General William Barr, after spending almost two years and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on the effort.
• 
But whatever the report reveals, it is the product of a process and a special counsel team that were both fatally flawed from the beginning.
• 
As a result, the Mueller report should be rejected out of hand by every American who cares at all about the concept of fundamental fairness that our founders intended to be a primary guiding principle for our government officials.
• 
It's a sure thing that no one will be fully satisfied with the report – no matter what it says.
• 
For some opponents of President Trump, anything that might paralyze his administration and stymie his ability to make policy was most welcome – even an investigation based on a lie.
• 
For others, there was a genuine concern, fueled by the media, that there might actually be something to investigate.
• 
They were all for getting to the bottom of it – even if they were never told exactly what "it" was.
• 
Those who believe no special counsel was needed questioned whether the criteria for the appointment had been met.
• 
They were puzzled by Mueller's choices for his team, and they were uncomfortable with being kept in the dark about how broad a mandate Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein would give Mueller.
• 
There are several core principles underlying the special counsel regulations.
• 
... the appointment of a special counsel is only triggered when a determination is made that a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted, when the Justice Department has a conflict of interest, and when the appointment would be in the public interest.
• 
... the investigation must be conducted by a special counsel team with a reputation for integrity and impartial decision-making.
• 
But under Mueller, the special counsel process and team utterly failed to meet those fundamental principles.
• 
The decision to appoint Mueller was corrupted by people with a clear political bias and agenda, who hoped to accomplish through the Justice Department and the special counsel process what they could not accomplish through a fair election.
• 
Top Justice Department officials who were directly involved in the decision to appoint Mueller as special counsel hated President Trump with all their hearts and souls, and were committed to acting on that hatred.
• 
... some of the same high-ranking officials involved in Mueller's appointment were aware that information underpinning the rationale for that appointment was derived from an unreliable source.
• 
These officials also knew that the source – former British spy Christopher Steele – was funded by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
• 
Yet they concealed these material facts from federal judges in order to get permission to spy on American citizens.
• 
The process of appointing Mueller as a special counsel was, therefore, improper from its inception.
• 
Any report derived from that process will be the fruit of a most poisonous tree.
• 
The special counsel process can only work if the special counsel's team is composed entirely of lawyers who have earned a reputation for the highest integrity and impartiality.
• 
Only then can the public have any confidence in the results of their investigation.
• 
Considering both the serious nature of any investigation of the president of the United States and the enormous power wielded by the special counsel team, fair-minded Americans would expect each member of Mueller's handpicked team to meet the highest standards of integrity and impartiality.
• 
This is required not only by the regulations, but more importantly, by the fundamental American value of fairness.
• 
Instead, for reasons known only to him, Mueller inexcusably decided to pick lawyers who abysmally failed these criteria.
• 
By doing so, Mueller absolutely guaranteed that any report issued by his team would never be accepted by anyone other than the most adamant Trump haters – and even then, only to the extent that it maligns the president.
• 
Especially in today's exceptionally polarized political climate, there can be no justification for selecting lawyers with deep ties to the Democratic Party to investigate a Republican president whose victory they considered illegitimate — at least not if Mueller cared at all about public confidence in his team's work.
• 
One can go right down the list of Mueller's legal staff choices and fairly ask what he possibly could have been thinking in selecting these people.
• 
If he had any respect at all for the American people or any interest in conducting an honest investigation – rather than just providing a vehicle for Hillary Clinton supporters to try to change the election results – Mueller would never have staffed his team with investigators whose primary qualification was their deep-seated hatred of Donald Trump.
• 
A nation conceived in liberty deserves far better than a special counsel report tainted by political bias and prepared to fit a political agenda.
• 
By definition, though, that's exactly what the Mueller report surely must be.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Free speech isn't just saying what you want to say, it's also hearing what you don't want to hear  (Fox 03/23/2019)
• 
... our president signed an executive order designed to protect and promote free speech on college campuses — threatening to pull federal research funding if colleges don't play ball.
• 
He said, "Under the guise of speech codes, safe spaces and trigger warnings, these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today."
• 
I couldn't agree more and I'm glad Trump is using his bully pulpit to push back on the college liberal indoctrination disease.
• 
Quite frankly, it needed to be done.  I am saddened it took government intervention to make it happen.
• 
It shouldn't be that way.  College kids and their school administrators shouldn't be so fragile, so delicate, so close-minded an executive order is necessary to stop the madness.
• 
How did we get here?  There have always been liberals, conservatives and competing ideas in this country — that's part of what makes it so great.
• 
When then, are we at the point where safe spaces, trigger warnings, cry-ins, and screaming at the sky are the new norm?
• 
All for what?  Because Trump won the election?  All because conservative college groups invite speakers?
• 
This, from the same people who claim to be all about tolerance, peace, and love?
• 
You claim our president — and yes, he is your president, too, and those who support him are so reprehensible you have to threaten violence and destruction when a conservative speaker comes to campus?
• 
Trump is a meanie so you have to beat up anyone who disagrees?  Or smash and burn your own campus?
• 
It's sad to think some college-age students are signing up to fight for our country in the U.S.  military and meanwhile, others are sitting on their precious California campuses whining about Ann Coulter and others.
• 
Pathetic.  Absolutely pathetic.
• 
You know free speech isn't just saying what you want to say, it's also hearing what you don't want to hear and that includes conservative opinions too.  Sorry.
• 
And let's not forget, no one forced these students to go listen to these conservative speakers.
• 
It didn't cost them anything.  They aren't losing college credits or hurting their grades by not going.
• 
Conservative students have to listen to liberal garbage from professors every day and yes, they are required to be there for that!
• 
Over the course of your lives, you're gonna have to hear things you don't want to hear from folks you may not like.  Get used to it.
• 
You're not that special.  And if you can't be around people you don't like saying things you don't like, you can't go around creating mass chaos and physically attacking people because you think words hurt.
• 
Grow up.  Get over yourselves and develop a thicker skin.
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Alan Dershowitz: Mueller just filed Russia report.  Here's what Barr should do with it  (Fox 03/22/2019)
• 
The fairest would be to immediately turn the report over to President Trump's legal team and give them a week to write a response.
• 
Barr could then issue both reports simultaneously so that the American public could judge the comparative merits of both sides of this adversarial process.
• 
But there may well be pressures on the attorney general to send the report to Congress – thus making it public – as soon as he can vet it for possible national security omissions.
• 
If that's what the attorney general does, then it is imperative that the American public withhold conclusions about the report until the Trump legal team has had the opportunity to respond in the court of public opinion.
• 
This is crucial because prosecutorial reports ... are, by their very nature, one-sided.
• 
Prosecutors only listen to inculpatory evidence rather than including exculpatory evidence.
• 
They interview witnesses against the subject, but not witnesses in favor of the subject.
• 
That is why the Trump legal defense team needs to provide its assessment of the Mueller investigation.
• 
The Mueller report itself might give us some clues as to the manner in which the investigation was conducted.
• 
How much reliance was placed on bought or rented witness?
• 
That is, defendants who were given the opportunity to cooperate with prosecutors in order to reduce their sentences.
• 
Great caution ought to be exercised in accepting evidence from any such source, especially since they have not been cross-examined or subject to other challenges. 
• 
It is unlikely that the president will be charged with obstruction of justice for firing FBI Director James Comey...
• 
Nor is it likely that the president or his campaign will be charged with any sort of collusion since there is no such crime in the criminal code.
• 
It is possible that we may see some allegations of campaign law violations, but those are likely to be rather technical and not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.
• 
... please, don't rush to judgment until you have not only read this report but any response the Trump legal team may offer.
      Marc Thiessen: Trump isn't the biggest threat to the Constitution.  Democrats are  (Fox 03/22/2019)
• 
Leading Democrats are promising that, if elected in 2020, they will abolish the Electoral College and might also pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices — allowing them to marginalize Americans who do not support their increasingly radical agenda and impose it on an unwilling nation.
• 
The purpose of the Electoral College is to protect us from what James Madison called the "tyranny of the majority."
• 
The goal was to make sure even the smallest states have a say in electing the president and prevent those with large, big-city populations from dictating to the less populous rural ones.
• 
No wonder Democrats don't like it.  Today, they have become the party of big-city elites, while their support is declining in less populous states of Middle America.
• 
... if we got rid of the Electoral College, Democrats could write off voters in "fly-over" country and focus on turning out large numbers of their supporters in big cities and populous liberal states such as New York and California.
• 
Unburdened by the need to moderate their platform to appeal to centrist voters, they would be free to pursue full socialism without constraint.
• 
The Electoral College protects us from this kind of unconstrained radicalism, by forcing the political parties to broaden their appeal — which is precisely why more and more Democrats want to get rid of it.
• 
Fortunately, the framers of the Constitution required supermajorities for amendments — another wise protection against the tyranny of the majority.
• 
Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for their judicial predicament.
• 
They were the ones who announced that they would not confirm a Supreme Court justice during George W.  Bush's final year in office, setting the precedent for Republicans to block President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland.
• 
And they were the ones who eliminated the filibuster for federal circuit courts judges — setting the precedent for Republicans to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court justices.
• 
Democratic candidates ... have all said that, as president, they would consider adding justices to the Supreme Court to secure a left-wing majority.
• 
The last president who tried this, Franklin D.  Roosevelt, was stopped only because members of his own party rebelled.
• 
The Senate Judiciary Committee, then controlled by the Democrats, correctly declared his plan "an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country."
• 
It seems unlikely a Democratic president would face such a rebellion today.
• 
Taken together, the Democrats are proposing what amounts to a systemic assault on the foundations of our federal system.
• 
Democrats are freely pursuing a tyranny of the majority.
      Newt Gingrich: Make the Mueller report public — Here's why  (Fox 03/22/2019)
• 
President Trump is right: Every American should be able to see what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team have been doing for the last two years.
• 
For two years, virtually every news organization – and every left-wing political organization – has been opining, speculating and fantasizing over what dirt Mueller's team of anti-Trump lawyers could dig up on the president and his associates.
• 
Again and again, they have used the investigation as a cudgel to attack the Trump administration and rally the so-called "resistance."
• 
However, with each new indictment and each new case that Mueller has handed off to various district courts, it's become increasingly apparent that the special counsel's office has simply been using the power of the Justice Department to conduct an inquisition on anyone in Trump's orbit – and do whatever was necessary to gain their cooperation or put them in jail.
• 
Many have commented that Mueller is treating this investigation in the same way he went about taking down the Gambino crime family.
• 
Let that sink in.
• 
The special counsel's office is treating the duly elected president of the United States and his associates as though they were a murderous organized crime family.
• 
This is why the Mueller report should be made public.
• 
The American people should be able to see how far Mueller and his team have been willing to levy the power of the government to torment people and extract cooperation from them – in a political investigation.
• 
... Mueller's investigation has been a historic effort by the left and the Washington establishment to unseat a sitting president.
• 
... the American people should see – in detail – all the lengths to which Mueller's team went to get what they wanted.
• 
All the arm-twisting, threats, promises and punishments – everything.
• 
I have no doubt that the Democrats are going to cherry pick pieces of the report to serve their own purposes – and the media will gleefully amplify and echo them.
• 
However, the American people have the right to see the investigation in full and decide for themselves whether this has been a legitimate investigation – or an inquisition carried out by bureaucrats who didn't like the choice Americans made in 2016.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The ghost of Soviet KGB disinformation in America  (INN 03/21/2019)
• 
After the 2016 Presidential Election, when their candidate of choice lost to Donald Trump the inner circle of the United States government known as ‘Deep State' has been pursuing a disinformation campaign at the highest level in order to take down, at any cost, the current duly elected President of the United States.
• 
The premise is built around the allegation that Trump, and those surrounding him, colluded with Russia to win the election.
• 
There is much speculation that Robert Mueller's team will come up empty handed of any evidence implicating Donald Trump with Russian collusion.
• 
But undoubtedly the Russians, or more precisely the former Soviet Union, have impacted the American psyche and are winning the disinformation campaign they launched over fifty years ago against both the United States and Israel.
• 
Unfortunately, this disinformation campaign is being conducted by Americans against Americans.  In doing so, they are doing the Soviet bidding.
• 
When you hear the new radicals of the Democratic Party bang on against their own country and its leaders, when they adopt the propaganda of radical regimes, when we hear allegations against Israel couched in anti-Semitic terms, you can be sure that they are ideologically colluding with the ghost of the Soviet KGB.
• 
To quote former KGB chairman ... "We could nurture a virulent strain of American-hatred, grown from the bacteria of Marxist-Leninist thought...We have only to keep repeating our themes that the United States and Israel were ‘fascist, Imperial-Zionist countries bankrolled by rich Jews."
• 
"Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidel's occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the US Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom."
• 
Who can say that what we are hearing from Ilhan Omar and others do not accurately reflect the KGB playbook from way back in the 1960's?
• 
This is the emerging dialogue being heard in the US Congress.
• 
This is the indoctrination coming out of American campuses.
• 
It is the language we are beginning to hear from the new graduates of the campus industry of Soviet-style indoctrination, graduates that are emerging as the new generation influence and opinion makers.
• 
It began in the early 1960's after the Arab armies failed to destroy Israel.
• 
The Communist Soviet Union entrusted the KGB to embark on a global campaign to destabilize the United States and Israel through propaganda and terrorism.
• 
Many leading Cuban, African, and Palestinian revolutionaries were brought to the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.
• 
An integral part of the Soviet disinformation campaign in support of the Palestinian cause was to use language against Israel that we are familiar with today.
• 
In the early 70's, the KGB launched Operation SIG, an international smearing campaign to fan the flames of Arab resentment against the United States and Jews represented by Israel.
• 
It was launched in the Arab world to portray America as an imperialist Jewish fiefdom financed by Jewish money and run by Jewish politicians with the aim of America and he Zionists subordinating the Islamic world.
• 
... a conversation in which the KGB chief, Andropov, said, "We need to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world and turn this weapon of emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States.  No one within the American-Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe".
• 
Surely the echoes of this threat are alive and growing on the campuses of America, on the streets of America in pro-Palestinian (read ‘anti-Israel') rallies, and, more worryingly, in the halls of Congress...
• 
You can hear it in statements such as "Israel has hypnotized the world.  May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel."
• 
The old Soviet KGB campaign is alive and revived in the current US Congress.
• 
Nothing effective has been done to counter this surge of anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic ideology which is wrapped up and protected under the brand of intersectionality politics making it impenetrable to any form of criticism by intimidation campaigns that carry the same Soviet-style accusations of racism and oppression of minorities. 
• 
One thing is certain.  The enemies of traditional America and Israel feel they have the tailwind to progress their agenda and to fundamentally change political thinking and policy within the United States government.
• 
And it will be done following the old Soviet-KGB playbook.
      Sean Hannity: Radical, Socialist 2020 Dems want to centralize power and control our lives  (Fox 03/21/2019)
• 
The alarming crop of 2020 Democratic hopefuls is pushing to give 16-year- olds the right to vote, even though you can't drink until you're 21.
• 
They're promising to stack the Supreme Court so they get enough justices that think their way and will legislate from the bench.
• 
And they're proposing an end to the Electoral College.
• 
This is a scary attempt by politicians to centralize power and control the lives of you - we - the American people.
• 
And right now, it is the party line among almost all the radical Democrats running to be president in 2020.
• 
It is a blatant, dramatic, frightening attempt to alter America in ways that will make it unrecognizable and forever destroy the greatest economic, wealth creation system in the history of mankind. 
• 
Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, and many more Democrats support an end to the constitutional process by which we have always elected the president of the United States.
• 
So, why is this a big deal?
• 
When our Constitution was drafted in 1787, the framers of the Constitution sought to rectify what was a very challenging conundrum.
• 
How do you create a limited, central government strong enough to defend its people against serious threats, but decentralized enough to prevent consolidation and subsequent abuse of power?
• 
The result was a Constitution filled with checks, balances, and shared power between the individual states and the federal government.
• 
The Electoral College is a product of this system, giving the states the power to conduct elections and choose the president.
• 
As a result, each state holds some power in determining the executive branch.
• 
Without the Electoral College — and our framers knew this — smaller areas with dense populations — in other words, New York, New Jersey, California — would monopolize the keys to the White House.
• 
Look at how all four of those states have been destroyed by the people who have elected liberal socialist politicians.
• 
Everywhere else — in other words, all of red America — would be pretty much totally ignored.
• 
Power would be totally consolidated.
• 
This was the scenario our framers, our Founders, feared the most.
• 
It's one of the reasons, Thomas Jefferson hated cities, writing they are harmful to "the morals, the health and liberties of men." He was smart, way ahead of his time. 
• 
And for hundreds of years, the Electoral College played an integral role in decentralizing the power of government, keeping the United States united.
• 
You think all those red states would stick around and be in the United States if they kept losing to New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois?  I tend to think not.
• 
Democrats don't share the values of our framers.  They want power for themselves, and they want it all cost.
• 
That is why every major proposal they are now pushing begins and ends with their power and a centralized federal government that they control.
• 
In other words, they will take it over.
• 
Government-run universal income, government-paid-for vacation,government-sponsored healthy food. 
• 
There will be government promises for everything and for everybody — you'll never have a worry in the world.
• 
But you also will give up all of your freedom and all of the wealth creation systems we have built up to this point in our history.
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      If we lose free speech on college and university campuses, we lose America  (Fox 03/21/2019)
• 
The criminalization of free speech on college and university campuses has reached epidemic proportions as simply expressing a point of view that runs counter to academic conventional wisdom can lead to ostracization and loss of basic freedoms.
• 
To protect our Constitutional Democracy, it is vital that we teach the next generation of American leaders that the peaceful expression of opinion is not a nuisance or triggering event, but a fundamental freedom all deserve to enjoy.
• 
The media celebrates millionaire athletes using their platform at work to voice their political sentiments, but students do not receive that same respect and support.
• 
This should be an area of bi-partisan agreement, as free speech is a foundational right in our Constitution making possible the kind of dynamic society we all enjoy.
• 
U.S.  Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.was eloquent in reminding us that free speech should not be permitted only when we like what we may hear, but instead:
• 
"If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."
• 
America will lose its national identity and fundamental freedoms if we don't fight for free speech on college campuses, where the next generation of leaders must learn to listen to and understand not just the ideas they like, but the ideas held by their fellow citizens, whether they like them or not.
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Immigration is not always good for our economy.  Those who say it is are lying to you  (Fox 03/21/2019)
• 
There is a loud debate going on in Washington right now, one that we participate in, about border security — whether to build a wall, how much funding ICE should get and whether our detention centers are big enough to hold everyone they need to hold.
• 
But on a deeper level, there really is no debate, there is instead consensus.
• 
Virtually everyone in the political system knows, as an article of faith, that mass immigration is good for our economy.
• 
Immigrants make us richer.  The Chamber of Commerce often tells us this.  Libertarian think tanks produce studies claiming to prove it's true.
• 
In the Democratic Party, it is a bedrock principle.  America would collapse without a steady torrent of new arrivals from the developing world.
• 
That is what they tell us.  Immigration does not just improve the economy — we wouldn't have an economy without it.
• 
Half of the illegal immigrants pay their taxes, says Hillary Clinton.  You should be impressed and grateful
• 
The left's new position is that immigrants are not just good for America, they are better for America than you are.
• 
They don't complain, they don't create H.R.  issues.
• 
They just do what they're told.  They are the noble workers our leaders have always wanted.
• 
... explained that every single immigrant in America is good, no matter how they got here or why — just by virtue of the fact that they are immigrants.
• 
Ever heard anybody say that about American citizens?  No?  Don't hold your breath.
• 
... something that everyone else believes.  Immigrants make our economy stronger.
• 
Okay, that's the claim.  But it is it true?
• 
Well, in some cases, it is true.  Plenty of immigrants have done a great job in this country.
• 
They are highly patriotic.  They are successful in business.  They are great neighbors and friends.
• 
Everybody knows people like that, and everybody is glad they are here.
• 
But not every immigrant is like every other immigrant.  ... Our current immigration system treats them like they are.
• 
Our government does virtually nothing to separate the good from the bad.
• 
A system like that is not designed to help America.  It is designed for the benefit of foreigners, and by that measure, it has been wildly successful.
• 
... just last year, immigrants living in the United States sent at least $120 billion in remittances to the countries they came from.
• 
... $120 billion is a lot of money.  It is more, for example, than we spent on the first Gulf War.  It is more than the entire Russian military spends every two years.
• 
It is a lot of money, and all of it could be going to Americans, many of whom badly need it.
• 
But instead, Mexico received $33 billion in remittances just last year.  That country's own president admits the Mexican economy would go under without those remittance payments.
• 
In Guatemala, remittances from the United States amounted to a full 11 percent of their entire GDP.  In El Salvador and Honduras, they were 18 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
• 
None of this is an attack on immigrants.  In most cases, they are just helping their families back home — and good for them.
• 
It's not their fault.  It is our fault.
• 
Much of this money has never been taxed at any level.  More than 10 million illegal aliens are believed to be working in this country under the table.
• 
Immigration is good for the economy?  Sure, it can be good.
• 
Immigration is always good for our economy?  More immigration is always better for our economy?
• 
No.  That is a lie.  There is nothing to support that claim.
• 
There is a lot of evidence to disprove it.  Anyone who tells you that — and that's pretty much everyone you see on television — either doesn't understand the subject or is lying to you purposely and maybe both, just so you know.
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Democrats want to change American institutions so they can regain power — whatever it takes  (Fox 03/20/2019)
• 
When the founders of this country designed the American Republic, something we're grateful for obviously, not everyone was impressed by it at the time.
• 
Contemporary liberals were worried it wouldn't work.  They didn't think it would.
• 
They thought that democracy was an inherently weak system.  At some point, they believed, unscrupulous politicians would come to power, change the rules in their favor and establish a one-party state.
• 
What began as government by the people inevitably would become tyranny
• 
For more than two centuries, this country has relied on our institutions — our brilliantly designed and remarkably durable institutions — to survive as an intact democracy.
• 
Donald Trump's election has convinced many on the left that our institutions no longer work.  They must be torched and replaced by a system that will prevent Trump and anyone like Trump from ever being elected again.
• 
That's their goal, and they're starting with the judiciary.
• 
Keep in mind that for a century and a half, the court has been limited to nine justices and by the way, it has worked just fine.
• 
Some of the court's decisions have been wise, others have been misguided, some have been appalling.
• 
But Americans still generally trust that the court is a real institution.  It's on the level.
• 
And that trust in the court and other institutions keeps this country stable.
• 
Would the public still have trust in the court once it becomes an arm of the Democratic Party?
• 
Well the feeling among Democrats is "Who cares what they think?" How people feel is not a concern for the Democratic Party right now.
• 
They want their power back now and forever, and that's why we're hearing calls to abolish the Electoral College.
• 
Still, the fact is the Electoral College does not favor one party or another — and hasn't in history.
• 
The Electoral College keeps the country from becoming a colony of California, Chicago and New York.
• 
It demonstrates that America is a union of equal states, not a collection of provinces that revolve around a few powerful cities.
• 
The Electoral College also discourages the rise of factional parties that dominate only a small portion of the country.
• 
... the best argument for keeping the Electoral College is pretty simple: For 230 years, it has worked, better than any other country systems in history.
• 
But because it didn't help the left win a presidential election two years ago, they want it gone forever, and along with it, any restrictions at all on who can vote — violent felons, illegal aliens and even children.
• 
That's the new Democratic coalition.  Whatever it takes.
• 
The Supreme Court, the Electoral College, voting restricted to citizens — burn it all down. 
• 
Left-wing intellectuals are already arguing the Senate should be abolished.
• 
... the left is already telling us it's immoral to defend our border.
• 
The First and Second Amendments?  They hate those.  They are speed bumps on the way to total control.
• 
Our newly packed Supreme Court could get rid of them — and maybe they will.
• 
But keep in mind that once your institutions have disappeared, it's nearly impossible to rebuild them.
      Liz Peek: It's time to stop apologizing, America.  The endless apologies are wearing us out  (Fox 03/20/2019)
• 
Stop apologizing for being successful, for believing in God, for loving your country, for respecting your rivals, for everything you did or said when you were a teenager, for speaking your mind and – for apologizing.
• 
Stop cowering before the radical correctness police whose legitimacy depends on depicting our nation as a cesspool of racism and inequity.
• 
Stop, for God's sake, trying to be "woke" when you have no idea what that actually means.
• 
This groveling needs to stop.  It conflates genuine misdeeds with thoughtless wanderings and promotes self-appointed morality guardians to a prominence they crave but do not deserve.
• 
Worse, most apologies demanded by the political correctness regulators prove useless.
• 
They do not want remorse; they want attention.
• 
The shaming of our nation does not discriminate.
• 
People on the left are just as vulnerable to attack as those on the right.
• 
Possibly more so since the ideological straightjacket is that much more confining.
• 
The endless apologies (and those are just examples on the left; people on the right have to apologize for their very existence) are wearing us out.
• 
Men everywhere are sorry for decades-old locker room comments or for remarks made in jest, which do not meet today's uber-sensitive standards.
• 
They have to apologize for having a Y chromosome.
• 
Well-meaning people in the United States are shocked to find themselves playing defense, having to defend capitalism, the Constitution, investing, the Electoral College, religion, ambition, and our way of life.
• 
Why all this groveling?  You can thank today's social media warriors, who happily crush anyone challenging today's liberal playbook.
• 
If you don't think climate change is an existential threat, likely to kill us all in 12 years, you are an idiot.
• 
Worse, you are a pawn of the hydrocarbon-using meat-eating-cow-farting- industrial complex, satisfying your appetites at the expense of the universe.
• 
If you don't agree that the United States systematically discriminates against women, you are anti-women.  There is no middle ground.
• 
If you don't think the United States is racist, you are in denial.  Or, more likely, you are racist yourself.
• 
If you disagree with O'Rourke, and don't think that capitalism is "unfair, unjust and racist", as he recently described it, you are a pig.
• 
It is time for Americans to stand up to the continued shaming.
      Laura Ingraham: Activists are in our schools and they're numbing Generation E to socialism  (Fox 03/19/2019)
• 
What do carbon, ice and an egg all have in common?
• 
They're all connected to recent stories involving "Generation E" - the Entitlement Generation. 
• 
... many of you were wondering how these kids were permitted to just blow off school, shut down entire city streets, and inconvenience other students who actually want to do this thing called study. 
• 
Was it easier hanging out with your friends and emoting about saving the planet and chanting really badly than studying, let's say, the Federalist papers or doing your physics lab?
• 
Well, come on, that's an easy answer, especially when schools excuse the absences, teachers themselves are encouraging the protests or the overwhelmingly left-wing and college admissions undoubtedly count activism as a legitimate extracurricular activity. 
• 
And naturally, members of Generation E believe they should get into the best colleges, even if they do not have the best grades or the best course.
• 
And they develop, by the way, this warped view of their own self-importance because Mommy and Daddy raised them to believe that they were special, really special.  Special in every extra special way.
• 
I think it's important to ask this: What's the end result here?
• 
Well, many of these young people — and it's not just the wealthy kids — grow up to be demanding entitled adults, and even ingrates.
• 
And at a time when American students are falling behind in science and math and reading, more and more kids at the same time here are indulged and even encouraged to become political activists before they've even earned their first paycheck.
• 
forget about mastering things like math or science or life skills, such as manners or self-reliance, or speaking and writing ability.
• 
And why bother with all that, when society celebrates you for being a punk with a political point of view. 
• 
... grad students are now demanding that the school remove ICE and border patrol job listings from their career services platform.
• 
Why?  Because the university should not "allow racist and abusive organization like this to recruit students."
• 
My friends, it's not just on American shores.  Take this example from Australia.
• 
A 17-year old cracked an egg on the head of a right-wing politician.
• 
The politician stupidly took a swipe or swing at the kid and the video of the incident went viral.
• 
Well, that's when the praise from celebs starts coming in.  ... "I love that guy.  I hope he inspires copycats.  Everyone should be like Egg Boy.  Everyone."
• 
So if the target is someone not telling the social justice line, it's okay to assault him, even have copycats. 
• 
...  Generation E activists have their own set of demands - free college, free health care, a guaranteed standard of living and a free pass if they're living in the country illegally.
• 
They also would require that you accept their views on everything from climate change to immigration to economic policy because they're entitled.
• 
Republicans should take heed of these trends and movements and offer a better alternative for the next generation.
• 
These are smart kids.  Republicans must offer a future where they don't have to wait on the government to give them what they can earn for themselves and where they'll feel better about it — and they'll feel better about themselves.
• 
Activists, though, are in our schools and they're aggressively propagandizing, Hollywood, and even churches, do as well and what they're selling is a political world view that numbs the young to socialism.
• 
That's the endgame. 
• 
It's an exercise in wealth confiscation that will leave us less free, less prosperous and less tied to that age-old American value that hard work makes the man.
• 
Oh, well, though, if you feel offended that I just said "man," then you are an honorary member of Generation E. 
• 
You're entitled to your opinion, but I'm not entitled or required to celebrate it.
      Thomas Sowell: The dangers of the 'social justice' vision  (Fox 03/16/2019)
• 
... demonstrated facts in the world of reality raise the crucial question as to whether the redistribution of income or wealth can actually be done, in any comprehensive and sustainable sense. 
• 
Where, instead, there is simply a humanitarian desire to see the less fortunate have better prospects for a better life, the ‘social justice' argument is both unnecessary and an impediment to joining forces toward that end with others who do not happen to share the implicit assumption of that particular social vision.
• 
The undeniable fact that life has never been remotely "fair" – in the sense of presenting equal likelihoods of achieving economic prosperity or other benefits – has led many people to conclude that human biases are the reason.
• 
There is no question that human biases have contributed to unfair prospects.
• 
But it is a complete non sequitur to say that human biases are the sole, or even primary, causes of unequal prospects, without hard evidence to support that conclusion.
• 
... the insistence on believing that human biases are the primary cause of disparities in outcomes ignores a vast range of evidence to the contrary.
• 
This is not to say that nothing can be done to offer more people more opportunities.
• 
But how it is done can be either helpful or harmful, depending on how well we understand and deal with the world as it is, rather than according to some vision that might seem more attractive, for whatever reason.
• 
Despite the inability to confiscate and redistribute human capital, nevertheless human capital is – ironically – one of the few things that can be spread to others without those with it having any less remaining for themselves.
• 
But one of the biggest obstacles to this happening is the ‘social justice' vision, in which the fundamental problem of the less fortunate is not an absence of sufficient human capital, but the presence of other people's malevolence.
• 
For some, abandoning that vision would mean abandoning a moral melodrama, starring themselves as crusaders against the forces of evil.
• 
How many are prepared to give up all that – with all its psychic, political and other rewards – is an open question.
• 
Certainly there have been many examples of times and places where money or other physical wealth has been confiscated by governments or looted by mobs.
• 
But, physical wealth is a product of human capital – the knowledge, skills, talents and other qualities that exist inside the heads of people – where it cannot be confiscated.
• 
Confiscating physical wealth for the purpose of redistribution is confiscating something that will be used up over time, and cannot be replaced without the human capital that created it.
• 
While it is possible to hire teachers and buy books, it is not possible to purchase a cultural past that will prepare and orient all people toward the acquisition of the skills, habits and attitudes that are decisive for human capital.
      There are just nine steps from freedom to socialism to societal breakdown  (Fox 03/16/2019)
• 
The journey from a free society to socialism ... does not occur overnight.  It's a stepped process that begins slowly and ends with a rush.
• 
Step 1.  Massive Government Spending.
• 
Socialist states have government at the center of their economies and feature enormous spending programs.
• 
In early 1990s Sweden often cited as a socialist state, government spending exceeded 70 percent of its economy.  Under President Jefferson, government spending was approximately 2 to 3 percent of the economy.  Today, we are at 36 percent.
• 
Government education, retirement, and medical care — nearly cradle to grave spending — are three cornerstones of future socialist states.
• 
Obama once said you can create a governing majority of those dependent on government.
• 
Step 2.  Massive Tax Systems that Reduce Incentives.
• 
Throughout history, tax systems start out simple and wind up complex and burdensome.
• 
By the end of Rome's socialism under Diocletian, according to the historian Will Durant, taxation "rose to such heights that men lost the incentive to work or earn, and an erosive context began between lawyers finding devices to evade taxes and lawyers formulating laws to prevent evasion," which led Romans to flee, seeking "refuge among the barbarians."
• 
Step 3.  Reduced Growth Leading to Economic Stagnation.
• 
Over the last 20 years, the European Union, which featured socialist and semi-socialist states, had almost zero economic growth.
• 
Over the last 60 years, while our governments grew to 36 percent of the economy and imposed trillions in regulation, our growth slipped from an average of 4 percent to 2 percent.
• 
Step 4.  Deficits.
• 
In semi-socialist Greece, once on the brink of being a failed state, government debt, as a percentage of the economy, is nearly 180 percent.
• 
That would be like you having credit card debt nearly double your income.
• 
Step 5.  Governments Print Money.
• 
Inflation is the result of governments increasing the money supply beyond the needs of economic growth.
• 
Step 6.  Government Fixes Prices and Declares When Goods Can be Sold.
• 
Diocletian set wage and price controls for socialist Rome.
• 
Step 7.  Underground Economies Rise
• 
The more crushing taxation, spending, inflation, and regulations are, the larger the underground economy
• 
People turn to a barter system because paper money becomes worthless.
• 
Step 8.  Class Warfare Begins Tearing the Fabric of Society.
• 
Historically, class warfare (the fight between classes of haves and have-nots) begins in earnest as economies stagnate.
• 
Of ancient Greece, Plato described "two cities .  .  .  one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, the one at war with the other."
• 
According to Durant, the "poor schemed to despoil the rich by legislation and revolution [and] the rich organized for protection against the poor."
• 
Ancient Greece's bitter class warfare included not only government redistribution, but a distrust of "democracy as empowered envy" – a certain outcome, in the U.S., if we abandon the Electoral College.
• 
Step 9.  Total Societal Discord.
• 
Also in ancient Greece, debtors, when the legislative ransoming of the rich's wealth was not enough, murdered creditors as in Mytilene.
• 
All along the way, the power of government grows and rights correspondingly diminish.
• 
Often initiated by a seduced vote of the people, in time, socialism is maintained by force.
• 
... the fall of the Roman Republic and Greek democracy still serve as harsh warnings to large governments like our own.
• 
Altogether, only a fool would rush into more government spending and irretrievable government dependence.
• 
The wise should rather seek to reduce government in the hopes of avoiding the socialist mistakes of the past.
• 
See related Socialist Economy (12/18/2018), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Ocasio-Cortez’s ignorance proves admissions fraud is the symptom, not cause, of America’s education crisis  (Fox 03/15/2019)
• 
Unfortunately, admissions fraud is the least of the nation's academic problems – a symptom, rather than the cause, of the degradation of American higher education.
• 
What unknown fact does the scandal expose?
• 
Wealthy parents have long relied on a properly timed donation to improve their children's chances at admission to college.
• 
And it isn't just the wealthy who play the system to gain an advantage.
• 
Legacies, athletes, and favored racial minorities all receive preferential treatment from admissions committees to the exclusion of academically better-qualified students.
• 
American universities have never considered academic merit the sole criterion for admittance.
• 
The parents caught up in Tuesday's sting simply exploited this reality to a criminal extreme.
• 
An even more troubling question is not how the deficient students matriculated but how they graduated.
• 
Over his six-decade career at Harvard, Professor Harvey Mansfield has witnessed grade inflation reach such ludicrous heights that he now gives students two different grades: one that will appear on their transcripts and another that they deserve.
• 
In 2017, Yale changed its course requirements such that an English major may now graduate without ever having read Shakespeare.
• 
A 2007 survey from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute showed that college students graduate with less knowledge of history, politics, and economics than they had before they entered.
• 
The admissions scam succeeded for so long because everyone knew once the sub-par students made it into these schools they were unlikely to encounter any real scholarly rigor.
• 
So what is a college degree worth these days?
• 
Millennial congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez majored in Economics and graduated cum laude from a private university that costs nearly $70,000 per year.
• 
Since entering Congress, she has struggled to articulate even basic economic concepts.
• 
Last month, AOC blocked Amazon from relocating tens of thousands of jobs near her congressional district because she failed to understand the difference between a tax incentive and a slush fund.
• 
On Tuesday, during congressional testimony, Ocasio-Cortez appeared bemused as Wells Fargo CEO explained the basic function of a bank.
• 
If Ocasio-Cortez represents the quality of an Economics degree from BU, the university should lose its accreditation.
• 
The liberal arts enable us to understand and earn our liberty.
• 
Unlike professional and mechanical education, the liberal arts do not train students for any particular job.
• 
They are literally the arts of freedom, and no society that abandons liberal education can remain free for long.
• 
Unfortunately, the left's decades-long effort to subvert liberal education through pseudo-academic disciplines, administrative bloat, and outright censorship have transformed even our nation's most elite universities into little more than decadent indoctrination camps.
• 
Compounding the problem, the leveling myth that every American regardless of aptitude or interest ought to receive precisely the same education has saddled an entire generation with a trillion and a half dollars of student debt and degrees worth less than the paper on which they were printed.
• 
The wealthy parents who cheated their children's way into college committed a relatively minor crime, akin to petty theft.
• 
The greater criminals are the academic arsonists who have burned down our institutions of higher learning.
• 
In a democratic republic, our legislators are as benighted or enlightened as our voters.
• 
As go the liberal arts, so goes our liberty.
      Cal Thomas: Socialism appeals to kids who think our government’s a giant ATM – Who will tell them the truth?  (Fox 03/14/2019)
• 
One of the rotten fruits produced by what passes for today's American education system is the ignorance some young people have about socialism.
• 
For young people who weren't alive during the Cold War and the horrors that came from socialism and its evil twin, communism, the notion that they can get free stuff from the government is addictive.
• 
Having sacrificed little for their country (members of the military excluded), too many young people have bought into the idea that rich people and big corporations are evil because they have "stolen" money from others, especially the poor.
• 
... socialism fails "because it's a flawed system based on completely faulty principles that aren't consistent with human behavior and can't nurture the human spirit."
• 
"...  support turns to opposition if people would have to pay more in taxes, if private health insurance were eliminated, if it threatened the current Medicare program, or if it led to delays in medical tests or treatment."
• 
Retreating fast into history is the notion "we can't afford it," an economic mantra accepted and taught to children by a previous and experienced generation that believed in living within one's means.
• 
The rapid demise of socialist Venezuela has apparently had little impact on younger Americans who think the U.S.  government is a large ATM and all they need do is insert a card and money will slide out.
• 
... even left-leaning organizations have calculated that the proposals of Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., would cost $40 trillion.
• 
When he interviewed her during the 2016 campaign, Tapper said that since her proposed tax increases would raise just $2 trillion, how would the then-candidate make up the difference?
• 
She launched into a non-answer answer.  Watch it and weep for the nation, if she has her way.
• 
Ronald Reagan said: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
• 
Will this be the generation that fulfills his prophecy?  Much is riding on the 2020 election.
      Socialists don’t really believe in the socialism they peddle – They love money, Amazon, mansions...  (Fox 03/12/2019)
• 
Can we dispel, once and for all, the notion that "socialists" — "democratic" or otherwise — actually believe in the socialism they peddle?
• 
"Socialists" love money, guns, walls, fossil fuels, Amazon, meat, private jets and cars, luxury apartments, mansions, and paying low taxes as much as anyone else.
• 
"Socialists" just want everyone else controlled under their rule of tyranny.
• 
Do you really think multi-house-owning, seven-figure net worth, $14,500.00-a-month-salary "democratic socialist" Vermont Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, truly believes the "free stuff" balderdash he's regurgitated for decades?
• 
He admires Fidel Castro because he probably wants to be just like him, and he's enamored with bread lines because, like a good "socialist," Sanders knows that the most addictive drug is government dependency.
• 
New York Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasted no time getting a fancy pad (she earns about the same amount as Bread Line Bernie).  ... in Washington, D.C., where average monthly rents are higher only in 10 other cities across the globe.
• 
President Obama?  You aren't still duped by his "fundamental transformation" schtick, are you?
• 
He and Michelle don't have a wall around their $8.1 million mansion, but there are many scary-looking bodyguards armed with scary-looking guns.
• 
If the Obamas' down payment was 20 percent, then their monthly mortgage bill is about $45,000.00.
• 
Redistribution of wealth!
• 
It's no coincidence that an alarmingly large segment of the American electorate — especially our youth — is now going steady with socialism.
• 
It's not our youth's fault, though; it's our fault.
• 
The shaping of malleable minds doesn't begin in college; it begins in elementary school and continues in middle and high school; higher education is just the higher-priced socialism re-education camp.
• 
The "free college" ploy is evil genius; college debt hovers around $1.5 trillion, in large part due to the fallacy of college as a "right."
• 
Once something becomes a "right," our tax dollars are thrown at it ad infinitum; for you "socialists" out there, when money is thrown at something, inflation sets in, and costs surge.
• 
The Democratic scam was, and is, brilliant: use Americans' hard-earned dollars to "transform" our youth into Che Guevera T-shirt wearing idol worshipers; then, when the collegiate tab exceeds the price of a single-family house, sell "free" college — which is just another tax that will most burden the middle class.
• 
Other than Presidents Reagan and Trump, and Speaker Newt Gingrich, try to name another elected Republican in the last five decades who unequivocally drew a line in the sand opposing socialism.
• 
... now's the time for those who give a darn about the well-being of our youth to have our "come to Jesus" moment, and recognize that Democrats always prey upon our kids.
• 
If we're willing to ask them specific questions that nakedly expose socialist hypocrisies, as well as the history of mass murdering socialist regimes, something pleasantly surprising will happen: our youth will again learn to love capitalism, liberty and realistic solutions to our many challenges.
• 
That's re-education we can all support.
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Ocasio-Cortez takes a swing at Reagan — Here's what she doesn't get about our 40th president  (Fox 03/12/2019)
• 
... freshman Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., threw sand in the eyes of capitalism while continuing her sing-song of socialism.
• 
Amongst those in the crosshairs of her juvenile rantings were our 32nd president, FDR, a Democrat who authored the New Deal, and our 40th President – Ronald Reagan – who was criticized for "screwing over working class Americans."
• 
While you have to admire her spunk and passion, perhaps it would benefit Ms.  Ocasio-Cortez to check her facts, listen more, talk less and learn from those who have gone before her – including the widely beloved and admired Ronald Reagan.
• 
He not only inspired our nation, but in many ways changed the world.
• 
That's quite a resume for her, a rookie, to be taking a swing at.
• 
Ronald Reagan famously said, "It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so many things that aren't so."
• 
AOC, and much of her generation, sadly epitomize this quote.
• 
And the irony is that only someone who lives in a free society can even make those claims and talk about embracing socialism as she does.
• 
AOC and the progressive left are in love with an illusion, the virtual reality of socialism - the hologram of its promised benefits, rather than the realities of what it actually is.
• 
The truth is there is no historic precedence for the success of socialism or anything the progressive left is currently peddling. 
• 
Socialism has begun to parade itself like a proud peacock, fanning out its beautiful feathers of enticement and entitlement with a promise of equity.
• 
It's often been said that if you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart.  And if you're not a conservative when you're older, you have no brain.
• 
AOC is a product of the transformation of the American education system from a place of learning to a place of political indoctrination.
• 
She is confident in her ideology because she believes that if she is morally right then facts and statistics don't really matter. 
• 
In fact, the true danger of her ideas and future proposed legislation is not in what she and her progressive colleagues are telling us.
• 
The true danger is in what they are NOT telling us.  The danger of omission.
• 
The danger of omission is that all these seemingly too-good-to-be-true promises are indeed just that.  Too good to be true.
• 
In addition, the underlying danger of taking the bait of all of these supposed freebies and promised benefits is the hook that lies just beneath.  The hook of government control.
• 
While the idea of safety, security, health and prosperity for everyone is enticing, if it comes without personal cost then it also comes without personal choice.
• 
For every bit of reliance on government you embrace, you sacrifice much more in freedom.
• 
And once you surrender, it's hard, if not impossible, to reclaim.
• 
Is there anything the government does that you want more of?
• 
Ronald Reagan warned us against socialism or any form of greater government influence or control, saying: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
• 
We would be wise to heed his warning and remember that government is rarely the solution to our problems – it often IS the problem.
• 
Government doesn't make your life better.  Only YOU can make your life better.
      Ilhan Omar is an anti-Semite who brands criticism of her as anti-Muslim bigotry – but she’s the real bigot  (Fox 03/10/2019)
• 
Rep.  Ilhan Omar in unquestionably an anti-Semite, but cloaks herself in victimhood – portraying herself as a "Muslim under siege" unfairly attacked because of her religion.
• 
This is how Islamism – a hateful political ideology pretending to be a religion – operates.
• 
Like Omar, I am a naturalized American Muslim woman of color.
• 
But unlike the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, I don't hate Jews and I don't hate the Jewish state of Israel.
• 
... Muslims, who are the majority population in 50 nations, should be able to accept tiny Israel as the only Jewish nation in the world.
• 
Muslim nations and their citizens would be far better off if they had normal diplomatic, trade and cultural relations with Israel.
• 
The Democrats watered down a resolution originally condemning anti-Semitism – a unique, genocidal hatred – into one condemning bigotry against a broad range of groups.
• 
Worse, they failed to sanction or condemn Omar for the vile hatred she has expressed repeatedly to the Jewish people and their national homeland.
• 
Had a member of Congress repeatedly attacked Muslims in the way Omar has attacked Jews, he or she would have been rightly condemned and punished. 
• 
Prestigious congressional committee assignments would have been taken away.
• 
Omar's anti-Semitism has been in full-throated, open display entirely consistent with the crude Islamist neo-anti-Semitism that typifies the indoctrinated Islamist.
• 
When justifiably attacked for her repeated anti-Semitic comments and tweets, Omar quickly shapeshifted into citing victimhood based on her Muslim identity.
• 
This is the classic inversion practiced by Islamists who seek to be privileged as a religious minority in pluralist democracies – at the expense of denying other minorities the very privileges they claim.
• 
Thus, the sentiment directed at Omar in response to her obscene and clearly defined anti-Semitism now becomes falsely labeled as "anti-Muslim bigotry."
• 
On the left and in much of the media, Omar was portrayed as the victim – not the attacker for her anti-Semitic rants.
• 
This is how Islamism operates.  In plain view, by assuming the role of the persecuted minority and by seeking the protections and freedoms awarded to religions.
• 
But Islamism warrants the scrutiny and skepticism we apply to political ideologies – especially ideologies that preach hatred and embrace terrorism and other forms of violence.
• 
We should think of Islamism not as a religion but as a political ideology and we should see Islamist Muslims as political ideologues.
• 
There was no justification for broadening the House resolution to denounce bigotry against many groups instead of focusing on a denunciation of anti-Semitism.
• 
Why would any decent person refuse to condemn the hatred of Jews when Jews have been attacked?
• 
Like other anti-Semites, Omar does not see herself as a bigot.
• 
Following the example of Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan – who last month called her "sweetheart" and urged her not to apologize for her anti-Semitic remarks – she sees herself as a defiant icon of tolerance for other groups.
• 
Omar and other anti-Semites believe they are quite justified in attacking Jews.
• 
They see their anti-Semitism not as hatred but as a revelation – theirs is a brilliant understanding of the "true nature" of Jews, of U.S.-Israel relations, and of the "Israel lobby" in their view.
• 
The congresswoman and her defenders – including seemingly progressive Democrats – view her anti-Semitism as a defensive response to anti-Muslim bigotry.
• 
This is precisely how Nazi ideology portrayed the anti-Semitism that justified the mass murder of the Holocaust.
• 
Encompassing all bigotries with anti-Semitism in the House resolution trivializes the single most-enduring and lethal genocidal hatred that has coursed through civilizations.
• 
The House resolution elevates criticism of Islamists to the equivalence of genocidal hatred directed at the only persecuted minority in the world – the Jews – who have been confronted by their own near-extinction.
• 
The protection of any future anti-Semitic speech – by a Muslim in particular – is now established.
• 
To criticize a Muslim for anti-Semitism will now get you labeled a hater of all Muslims.
• 
This is a victory for America's Islamists – and a defeat for all other Americans, not just for American Jews.
• 
See related I'm ... Anti-Semitic (Bob Gorrell, 02/13/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: 1 million illegal aliens at the border is a crisis — 'manufactured' or not  (Fox 03/07/2019)
• 
Do you ever get the feeling that news stories come and go faster than they used to?
• 
Maybe it's the effect of staring at screens all day, jumping from snippet to snippet.
• 
Our brains have been rewired to think only in the present tense.
• 
Or maybe there is a lot more news than there used to be.
• 
Some world historic crisis hits every four days, knocking the last world historic crisis from our collective consciousness forever.
• 
Can you remember what happened 70 days ago?  How about 56 days ago?
• 
The president said we needed a border wall.
• 
The Democrats scoffed at him.  They claimed the entire immigration crisis was "manufactured."
• 
The news media heartily weighed in on that debate.  In case you can't remember whose side the media took, they called it, in clip after clip, a "manufactured crisis."
• 
All together now: "manufactured crisis." Six syllables.
• 
Learn them, dear robots.  Repeat them until they seem plausible.
• 
Move on, they will never remember you lied.
• 
And that's exactly what the news media did.  It's what they always do.
• 
But reality has an unpleasant habit of reinserting itself into these things.
• 
You can dismiss a crisis as manufactured, but that doesn't mean the crisis doesn't exist.
• 
In the last month, 76,000 illegal aliens crossed the U.S.-Mexico border — the highest number in a decade.
• 
That's more than the entire population of San Francisco or Boston or Washington, D.C., every single year, coming by foot, over just one of our international borders.
• 
That is a crisis, manufactured or not.
• 
How are the people in charge responding to this crisis?
• 
Well, they are still lying — and not just lying, because that's never enough for them.
• 
They are lying and sneering at the same time, all with maximum self-righteousness.
• 
They are selling us a steaming load of BS and screaming at us for not believing it.
• 
Young pioneer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is letting you know that if you want your border secured, you are a bad American.
• 
The good Americans are the ones trying to sneak into America.
• 
"The president should not be asking for more money to an agency that has systematically violated human rights."
• 
"The president should be really defending why we are funding such an agency at all.  Those women and children trying to come here with nothing but the shirts on their back to create an opportunity and to provide for this nation are acting more in an American tradition than this president is right now."
• 
Yes.  They are the real Americans.
• 
"Where was the concern last week when 26 Democrats voted for a G.O.P.  amendment to expand I.C.E.  powers rooted in the racist plus false trope that Latino immigrants are more dangerous than U.S.-born citizens?"
• 
"The entire premise of a wall is not based in fact.  It's based on a racist plus non- evidence based trope that immigrants are dangerous.  Yet some Dems are willing to 'compromise' and spend billions on a trope because we have accepted some kind of racism as real politic in America."
• 
She thinks it is fresh and cutting edge.  She thinks she is the future.
• 
In fact, she is completely out of touch.  She has no idea what America is like.
• 
Her tiny little world of fair trade coffee shops is thriving.  She thinks everyone lives like her.  That's how closed her mind is.
• 
For millions of other people, the country they grew up in is crumbling.  Bad immigration policy is not the only reason for that, but it's a major reason for it.
• 
Every year in America, drug overdoses kill more Americans than the entire Vietnam War. 
• 
One of the main causes of that is fentanyl.  Much of which is smuggled across the Mexican border.
• 
In all of fiscal year 2013, the Feds seized a total of two pounds of fentanyl.  That's enough to kill 450,000 people.
• 
In 2018, last year, Customs seized 1,747 pounds of fentanyl.  That is almost 900 times as much.
• 
It's enough to kill 396 million people.  That's more people than live in the United States and Canada combined.
• 
Now, if that bothers you, are you a racist?
• 
Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the morons say, yes, you are.
• 
Everyone else understands that borders are what make a country.  If you can't control who enters, you are a failed state.
• 
Meanwhile, the border degrades, and unaccompanied minors keep showing up here.
• 
Word has gotten out that almost nobody will ever be deported from this country, just claim asylum and get released.
• 
About 22 million illegal immigrants already live in the United States.
• 
That's more people than the populations of 16 U.S.  states combined.  That is more than the entire New York City metropolitan area, just of people here illegally.
• 
But remember, it's not a crisis.
• 
It's a guaranteed Democratic majority for the next 100 years — and that's a good thing.  Ask CNN.
• 
See related Leading the Caravan (Sean Delonas, 10/22/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Dreamer (Glenn McCoy, 09/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      If there is silence, Jew and Israel hatred grows with amazing speed  (INN 03/07/2019)
• 
Rabbi Meir Kahane ..  once wrote that "Turning the other cheek has never worked."
• 
But too often, Israeli responses to Palestinian Arab aggression have been just that.
• 
Bombing empty buildings in Gaza.
• 
Warning the hate-filled Arab terrorists, who call themselves Palestinians, to remove themselves to safety from buildings before bombing them.
• 
Enduring the most unspeakable and relentless Palestinian Arab terror and responding to it with velvet gloved hands.
• 
None of this works and must end.
• 
And so it is when dealing with anti-Semitism.
• 
If there is silence and weak response, Jew and Israel hatred grows with amazing speed.
• 
"Jews have been denied their freedom, their property, and even their lives by any neighborhood bully or national entity."
• 
For that and because he spoke out about appeasing a hostile Arab world, he was persecuted and his party, Kach, expelled from the Knesset by the trembling Israelites of both the Left and the Right – sadly mostly from the Right.
• 
Then, when he was back in America, he was cut down; murdered by a Muslim Arab.  A searing Jewish tragedy.
• 
"It may seem paradoxical, but the more aggressive we are, the less Jew-hatred there will be."
• 
Rabbi Kahane, if he was still among us, would recognize the plague that afflicts Israel.
• 
They include the unacceptable acceptance of hostile and treasonous Arab members of the Knesset and of Israeli Leftists who seem to have a death wish for the survival of the Jewish state. 
• 
It is beyond all comprehension how and why so many Jews remain in the Democrat Party for one minute longer.
• 
Are they not moved by the growing dhimmitude and anti-Jewish sentiments among rank and file Democrats?
• 
Are they not aware of where this age old hatred for Jews - and increasingly the Jewish state – will lead to as the detestable Ilhan Omar spews her anti-Jewish venom; a pestilence no doubt sucked in with her mother's milk and with large doses of Islamic Koranic hatred towards Jews and Christians alike.
• 
Is there some deep pathological disturbance in the minds of Democrat Jews that keep them bound and lashed to an increasingly anti-Semitic and loony tunes party?
• 
Perhaps it is the same disease which afflicts Leftists in Israel.
• 
"We hold that Zionism is moral and just.  And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmed agree with it or not."
• 
He also said that, "silence is despicable."
• 
Take note Jewish Democrats as you face growing anti-Semitism throughout the ranks of the Democrat machine and the irrational Democrat fear of upsetting the proliferating and Sharia imposing Islamic pressure and front groups.
• 
There are some 11 Jewish Democrats in the House.
• 
If they remain without vigorously and effectively protesting the filth that spews from Omar's mouth, then they shall be forever condemned by history and will have allowed the flood gates of anti-Semitism in America to open wide.
• 
Meanwhile, the spineless and dhimmi Democrats - especially Nancy Pelosi - treat Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Linda Sarsur, Rashid Tlaib, ad nauseam, with the velvet glove treatment.
• 
"The Jew learns not by way of reason but from catastrophes.  He won't buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky; he waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia – then he makes up his mind."
• 
See related I'm ... Anti-Semitic (Bob Gorrell, 02/13/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Ilhan Omar 'knows exactly what she is doing' with comments deemed anti-Semitic, author says  (Fox 03/07/2019)
• 
"We understand why you're doing it, it represents your constituents, it represents the new wing of the Democratic Party.  There's benefits to be accrued.  Go to it!"
• 
"There is a far-left wing of their party that ... is in true disagreement with them.  They truly do not like Israel.  They truly believe all the things that Omar has been saying."
• 
"She believes it.  That should really be clear to everybody by now.  She's been trying to tell us for a long time and it's been explained away multiple times now.  There's been apologies made for her."
• 
See related I'm ... Anti-Semitic (Bob Gorrell, 02/13/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The truth about socialism: It doesn't care about the middle class.  It's about keeping the ruling class...  (Fox 03/05/2019)
• 
Q: What did socialists use before candles?
• 
A: Electricity.
• 
It's an old joke, sure.  But it's no laughing matter.  Just ask the people of Venezuela.
• 
The socialist regime there nationalized the electricity sector a dozen years ago.
• 
Today, blackouts in the once-prosperous Latin American nation have become routine.
• 
Electricity isn't all that's in short supply.  Gasoline is scarce in the oil-rich nation, as are food and medicine.
• 
Meanwhile, the regime concentrates on violently repressing protests and burning humanitarian aid as it approaches its borders.
• 
After 20 years of socialism, Venezuela is a failed state.
• 
And that should surprise no one.  Socialism is a rigid ideology that always ends in tyranny.
• 
The prime example is the Soviet Union.  Lenin and Stalin's iron rule brought death to 20-25 million victims.
• 
"Enemies of the state" were executed by firing squads, sent to forced labor camps in the Gulag, perished in country-wide forced famines, experimented on in "psychiatric" hospitals, and summarily deported from their homes to the distant steppes of Russia.
• 
No less totalitarian in their practices were the Castro brothers, who promised freedom and democracy when they came to power in Cuba.
• 
Six decades later, the Cuban people are still waiting for the first free election.
• 
Socialism always promises progress, but it inevitably delivers scarcity, corruption and decay.
• 
Socialism has little regard for the middle class.  It's all about securing and maintaining power for the ruling class.
• 
All of these horrors are inevitable because socialism is built on a fatal conceit.
• 
Modern socialists believe that the world has become so complicated, so complex, so globalized, that regular citizens just can't manage things.
• 
We, and only we (say the socialists) are equipped to run things
• 
Rather than empower the common man, socialists believe in empowering bureaucracy.
• 
It's an elitist, intellectually arrogant belief, and it's dangerous.
• 
As Ronald Reagan noted ... "Either we accept the responsibility for our own destiny, or we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual [elite] in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."
• 
"America will never be a socialist country!" So President Trump declared last month in his rousing State of the Union speech.
• 
That should be the fervent prayer of all Americans who prize liberty and wish to live our lives our way.
• 
See related Socialism (Antonio Branco, 07/10/2018) cartoon from General picture album
• 
See related Socialist Economy (12/18/2018), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Liz Peek: Socialism vs.  the American way of life will be on the 2020 ballot  (Fox 03/05/2019)
• 
The American way of life is going to be on the ballot in 2020.  Our free enterprise system, our individual liberties and the universal opportunity offered by this great country are under attack.
• 
A wrong choice in the next election could set this nation on a road from which there will be no turning back.
• 
AOC, as she is called, has terrorized her Democrat colleagues into embracing one policy after another that would destroy our capitalist economy.
• 
The Green New Deal, which requires legislators to dictate not only how our energy industries operate but also what kinds of jobs Americans may hold and what their homes will look like, may seem crazy and reckless to most of us, but it has attracted the support of 11 co-sponsors in the Senate and 89 in the House.
• 
All six Democratic senators running for president have signed on.  They apparently don't think it's crazy at all.
• 
Medicare-for-all, also gathering support, is nearly as frightening.
• 
Backers are either willfully ignoring the well-publicized shortcomings of similar systems in the UK or Canada, or they are too lazy to have done their homework.  I suspect both are true.
• 
... a program that kills off the $1 trillion health insurance industry, puts the 600,000 workers in that field out of work, ends all employer-sponsored insurance programs and therefore many, many labor contracts, puts the feds in charge of prioritizing and vetting our health care providers, and sets up the requisite watchdog operation necessary to oversee the vast funds that would flow under the mandate.
• 
Is it possible she is that misinformed?
• 
Are voters that stupid?
• 
Will this country turn its back on an economic system that has created more wealth and provided more opportunity for millions to improve their lives in favor of a socialist utopia that has never, ever succeeded elsewhere?
• 
Will they break from our free enterprise system at a time when every person who wants a job can find one, when real wages are finally moving higher, when Americans are optimistic about their futures?
• 
This is the moment Democrats choose to try to force socialism down our throats?  How can that be?
• 
You can thank President Obama.
• 
Obama ignored the working men and women of this country.
• 
After the financial crisis, Obama did not prioritize putting people back to work.
• 
He focused on ObamaCare, climate change and on winning the Hispanic vote. 
• 
As a result, the economy stuttered forward and wages were stuck.
• 
Disgruntled workers saw investors reaping the rewards of globalization while their own fortunes steadily declined.
• 
Some of those workers elected President Trump, who promised to revive American industry and has kept that promise.
• 
Others bought into Bernie Sanders' politics of envy, believing that successful Americans are profiting from a rigged system that only favors the rich.
• 
The former group will vote to support our way of life; as success stories pile up, we have to hope that the latter group will also vote against the socialist solution.
• 
President Trump is a political neophyte, and as such he gets into trouble.
• 
But for the same reason, he challenges everything.
• 
He asks why we allow China to cheat and steal, why U.S.  exporters to Europe are treated unfairly and why we can't use our energy bounty to move the needle in the Middle East.
• 
He asks, most importantly, what we can do for our workers and how we can grow our economy.
• 
In 2020, he will face off against someone who wants to toss our progress down the drain and forever change the nature of this exceptional nation.
• 
We cannot and must not let that happen.
      Legendary economist on biggest socialism myth  (Fox 03/05/2019)
• 
"I do have a great fear that in the long run we may not make it."
• 
"Socialism is a wonderful sounding idea.  It's only as a reality that it's disastrous."
• 
"Unfortunately so many people today, including in the leading universities, don't pay much attention to evidence."
      Tammy Bruce: Democrats' treatment of the 'Born Alive' bill is a wake-up call  (Fox 02/28/2019)
• 
What normal, decent person could oppose providing care to a living baby struggling on a table?
• 
And yet that is exactly what 44 Democratic senators just did...
• 
Its failure to pass, while horrible, confirms an important revelation: The Democratic Party, the same people who keep telling us that politicians like them should be trusted to completely control our health care, refused to support a measure that would save the life of the most innocent among us.
• 
What does that tell you about their opinion of all of us?
• 
... it's fair to say that the average Democrat, just like the average American in general, is not in favor of murdering a baby as she's being born or leaving her to die through neglect as she suffers on a nearby table after birth.
• 
So why are Democratic politicians pushing this obscenity on society?
• 
Are the Planned Parenthood PAC checks so large they eclipse the natural instinct to save the suffering?
• 
Make no mistake: The revelation over the past several weeks that Democrats have indeed moved to normalize infanticide was a kick in the gut and has reinforced and expanded the common ground Americans share on the issue.
      Tucker Carlson: Yes, there is a fascist threat to America.  But it's not from Trump  (Fox 02/27/2019)
• 
There are some negative things that you could say about Donald Trump.
• 
What is interesting that the left almost never says them and instead, they spend a lot of time telling us how Trump is a fascist, who poses an imminent and terrifying threat to our constitutional order.
• 
Sounds pretty scary.  Is it true?
• 
Well, consider the major freedoms protected by our Bill of Rights, the document that makes America distinct from all other countries - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, the right to keep and bear arms, due process under the law.
• 
Who exactly is threatening those freedoms?  Is it Donald Trump?
• 
Whatever his faults, it is not Donald Trump.
• 
It is the left, and they are doing it more aggressively than they ever have before.
• 
As usual, their critique of Trump is pure projection.
• 
If you want to know what the left is actually doing, listen to the way they attack other people.
• 
Start with our foundational freedom — speech.  If they can tell you what to say, you are not free.
• 
There is nothing they can't make you do.  That is why the Founders put it first.  It is the freedom that comes before all others.
• 
The left has spent decades trying to weaken the First Amendment.
• 
They have done it in the sneakiest way possible, by creating phony hate speech exemptions out of thin air.
• 
So far, the courts have not accepted this idea, the idea that you can limit speech simply because someone else doesn't like it.
• 
So the left has a new plan now.  They have allied with big corporations to make it impossible for people who say the wrong things to make a living in this country.
• 
Across the country, the left is working to crush any organization that stands in the way of its power.
• 
An entire news media with one perspective — that is their goal.  Total conformity — which is the same thing as obedience.
• 
To achieve that, they are working to nullify the Second Amendment as well.
• 
Once you understand that their goal is total control, their policies begin to make sense.
• 
... if you really cared about the environment, the quality of air and water, you would push China to stop polluting.
• 
China is the world's biggest polluter by far, but the Green New Deal doesn't even mention China.
• 
Instead, it's all about controlling you — the job you have, the house you live in, the vehicle you drive.
• 
One morning you'll wake up, and Commissar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be proposing control over who is allowed to have children and when.
• 
Twenty years ago, seizing people's possessions and giving them away to atone for the sins of those who died more than a century ago, that was considered a fringe position.
• 
Nobody said that out aloud and wanted to be elected.  Today, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro — they have all said they are for it.
• 
Fascism?  Yes, it is a threat.  And it's not coming from the White House.
      Here's why what Michael Cohen is doing is so damaging everyday Americans  (Fox 02/27/2019)
• 
America has now seen the very worst of what an attorney can be.
• 
His wanton breach of ethics has harmed not only the profession but, more importantly, the Americans it is meant to serve.
• 
The purpose of the legal profession, or certainly should be, is to serve the interests of clients...
• 
In order to do that, it is the ethical requirement of every attorney in this country NOT to disclose the confidences of his or her client.
• 
In New York, the cannon of ethics reads: "A lawyer shall not knowingly reveal confidential information .  .  .  or use such information to the disadvantage of a client or for the advantage of the lawyer or a third person, unless .  .  .  the client gives informed consent."
• 
... that is no minor obligation.  It is essential to the rights of clients and their ability to obtain justice.
• 
The purpose of the attorney/client privilege is to encourage clients, everyday people, to disclose ALL of their information FREELY to their attorney so that the client can be represented in the very best interest of the CLIENT.
• 
Without that inviolate ability, clients will be weakened in their ability to defend themselves or to pursue their rights.
• 
In a very real sense, an attorney without all the information is an attorney unable to do the best for his or her client. 
• 
Michael Cohen, over and over, purported to knowingly reveal confidential information of his client.
• 
No rational person, after witnessing Cohen, wouldn't wonder whether their attorney could or would do the same to them.
• 
Therefore and logically, any person who feels that the information they tell their attorney is not made in confidence, they will withhold information and therefore their ability to defend themselves and to be represented will be terribly compromised.
• 
... when Mueller raided the office of attorneys and took all or substantially all of that attorney's office documents, it sent a message to clients that the attorney/client privilege does not really exist.
• 
The effect of that is to make clients wonder that if they disclose information and documents to their attorney, they could be seized.
• 
The gravity of the above cannot be overstated.  It strikes at the rights of every American.
• 
The fact that the Democrats in Congress gave Cohen a forum to do the above, indeed, that they encouraged him to do so, should never be forgotten.
      Michael Goodwin: What Trump hate crime 'victims' hope to get out of their lies  (Fox 02/25/2019)
• 
... after alleging that Smollett, who is black and gay, "took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career," Jackson added, "I'm left hanging my head and asking, ‘Why?' "
• 
Good question.  Why, indeed, would an actor reportedly making $1.8 million a year stoop so low and risk it all?
• 
The short answer is greed; Smollett allegedly wanted a raise.
• 
The added element also explains much of the vicious, anything-goes turmoil roiling our nation: Smollett thought he could get away with it.
• 
And why not?  One look around America would tell him that blaming President Trump and his supporters for the worst things imaginable is the fastest way to become a celebrated victim and a hero to half the country.
• 
And victimhood is making some people very, very rich.
• 
Smollett could have correctly concluded that events don't even have to be true to be solid gold.  Enough people are willing to believe the worst because, hating Trump with every fiber of their being, they need the worst to be true.
• 
The more serious the charge, the more they fantasize it will be the death knell of his presidency.
• 
That makes Trump haters easy prey for con men.
• 
If police are correct, Smollett played his trick by scripting events designed to activate all the erogenous zones on the political and cultural left.
• 
His claim that his "attackers" made racist and anti-gay slurs, threatened to lynch him and declared Chicago "MAGA country," was an immediate smash hit with his intended audience.
• 
Overnight he became a household name as Hollywood and Democrats — excuse the repetition — embraced his story without a shred of doubt.
• 
See, see, they said, that's Trump's America for you.
• 
Their enthusiasm reflected their self-interest.  Smollett's story was tailored to fit all the corners of the narrative they've been selling...
• 
... Comey and McCabe didn't exist in a vacuum.  They were part of an administration that weaponized law enforcement and intelligence to boost their preferred candidate, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and destroy Trump.
• 
As for Clinton herself, she lost an election she should have won in a cakewalk — yet managed to launch the lie that Trump stole victory.
• 
Her lie remains an article of faith among deluded millions who believe it because they want it to be true.
• 
But Smollett's scheme would have made no sense unless he could count on the complete cooperation of one other player: the media.  He would need them to swallow his story, then amplify it and repeat it a thousand times over.
• 
Naturally, they did, because they, too, desperately wanted it to be true.
• 
He hand-picked his interviewers, and played the role of his life — a defiant victim of Trump Nation.
• 
He might even have gotten a call for a starring role in Sunday's Oscar telecast.
• 
The world would watch movie stars cry real tears of admiration and sympathy.
• 
Smollett would bask in their salute, a bold, strong member of the resistance.
• 
What could go wrong?
• 
See related One of His Better Performances (Tom Stiglich, 02/18/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
      5 things Bernie Sanders doesn't want you to know about socialism  (Fox 02/24/2019)
• 
Sanders ... is a self-described socialist who has been peddling destructive collectivist policies for decades — everything from single-payer health care to punitive taxes and radical climate change agreements.
• 
Make no mistake about it, Sanders, who honeymooned in Soviet Russia, wants to fundamentally alter American society and impose a socialist agenda on tens of millions of Americans who want the federal government to stay out of their homes and businesses.
• 
Although the popularity of socialism has clearly increased in recent years, it's largely because most Americans don't understand what socialism is or its long history of failure around the world.
• 
It's up to those of us who support individual liberty and free markets to tell our friends, neighbors, children, and grandchildren the truth about the dangers of socialism.
• 
1.  Socialism has never worked.
• 
The ultimate goal of socialism, according to Karl Marx and his followers, is to create a society in which all people share wealth equally.
• 
But whenever socialism has been attempted, it has always resulted in tyranny.
• 
The reason for this is simple: In order for a society to collectively share wealth, a ruling class first has to be established that will take wealth away from those who have it.
• 
That necessitates giving significant power to a centralized authority, the government. 
• 
2.  Tens of millions have died at the hands of socialist and communist parties.
• 
Because regimes attempting to create socialist utopias inevitably turn to violence, socialism and communism have caused more death and destruction than any other political or religious ideology in the past century.
• 
... there have been more than 167 million people who have been killed, murdered, or exiled in the pursuit of socialism.
• 
It would take roughly 56,000 terrorist events as deadly as the tragic attack by radical Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, to match the misery caused by socialists and communists.
• 
3.  Scandinavian countries do not have socialist economies.
• 
... Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have some large social welfare programs and high individual tax rates, but they also have very little debt, few regulations, and require all people in society, not just the wealthy, to pay a hefty tax burden.
• 
... the corporate tax rates in all three of these Nordic countries is only slightly higher than the current U.S.  rate of 21 percent...
• 
Perhaps most importantly, Scandinavians are not better off than most Americans.
• 
They pay much higher tax rates; earn, on average, lower salaries; and pay significantly more for housing and basic goods and services.
• 
4.  Taxing the wealthy won't pay for Bernie's socialist plans.
• 
Socialists like Sanders say that they can pay for their massive, multi-trillion-dollar programs by raising taxes on the wealthiest earners, but research shows this claim is false.
• 
5.  We need a wealthier world, not wealth redistribution.
• 
Socialists like Bernie Sanders focus nearly all of their time talking about redistributing wealth, but what they never tell you is that research shows that even if the world's wealth were totally redistributed, it would result in all people being relatively poor.
• 
... the world needs more wealth, not wealth redistribution, and history has proven repeatedly that you don't create wealth by stealing it from some to give it to others.
• 
The only way to help the world's impoverished is to enact policies that promote innovation and enhance quality of life for all people.
• 
Thanks to relatively free markets and capitalism, that's been occurring over the past 200 years at breakneck speed.
• 
The last thing we need is a socialist like Bernie Sanders getting in the way.
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Bernie Sanders once said breadlines are good — I grew up in Communist China and I can tell you they're not  (Fox 02/23/2019)
• 
"It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food.  That is a good thing!  In other countries, people don't line up for food.  The rich get the food and the poor starve to death."
• 
Sen.  Sanders is a very lucky guy.  He grew up in a free society with a market economy that supplies an abundance of choices.
• 
Sanders has a history of expressing sympathy and support for leaders of Communist/Marxist revolutions in Latin America despite their troubling records of human rights abuse and the disastrous economic outcomes caused by their socialist policies.
• 
I doubt he's ever had to stand in line for food because had he, even once, he would not have thought it was a good thing.  I know, because my family and I did.
• 
... my parents often had to get up at three or four o'clock in the morning and stand in lines in front of two different grocery stores, waiting for a pound of sugar or flour.
• 
If they showed up late, they knew the only thing waiting for them would be empty shelves.
• 
Yet, according to my parents, we were still lucky because we all survived.
• 
Their generation had to live through the worst famine in human history, the "Great Chinese Famine" from 1959 to 1961, which was caused by Chairman Mao's ruinous socialist policies.
• 
We can only estimate that the death toll during the Chinese Famine ranged between 30 and 60 million.
• 
Despite what Bernie Sanders said in 1985, breadlines are immoral.
• 
They symbolize the failure of socialism.
• 
The only equality socialism has managed to achieve, no matter where it is practiced, is misery.
• 
Anyone who thinks breadlines are "good" undermines the suffering that millions have endured.
• 
Sen.  Sanders and Democratic socialists promise us they will do socialism right this time.
• 
But what they promise us has been promised many times before.
• 
Neither Stalin nor Mao nor any other socialists ever declared that their goal was to bring starvation, mass murder and unimaginable misery to their people.
• 
In the early days of their revolutions, they all had good intentions and they all won popular support by painting a rosy picture for all: Everyone will have adequate food, housing, health care, child care and education.  Sound familiar?
• 
The problem with socialism is not the intentions, but the means necessary to turn those intentions into reality, and the poor results they produce.
• 
Socialist countries usually were able to initially deliver their promises of free stuff by forcefully taking property from rightful owners for the purpose of redistribution.
• 
But the destruction of the rule of law and property rights, and the distortion of markets, always led to the destruction of the economy.
• 
In the end, socialist countries always ran out of free stuff to give and other people's money to spend.
• 
That's when those governments turned their brutal forces against the people they were supposedly trying to help, and started suppressing the voices they were supposedly trying to elevate.
• 
Socialism and democracy are incompatible.
• 
Socialism always leads to authoritarian dictatorship because socialists want everyone else to live only in the way they approve.
• 
But that's anti-freedom and anti-human nature.
• 
Therefore, the only way socialists can get everyone on board is by using force.
• 
It's both sad and dangerous that socialism has become popular in the U.S., especially among the youth.  Have we already forgotten the 100 million deaths attributable to Communism/Socialism over the last 100 years?
• 
It will be critical to call out the nascent totalitarian that lives in the heart of every socialist. 
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialist Economy (12/18/2018), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an economic illiterate — And that's bad news for America  (Fox 02/22/2019)
• 
Amazon's departure cost the city between 25,000 and 40,000 new jobs.  Forget the tech workers whom Amazon would have employed.  Gone are all the unionized construction jobs to build the headquarters, as well as thousands of jobs created by all the small businesses — restaurants, bodegas, dry cleaners and food carts — that were preparing to open or expand to serve Amazon employees.  They are devastated by Amazon's withdrawal.
• 
Ocasio-Cortez was not disturbed at all.  "We were subsidizing those jobs," she said.
• 
"Frankly, if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district, ourselves, if we wanted to.  We could hire out more teachers.  We can fix our subways.  We can put a lot of people to work for that amount of money if we wanted to."
• 
No, you can't.  Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to realize that New York does not have $3 billion in cash sitting around waiting to be spent on her socialist dreams.
• 
The subsidies to Amazon were tax incentives, not cash payouts.
• 
It is Amazon's money, which New York agreed to make tax-exempt, so the company would invest it in building its new headquarters, hiring new workers and generating tens of billions in new tax revenue.
• 
... the Amazon deal would have produced "$27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a nine-fold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters."
• 
Unlike Ocasio-Cortez's imaginary $3 billion slush fund, that is real money that actually could have been used to hire teachers, fix subways and put people to work.
• 
With Amazon leaving New York, that $27 billion leaves with it.
• 
Ocasio-Cortez does not seem to understand that by helping to drive Amazon away, she did not save New York $3 billion; she cost New York $27 billion.
• 
There is a difference between having bad ideas and not grasping basic facts.
• 
Reasonable people can disagree about whether New York should have offered Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives — or anything at all — to build its headquarters in the city.
• 
But that is different from not understanding that New York is not writing a $3 billion check to Amazon.
• 
Her economic illiteracy matters because she is the principal author of the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by most of the leading Democratic candidates for president.
• 
From this unschooled mind has sprung the most ambitious plan for government intervention in the economy since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's train pulled into Petrograd's Finland Station.
• 
If Ocasio-Cortez doesn't understand how tax subsidies work, how can she be trusted to plan the federal takeover of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of our economy?
• 
When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger.
• 
Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city.
• 
And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
      Americans must wake up and fight against the socialist movement that’s already well underway  (Fox 02/20/2019)
• 
As this socialist tragedy unfolds in Venezuela, my questions is this: Do the American people know how deadly socialism is, and how real the threat of it is here in the United States?
• 
I would pose this question especially to Millennials, who polls show are increasingly riveted by socialism.
• 
The president declared again Monday that the United States will never be a socialist country – a theme he introduced in his recent State of the Union address.
• 
To many Americans, saying the United States will never be socialist is rhetorical: Of course it won't – we have a Constitution that forbids it.
• 
What those Americans miss is that the Constitution works only if it is adhered to, and only if it remains.
• 
Right now, that Constitution is under attack institutionally and individually all around the country.
• 
The socialist movement is well underway.  This is a defining moment in American history.
• 
Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was not beamed in from a spaceship.
• 
She has lived there for most of her life and she has been "produced."
• 
She has come through an educational system that is filled with people who believe in the ideas of socialism.
• 
She has lived around people who are motivated by their envy of others, who feel like victims, who believe they are entitled, and who think it is ok to take from the oppressive "haves" by any means necessary.
• 
People start to yawn when you warn them about a move toward socialism.  It seems abstract.
• 
But if you discuss the issues that arise from high taxes, oppressive regulation, seizure of private property, and dictating of individual behavior, people understand them, and they reject them.
• 
Well guess what?  Those are the four basic food groups of socialism.
• 
People often point to Karl Marx when they talk about socialism.  They shouldn't.
• 
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Swiss philosopher of the 18th century, is the true intellectual founder of socialism and was an inspirational leader of the bloody French Revolution.
• 
Rousseau launched the attack against private property, which is at the core of socialist thought.
• 
If you take away what a person owns, you control what that person can do.
• 
People in the United States who do not take the threat of socialism seriously, who do not think they have to wake up and fight against it, would do well to contemplate the words of 19th century Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle: "There once was a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas.  The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first."
• 
See related Socialist Economy (12/18/2018), ) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Antonio Branco, 07/10/2018) cartoon from General picture album
• 
See related Socialism Illustrated (Mike Lester, 07/26/2007) cartoon from General picture album
      Andrew McCarthy: Why it’s so hard to revoke the citizenship of terrorists  (Fox 02/20/2019)
• 
What allegiance does the United States owe to our enemies when they are our own citizens?
• 
More than we should.
• 
The question arises due to the case of Hoda Muthana, a young woman born in Alabama, the daughter of Yemeni immigrant parents.
• 
... ideology — commonly called "radical Islam," but more accurately labeled "sharia supremacism"
• 
Islamist strategies, pressuring governments and societies to concede to fundamentalist Muslims the right to live autonomously — i.e., to adhere to sharia whenever it conflicts with domestic law.
• 
This is a profoundly dangerous concession.
• 
"Spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n drive all over them.  Kill them" — that is what she called for her fellow radicals to do to her fellow Americans.
• 
She was captured by Kurdish forces and is now living in a refugee camp in Syria.
• 
Naturally, she is expressing remorse and pleading that she be permitted to return with her son to her family in Alabama.
• 
Clearly, she is not a sympathetic case.  Nevertheless, she has a right as an American to be admitted back into the United States.
• 
It is entirely reasonable to posit that, because she has committed treason, Muthana should be deemed to have renounced her American citizenship by making war on our country.
• 
But that is not the law.
• 
A person who is an American citizen by birth may not have that citizenship revoked without her consent.
• 
I think this is ill-considered.  Citizenship implies obligations of fealty as well as benefits.
• 
Traitorous acts should be construed as renouncing those obligations, and thus renouncing citizenship itself.
• 
... a section of our immigration law permits revocation if a naturalized citizen joins a subversive organization within five years of becoming a citizen.
• 
The legalistic theory is that this is a form of fraud: You can't have taken the oath of citizenship seriously if, so soon after being naturalized, you've joined such a group — e.g., al Qaeda.
• 
But the more salient point, I believe, is that you have renounced the obligations of citizenship; it should not matter if you are a born or a naturalized American if you make war against America.
• 
Alas, that is not how the law is interpreted.  Muthana will be permitted re-entry into our country.
• 
She should be prosecuted for treason and terrorism offenses.
• 
... the Justice Department should indict her now, so that she has fair notice of what she faces if she chooses to return.
• 
A more pressing challenge than what happens in Syria is that we avoid the development of sharia-supremacist enclaves within our country.
• 
As we learn from the European experience, such enclaves can become cauldrons of radicalization.
      Hey, Democrats, I've lived in a socialist country with income 'equality' and it was miserable  (Fox 01/09/2019)
• 
... as Democrats justify grandiose proposals by decrying income inequality, many of us who immigrated to the United States from socialist countries see great irony.
• 
After all, unending income equality is what drove us to leave our native lands in the first place.
• 
As a child, I lived in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China.  Everyone in my city was equal in having no running hot water, no modern toilet facilities, no refrigerator, no washer, no dryer, and no color television.
• 
Imagine a world without Whole Foods, Safeway and Walmart, or the plethora of products stocked on their shelves...
• 
Now imagine instead being allotted food stamps from the government, indicating how much your family can eat.
• 
There was abundant equality in the dearth of economic opportunities as well.
• 
The state told us where to live, where to work, what to buy, and for how much.
• 
Worse yet, my fellow citizens who lived in the countryside were even more impoverished.
• 
After decades of totalitarian rule and grand socialist experiments, China had a meager per capita GDP of less than $200 in 1980.  By comparison, America's was $12,500 that year.
• 
Around that time ... embarked on historic economic reforms and opened up the country to the world. 
• 
As China began to dismantle bits and pieces of its command economy, Chinese citizens came face to face with the liberating effects of what the market made possible.
• 
In the end, even Communist China did not want the kind of economic equality that existed during my childhood.
• 
... don't for a minute forget the lesson that still applies: When the state runs the economy and its citizens' lives, there will be plenty of equality in scarcity, poverty and hopelessness.
• 
Today, this is a lesson that prominent Democrats seem eager to forget.
• 
Less than 30 years after the former Soviet Union collapsed and the United States emerged victorious from the Cold War, Americans increasingly find it necessary to debate the shortcomings and evils of socialism all over again.
• 
It was left up to President Trump to declare on Tuesday night: "Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.  America was founded on liberty and independence – and not government coercion, domination and control.  We are born free, and we will stay free.  Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country."
• 
It is crazy that the leader of the free world had to state this.
• 
It is crazier still that he will have to deliver an even more robust defense of democratic capitalism in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
• 
Hopefully, the Democrats' vision of economic equality will not prevail.
• 
See related Resistance's Response (Michael Ramirez, 02/01/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Yes, it feels like there are 'endless' wars for our military – But here's the hard truth  (Fox 01/08/2019)
• 
"Great nations do not fight endless wars," President Trump declared in his State of the Union address.
• 
Just a few days before Trump's address, his own party delivered the president a stinging rebuke when Senate Republicans passed a resolution opposing his Syrian and Afghan withdrawals by an overwhelming bipartisan 68-to-23 vote.
• 
When ... will these wars end?  When will we be able to declare victory and go home?
• 
These are fair questions, and they deserve serious answers.
• 
In traditional wars, defining victory is easy.  Victory comes when the enemy surrenders and lays down its arms.
• 
But this is not traditional war.  We are not fighting nation-states with defined borders and armies, navies and air forces.
• 
We are fighting radical Islamist terrorists who are engaged in what Usama bin Laden called "a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam."
• 
They will never lay down their arms.  In this war, victory for the United States is every day that passes without a terrorist attack on American soil.
• 
And that daily victory is made possible because the men and women of the U.S.  military are hunting the enemy in faraway lands.
• 
America's enemies have a very clear definition of victory.  For them, victory comes when we give up the fight before they do.
• 
"Americans don't realize we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting."
• 
That is how the terrorists see Obama's withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and Trump's planned withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan: America defeating itself by quitting.
• 
It is understandable that, after 18 years, Americans want the war to end.  But what we want is irrelevant.
• 
We don't get to decide unilaterally that the war is over.  The enemy gets a vote.
• 
Just because we have tired of fighting doesn't mean that they have.
• 
Here is the hard truth: We don't get to choose when the war ends, but we do get to choose where it is fought.
• 
Trump deserves enormous credit for taking the gloves off in the fight against the terrorists.
• 
"When I took office, ISIS controlled more than 20,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria.  Today, we have liberated virtually all of that territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty monsters."
• 
But the Islamic State is not defeated.  It still has tens of thousands of fighters under arms and ... as much as $400 million it smuggled out of Iraq, money that can be used to sustain its movement and plan attacks across the world
• 
In Afghanistan, U.S.  intelligence estimates there are about 20 terrorist groups ... who would immediately gain an uncontested sanctuary from which to plan new attacks if America withdraws.
• 
... a 2017 intelligence assessment, renewed last year, "says a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan would lead to an attack on the United States within two years."
• 
Right now, the U.S.  military has its boot on the terrorists' necks.
• 
They are focused on survival, not on launching faraway attacks.
• 
Take that boot away, though, and the terrorists will get up, dust themselves off, regroup, rebuild and go back to trying to kill Americans in the United States.
• 
In his address, Trump praised the heroism of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
• 
"They did not know if they would survive the hour.  They did not know if they would grow old.  But they knew that America had to prevail."
• 
The same is true today.  Great nations do not quit before they prevail.
      The Virginia governor scandal ignores the past and threatens the future  (JWR 02/06/2019)
• 
More and more, the eerie warnings of the Orwell's masterpiece reveal themselves as prophecy: Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.
• 
History taken out of context is not history — it is propaganda.
• 
Destroying monuments to imperfect heroes does not protect us from repeating their errors.
• 
It indulges a most insidious kind of arrogance by suggesting that we have the moral clarity to pass judgment on times we haven't bothered to study and do not adequately understand.
• 
By rewriting our past, we imperil our future.
• 
King Solomon says, A righteous man falls seven times yet rises again, while the wicked stumble in adversity.
      What rudderless millennials could learn from Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor — who gave his life...  (Fox 01/30/2019)
• 
Michael Monsoor lived and died selflessly, a testament to virtue and providence.
• 
Sadly, the memory of Michael Monsoor stands in stark contrast to the lives of young Americans today, whom surveys show to be the least patriotic, least religious, least loyal and least grateful generation in American history.
• 
Coincidentally, they're also the most miserable, exhibiting higher rates of anxiety, stress, depression and even suicide than any of their forebears.
• 
... a full quarter of American college students have suffered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the 2016 presidential election.
• 
Young Americans' fragility stems from a culture that has flipped the moral order on its head, dismissing strength as "toxic," rejecting service for "self-care," and eschewing humility for "pride."
• 
Faith, courage and clarity of purpose prompted Michael Monsoor to heroic service.
• 
A rudderless generation looks with bewilderment on those virtues.
• 
They weep for Michael Monsoor; they ought to weep for themselves.
      If Roger Stone’s arrest is a sign of things to come, we’ve lost our country.  Say goodbye.  (Fox 01/30/2019)
• 
They want to put the screws to Stone, who is 66, to make him sing or compose against Trump.  That's the only reason.
• 
Otherwise, why would you arrest him?  If it was really for lying to Congress, he'd be near the back of a long line.
• 
Last week's pre-dawn raid on Stone home in Fort Lauderdale featured 17 vehicles, including armored tactical trucks.
• 
There were 27 heavily armed agents ... in tactical gear with weapons drawn.
• 
For lying to Congress?
• 
Roger Stone committed no violent crime.  He's not a drug dealer or a drug kingpin.  He's not a Mafioso or a gangster.
• 
All the feds had to do was call his lawyer and say, "Be at police headquarters for processing at 9 a.m.  or we're putting a warrant out for your arrest," and he would have shown up.
• 
Hillary Clinton and her cronies ignored subpoenas for emails, wiped her hard drive with BleachBit and smashed phones to pieces to avoid turning them over.
• 
Do you think you would get away with that?  You might, if you could help the Deep State with its witch hunt for President Trump.
• 
There's a danger here.  We are a democratic republic.  The Constitution that we cherish so much is the foundation of all law and order in this country.
• 
If you don't apply the laws equally, only going after one group of people because of their political views, and you protect people with other political views, you've lost our Constitution.  We've lost our country.
• 
Without equal application of our laws and equal justice under the law, there's one thing left to say to our great nation: Goodbye.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Roger Stone raid shows that CNN is no longer covering Robert Mueller.  They're working with him  (Fox 01/29/2019)
• 
LongtimeTrump adviser Roger Stone was arrested on Friday by federal agents and charged with seven felonies, none of which had anything to do with Russian collusion or election meddling.
• 
But you'd never know that from the penalties he faces.
• 
If convicted, Stone could die in prison.  Nobody in Washington seems to find that punishment excessive.  Many have cheered it.
• 
Officially, Stone was charged with lying, something most of our political elite engage in every day.
• 
But his real crime was flamboyance.  Stone has spent the last 40 years giving the finger to the people in charge.  In the end, they got him – they always do.
• 
... it is worth taking just a moment to consider a few basic questions about it, if only because nobody else is going to.
• 
First, why did the Justice Department stage what was, in effect, a military assault on Roger Stone's house?
• 
Stone himself asked that question on ABC over the weekend, but anchor George Stephanopoulos dismissed the DOJ tactic as "pretty standard."
• 
But is it "pretty standard" to send dozens of federal agents with rifles to arrest an unarmed 66-year-old man who has been charged with a nonviolent crime?
• 
No.  It is not standard.  It is shocking.  And any honest person who pays attention could tell you that.
• 
... there were 29 agents on the scene, along with 17 vehicles, two of them armored, and a helicopter overhead.
• 
If that's an accurate accounting, it means the feds sent more armed men to Roger Stone's house in Fort Lauderdale than they did to Usama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan — just for some perspective on this.
• 
So, what was the justification for doing that?
• 
Prosecutors knew perfectly well that Stone wasn't a flight risk.  He's broke.  He doesn't even have a valid passport.
• 
They could have simply called his lawyer and told him to surrender.  That's the actual "standard" in cases like this.
• 
But they didn't do that.  Instead, they went in with guns drawn.
• 
Who decided to do that?  How much did it cost taxpayers?
• 
Mueller can send armed men to your home to roust you from bed at gunpoint just because he feels like it, and there's nothing you, or anyone else, can do about it.
• 
Mueller has an unlimited budget and no timetable.  He doesn't have to answer questions.
• 
He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants.  He cannot be fired.
• 
Mueller is the single most powerful person in America, and yet nobody voted for him.
• 
He is a living rebuke to the principles of our democratic system.
• 
At the same time, our leaders tell us that we need Robert Mueller — an all-powerful, unelected prosecutor, accountable to no one — to protect us from threats to – brace yourselves here – democracy.
• 
Nobody in Washington catches the irony in any of this.
• 
Mueller himself is the threat to our democracy.  The most powerful man elected by nobody.
• 
Our media don't ask questions about any of this, or even acknowledge that it is a question. 
• 
So, to recap: "We journalists" says CNN, need to fight back against the "fringes of the right" who want to "move the story away from what it should really be."
• 
CNN decides what it should really be.  And if you don't agree, you're on the "fringes of the right."
• 
In other words, shut up, you guys.  Stop asking questions we don't feel like answering.
• 
CNN acted as the public relations arm of the Mueller investigation, as they have before.
• 
And then they lied about it in the most self-righteous possible way...
• 
The network is no longer covering Robert Mueller; they're working with Robert Mueller. 
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Phony shutdown showdown shows cynical game-playing is what’s truly in charge in Washington  (Fox 01/29/2019)
• 
The first thing that needs to be said about President Trump's decision to sign a measure re-opening part of the federal government without getting money for the wall he demanded is that his experience as a New York businessman was no help.
• 
Perhaps he failed to recognize that Democrats are the party of government and no one guards the power, cost and perks of government better than they do.
• 
As long as Democrats stuck together — and they did (Republicans should learn a lesson) — he was bound to lose.
• 
Of course a wall, or barrier or something, is needed to stem the tide of those who enter the country illegally
• 
Democrats, flushed with at least a short-term victory, are not about to anger their base by compromising, and some in the Republican base are upset by the president's so-called "cave" to Democrat demands.
• 
... the president held out the possibility of declaring a national emergency if Democrats continue to refuse funding for his barrier wall.
• 
We know where that will lead, don't we?  Democrats will likely go to a liberal federal judge, probably named by President Obama, and get a stay on the order.
• 
Any appeal process could take months, adding more fuel to the chaos stoking anger among many on the left and the right.
• 
One way to get Democrats to focus might be to steer those entering illegally with criminal backgrounds to the states and districts where members of Congress who oppose the wall reside.
• 
Cynical, I know, but in Washington, since the 2016 election, cynicism reigns supreme.
• 
There are solutions to almost any problem, but it appears politicians prefer the immigration issue to run on as a means of raising money, garnering votes and harnessing power.
• 
It's all about politicians and rarely about the rest of us, their claims about "the American people" notwithstanding.
• 
President Trump made building a wall (and getting Mexico to pay for it) the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign and the first half of his term.
• 
If it doesn't happen, with or without the help of Congress, he must find another way to do it that the courts will allow and that his base will accept.
• 
Maybe the president will do all these things.  I hope he does.
• 
The alternative is likely a socialist government offering high taxes and even more debt, which would end the economic boon that has benefited a record number of new U.S.  workers.
• 
"Although this bill does not provide wall funding, President Trump remains firmly committed to securing funding during ongoing negotiations.  President Trump will not budge on building the wall."
• 
Speaker Pelosi remains just as committed not to fund a wall.
• 
Each time I travel internationally I must go through immigration and customs at the airport.
• 
If I attempted to re-enter this or another country illegally, I would be arrested.
• 
What's the difference when Pelosi, Schumer and many other Democrats won't stop non-citizens from sneaking into America?
      Michael Goodwin: President Trump is down, but not out  (Fox 01/28/2019)
• 
What Trump cares about most, and what he should devote the rest of his presidency to, is obvious: fixing the immigration crisis, with border security the essential first step.
• 
In large measure, it is why he ran and why he was elected.  It is the heart of America First.
• 
... he, like all presidents, will rise or fall on domestic issues, and legislative victories at home are now impossible.
• 
Pelosi and Schumer are afraid of their party's radicals, so the safest path for them always will be "no."
• 
While that leaves Trump little room to maneuver, it paradoxically points the only way forward.
• 
Because there is nothing he can do to please the half of the country that hates him, he must do everything he can to win back those who were with him until the shutdown dragged on.
• 
... "the tremendous economic and financial burdens of illegal immigration fall on the shoulders of low-income Americans."
• 
Large numbers are crossing illegally each day, with patrol agents in Arizona saying that one group that tunneled under a fence included 376 people, nearly 200 of them under age 18.
• 
All 376 applied for asylum, and after being processed, were scattered across America.
• 
... 800,000 already waiting for asylum hearings, a backlog that grows by the day.
• 
Most will never show up for hearings, and few who skip will ever be arrested unless they commit a federal felony.
• 
They arrived in America illegally, and will join millions living in the shadows.
• 
Yet for most, that life will be far better than life in the hellhole ­nations they fled, especially now as Democrats aim to erase distinctions between legal and illegal ­immigrants.
• 
Sanctuary cities offer free health care and reduced college tuitions and many blue states give all comers the right to driver's licenses.
• 
There are also efforts to allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.
• 
... sometimes the key to winning is behaving as if there is something worse than losing.
• 
In Trump's case, that would be giving up on securing the border and failing to put America first.
      Religious faith is guaranteed; all religious practice is not  (INN 01/25/2019)
• 
... the Constitution does not mandate tolerance of religious extremism.
• 
Nor does it guarantee totally unfettered freedom of religion.
• 
Freedom of belief is certainly absolute, but the exercise of religion is not when it compromises the rights of others.
• 
Constitution requires no repudiation of background, imposes no national creed, and respects freedom of belief.
• 
It asks in return only that citizens pledge to uphold its principles.
• 
By treating anti-blasphemy initiatives and anti-western rejectionism as protected religious expression, Islamist enablers make a mockery of American values and freedoms.
• 
Though Islamist intolerance and insularity are often rationalized in the name of multiculturalism, government cannot ignore faith-based conduct that threatens the rights of others.
• 
The First Amendment of the Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion .  .  .  or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
• 
... it does not prohibit government from safeguarding the welfare of its citizens; and the exercise of religion is not absolutely guaranteed when it threatens public safety or the rights of others.
• 
Calling for the subjugation of "infidels" or death penalty for heretics, for example, is incompatible with the Constitution and thus not subject to protection.
• 
"Since Muslims believe that enduring peace and civic harmony can only be achieved by unconditional obedience to Allah, the project of spreading knowledge of Islam and calling upon non-Muslims to submit to conversion (da'wa) is seen as an invitation to join in the creation of a universal order of peace, justice, and harmony under Allah.  When, however, nonbelievers decline that call, they are not regarded as being faithful to their own traditions but rejecting the sovereignty of Allah..."
• 
"Hence, at least theoretically, Muslims are obliged to wage war until the unbelievers either become Muslim or acknowledge Islam's supremacy..."
• 
America's founders conceived of a broadly inclusive society, but they never contemplated empowering religious extremists who would seek to impose their beliefs on others and respect no authority but their own.
• 
The US Constitution grants freedom of speech and worship, but it entitles nobody to protection from insult or offense.
• 
Indeed, US citizens are constitutionally protected from extremist enablers who seek to regulate speech or impose totalitarian restrictions through questionable legislation or enforced political correctness.
• 
Freedom of belief may be absolute, but freedom of practice is not when it inhibits speech, imposes minority beliefs on the majority, and undermines the law of the land.
      Covington kids have been irreparably harmed by their own – Why didn’t their school, church stand...  (Fox 01/24/2019)
• 
... the worst part of the condemnation that rained down on their heads did not come from the media.  It came from the school that the students attend and the local Catholic diocese that it serves.
• 
Like the mainstream media, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School chose to convict their own students before all the facts were known.
• 
"We extend our deepest apologies to Mr.  Phillips [the Native American who came face-to-face with the students].  "This behavior is opposed to the Church's teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person."
• 
They vowed an investigation, and "appropriate action, up to and including expulsion."
• 
A religious school that is supposed to teach and preach about the dangers of bearing false witness and condemning the righteous did exactly that to its own students.
• 
When the students needed their religious leaders the most – the ones who knew them best – they were condemned by them and led to slaughter.
• 
The school's stated mission is, in part, to "encourage respect for others and service to the community;" to "embrace the gospel message of Jesus Christ in order to educate young men spiritually, academically, physically, and socially."
• 
But Covington Catholic High School and the diocese it serves did not practice what they preach.
• 
By throwing their students and parishioners under the bus, they betrayed them and every tenet they are supposed to hold dear.
• 
The students were being preyed upon by an infamous group of radicals known as the Black Hebrew Israelites – a vicious hate group.
• 
It was the Black Israelites who were injecting hate and fear – not the group of high school students who had peacefully gathered for the cause of life.
• 
Those kids were taunted and baited, but they did not return the vitriol.  They stood their ground and acted appropriately.
• 
It's no surprise that the media made no mention of these facts.
• 
But it's shocking that the students' own school failed to recognize them too.
• 
The students deserved the support of their school, their church and their community.
• 
They deserved the presumption of innocence until all the facts were gathered and weighed.
• 
I pray that the Covington Catholic High School students will come to realize that they have taught an important lesson to their school administration, their Diocese and their community – that the values they learn and the tenets they believe were honored by them, and betrayed by the adults.
      Covington kids can teach a lot to 'adults' in media, politics who condemned before facts  (Fox 01/22/2019)
• 
The defamers framed the narrative: These teenage boys, many of whom wore hats that read, "Make America Great Again," had surrounded the peaceful Native American elder Nathan Phillips to taunt and threaten and smirk at him.
• 
Condemnations abounded.
• 
Covington Mayor Joe Meyer called the students "appalling."
• 
Presidential candidate and Sen.  Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., praised the Native American for his "dignity and strength" in the face of the teenagers' "hateful taunts."
• 
CNN's Reza Aslan asked if anyone had "ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's."
• 
The ostensibly conservative National Review declared, "The Covington students might as well have spit on the Cross."
• 
Beyond the political realm, censure poured in from on high.
• 
... James Martin, a social media-savvy Catholic priest, tweeted that he was "disgusted by the contemptuous laughter of the mass of students."
• 
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, Bishop Roger Foys, and other members of the clergy joined Fr.  Martin in his reproval.
• 
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington threatened to expel the students, whom they condemned before concluding, "The matter is being investigated."
• 
A healthy culture investigates before it condemns.
• 
When the truth came limping along on Sunday morning, hours of additional video footage exonerated the students, who neither instigated the confrontation nor responded in kind to Phillips's rude provocations
• 
In reality, the confrontation began when the Hebrew Israelites, an eccentric group of black supremacists, heckled the students as "crackers," "f*****s," and "incest kids."
• 
The students responded by reciting school spirit cheers amongst themselves.
• 
As the students cheered, Phillips approached one of the teenagers, cameramen in tow, and proceeded to bang a drum mere inches from his face.
• 
A great many adults owe the Covington boys an apology.
• 
Few have proffered one, and most have doubled down on their calumny.
• 
Anne Helen Petersen, the senior culture writer for Buzzfeed, excused her libel by calling on readers to "recognize why the sight of that face caused a visceral reaction in so many."
• 
The teenager is odious, she implies, because he is a white boy.
• 
The unrepentant Fr.  Martin calls the scandal a "teachable moment."
• 
If the incident offers any lesson at all, it is that our culture has become inverted: journalists peddle lies; officeholders vilify their constituents; clerics abandon their flocks to wolves
*.
• 
In this inverted culture, pride is transformed from the essential vice into the paragon of virtue, the celebrated object of parades.
• 
Conformity is rebranded as diversity.
• 
Racial and sexual bigotry becomes tolerance.
• 
Justice, which means to get what one deserves without favor, is replaced with "social justice," which means to receive through favoritism what one does not deserve.
• 
Objective reality is lost to the tyranny of subjective narrative, "your truth" and "my truth."
• 
A social media lynch mob inverted the truth of what happened at the National Mall on Friday.
• 
The Covington Catholic High School students comported themselves with exemplary restraint and maturity.
• 
The adults around them behaved like children.
• 
Unfortunately, those overgrown children control our culture, and this "teachable moment" hasn't taught them a damned thing.
• 
See related Love Trumps Hate (Sean Delonas, 11/10/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Covington story was not about race but about people in power attacking people they've failed  (Fox 01/22/2019)
• 
It's hard to remember the last time the great American meme machine produced a clearer contrast between good and evil — it was essentially an entire morality play shrunk down to four minutes for Facebook.
• 
On one side, a noble tribal elder, weather-beaten, calm and wise.  He looks like a living icon.
• 
You could imagine a single tear sliding slowly down his cheek at the senselessness of it all.
• 
On the other side, you had a pack of heedless, sneering young men from the south, drunk on racism and white privilege.
• 
The irony is overwhelming: The indigenous man's land had been stolen by the very ancestors of these boys in MAGA hats.
• 
Yet they dare to lecture him about walls designed to keep people who look very much like him out what they were calling "their" country.
• 
It was infuriating to a lot of people.
• 
At the same time, it was also strangely comforting to the people who watched it from Brooklyn and L.A.
• 
The people who run this country have long suspected that middle America is a hive of nativist bigotry.
      And now they had proof of that.  It was cause for a celebration of  ()
• 
There's nothing quite as satisfying as having your own biases confirmed.
• 
But did the video really describe what happened?
• 
That should have been the first question journalists asked.  Checking facts and adding context is what journalists are paid to do.
• 
It's in the first line of the job description.  Yet, amazingly, almost nobody in the American media did that.
• 
The four minutes that made Twitter don't tell the story, but instead distorted the story.
• 
A longer look shows that the boys from Covington Catholic in Kentucky weren't a roving mob looking for a fight.
• 
They were, in fact — and it shows it on the tape — standing in place waiting to be picked up by a bus.
• 
As they waited there, members of a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black supremacist organization, began taunting them with racial epithets.
• 
Nathan Phillips, the now-famous American Indian activist, also approached them, pounding his drum.
• 
The footage seems to suggest the boys were unsure whether Phillips was hostile or taking their side against the Black Hebrew Israelites.
• 
But in any case, there is no evidence at all that anyone said, "build a wall."
• 
What we know for certain at this point is that our cultural leaders are, in fact, bigots.
• 
They understand reality on the basis of stereotypes. 
• 
When the facts don't conform to what they think they know, they ignore the facts.
• 
They see America not as a group of people or of citizens, but as a collection of groups.
• 
Some of these groups, they are convinced, are morally inferior to other groups.
• 
They know that's true.  They say it out loud.
• 
That belief shapes almost all of their perceptions of the world.
• 
... in case you think the response was entirely from the left, you should know that the abuse was bipartisan.
• 
This wasn't just left versus right.  It was the people in power attacking those below them as a group.
• 
Plenty of Republicans in Washington were happy to savage the Covington kids, probably to inoculate themselves from charges of improper thought.
• 
The National Review, meanwhile, ran a story entitled, "The Covington Students Might As Well Have Just Spit on the Cross."
• 
That story has since been pulled too, but not before the author admitted he never even bothered to watch all the videos.
• 
He knew what he knew.  That was enough.
• 
What's so fascinating about all these attacks is how inverted they are.
• 
These are high school kids from Kentucky.  ... They're far less privileged than virtually everyone who called for them to be destroyed, based on the fact that they have too much privilege.
• 
Consider Kara Swisher, for example, an opinion columnist at the New York Times.
• 
Swisher went to Princeton Day School and then Georgetown, then got a graduate degree at Columbia.  She's become rich and famous, in the meantime, by toadying for billionaire tech CEOs.  She's their handmaiden.
• 
Is she more privileged than the boys of Covington Catholic in Kentucky?  Of course she is.
• 
Maybe that's why she feels the need to call them Nazis, which she did, repeatedly.
• 
So what's actually going on here?
• 
Well, it's not really about race.  In fact, most of the stories about race really aren't about race.
• 
And this is no different.  This story is about the people in power protecting their power, and justifying their power, by destroying and mocking those weaker than they are.
• 
Why?  It's simple.  Our leaders haven't improved the lives of most people in America.
• 
They can't admit that because it would discredit them.  So, instead they attack the very people they've failed.
• 
The problem, they'll tell us, with Kentucky, isn't that bad policies have hurt the people who live there.
• 
It's that the people who live there are immoral because they're bigots.
• 
They deserve their poverty and opioid addiction.  They deserve to die young.
• 
That's what our leaders tell themselves.  And now, that's what they're telling us.
• 
Just remember: they're lying.
• 
See related Love Trumps Hate (Sean Delonas, 11/10/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Ex-Navy SEAL Jocko Willink: 'Toxic masculinity' and the powerful dichotomy of being a man  (Fox 01/19/2019)
• 
Stoically controlling your emotions is necessary.
• 
Competitive spirit drives success.
• 
Dominance – and the mental and physical strength required to dominate – is far superior to a lack of strength, which results in being dominated by someone else.
• 
And aggression is a means to an end.  Without aggressive action, you will likely be on the receiving end, bowing to someone else's aggression.
• 
Instead of competition, in that imagined world everyone would win.
• 
Rather than looking to dominate, in this imaginary realm everyone would collaborate and live as equals.
• 
And finally, in this fictional domain, aggression would not stand and people would simply hug each other and get along.
• 
But that world doesn't exist.  Would it be nice if it did?  Sure.  But it doesn't.
• 
The world is a hard place.  Life is tough.
• 
Human beings are not always benevolent and kind.  You cannot count on charity, tolerance and compassion.
• 
If you show your emotions, you might get taken advantage of.
• 
If you make emotional decisions, they will likely lead you in the wrong direction.
• 
If you lack competitive spirit, you will probably lose on many fronts...
• 
Finally, if you are not aggressive, you will not be able to capitalize on opportunities.
• 
Good things in life don't just appear on your doorstep – you have to be aggressive and make them happen.
• 
Failure to do so will result in missed opportunities.  Instead of you being in control of your life, life will be in control of you.
• 
So: Be stoic, be competitive, be dominant and be aggressive.
• 
But it isn't that simple, and this is where things become difficult.
• 
It's important to not go too far with any of those traits.
• 
... a leader must strive for balance and a man must do the same.
• 
If you turn your emotions off completely and become overly stoic, you will not be able to connect with anyone.
• 
If you are too competitive, you can be driven to the point where you cannot enjoy anything.
• 
You will obsess over winning and drive yourself crazy.  A loss will crush you.
• 
The will to dominate must also be tempered.  If you focus on dominating in all situations, it will not work out well for you.
• 
If your goal is to dominate you won't listen to other people and will thereby miss out on other ideas and thoughts that might be superior to your own.
• 
Lastly, if you are hyper-aggressive you will burn yourself out.  You will take too many risks, burn too many bridges and use up all your ammunition.
• 
This list of dichotomies continues on endlessly: as a leader and as a man, you have to have balance.
• 
You must be courageous but not foolhardy, decisive but not dictatorial, open-minded but principled, disciplined but not rigid.
• 
So don't listen to the media telling you to suppress your "masculine traits." Don't listen to commercials conveying that acting as a "traditional man" is bad.
• 
But at the same time, don't let those traits, or any other, drift to the extremes.  ... Instead, balance the dichotomies that pull you toward one extreme or another.
• 
And pass that balance on to your sons – and your daughters as well.
• 
These so-called "masculine traits" aren't just for men.
      Ocasio-Cortez must be taken seriously.  Is America ready to be ruled by these new progressives?  (Fox 01/18/2019)
• 
... it's a mistake for conservatives not to take her seriously, to brush her off as kind of a flash in the pan or an upstart.
• 
She's as close to a thought leader that the Democratic Party has today, and she has a massive social media following.
• 
She's both charismatic, and she's committed to transforming both our economic system and our culture.
• 
First, she aims to create a socialist economic system with sky high marginal tax rates.
• 
And it doesn't stop there.  On the cultural side, she and others like her intend to use the government and their positions of influence now to mandate campus-style political correctness.
• 
... anyone who dares question this progressive agenda is not just wrong, but they're downright evil.  So, there's no room for debate, only demonization.
• 
... this isn't your daddy's liberalism, where it was all about love and peace and live and let live.
• 
They're going to whip up their followers to try to intimidate and silence anyone who gets in their way. 
• 
Now she's only been on the job for, like, six days, but Ocasio-Cortez already practicing Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."
• 
Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.  Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy.  Go after people, and not institutions.  People hurt faster than institutions.
• 
So, rather than debating the merits of policies, these new left-wing progressive Puritans aim to shame.  A wall is racist, so people who want a wall are racist.  End of story.
• 
Now, all of you are doing better in the Trump economy, you should know this: They plan to take your money away and redistribute it to you know, wherever their pet causes are.
• 
And to all of our libertarian friends who believe that Trump is the big threat to the free market because of tariffs and so forth, open your eyes.
• 
These people, including Nancy Pelosi, who herself has moved left, are going to take it all away.  Freedom of speech, freedom of contract, freedom of religion or conscience.
• 
... when you say the wrong thing in Ocasio-Cortez world, they put you in detention hall and you never get out.
• 
Remember, they believe that they are right and you're evil.
• 
And moderates even seem petrified of taking on these new progressives.
• 
And Republicans ought to take the progressive takeover of the Democratic Party very seriously and offer a strong counter narrative.
• 
If you want to know what it looks like to be a conservative and perpetually in the fetal position, worried about being branded racist or evil, well, look no further than Theresa May, okay?
• 
Now Trump is the opposite.  He fights.  He fights for law and order.  He fights for sovereignty.
• 
He fights for judges who apply the law and don't rewrite it.  And he fights for a stronger economy.
• 
After two years of President Trump, we have higher wages, we have 500,000 new manufacturing jobs, we have the strongest GDP growth among all the G7 nations.
• 
But the progressives, they don't care.  ... These people are fanatics.  And they're running for president.
• 
Americans are fleeing the most progressive states in America due to high costs and high taxes.
• 
No wonder they're welcoming illegal immigrants in New York and California.
• 
Are Americans really ready to be ruled by the values and policies of progressives in New York and California?
• 
Let's hope not.
• 
See related Socialist Economy (12/18/2018), ) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Democrat Platform (Sean Delonas, 07/04/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What Do We Want? (Sean Delonas, 07/12/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Leading the Caravan (Sean Delonas, 10/22/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The shadow Trump Russia investigation has harmed our country.  We need radical transparency  (Fox 01/15/2019)
• 
According to what are apparently high-level sources within the Department of Justice, in 2017 the FBI secretly began an investigation into whether President Trump was, in fact, a Russian agent.
• 
The FBI believed that the president could be a one-man sleeper cell, personally taking direct orders from his handlers in Moscow, and working from within the Oval Office to subvert this country.
• 
The FBI said they believed that.  So they spied on the President of the United States.
• 
How did this happen?  Deciding that a sitting president should be investigated for treason is not a small thing.  Officials within the FBI had to push for that investigation, and then marshal evidence to justify it.
• 
Leaders at the very highest levels of the agency had to sign off on the whole thing.
• 
All of which happened.  But on what grounds exactly?  That's what we would need to know to understand this.
• 
Apparently, the FBI assumed Trump might be a Russian agent not because of anything he did in secret, but because of things he said in public, standing on stage, on camera, while running for president.
• 
"There's nothing I'd rather do than to have Russia friendly as opposed to the way they are right now.  Wouldn't it be nice if we actually go along with – as an example – Russia?  I'm all for it."
• 
According to the FBI, those words are evidence that Trump may have betrayed his country.
• 
That's their view.  But there's another way to look at those words.  Maybe Trump's right.
• 
Russia is a nuclear-armed power on the other side of the planet that does not have the power to invade the United States, close international shipping lanes or seriously threaten key allies.
• 
Is there some reason we should inherently be in conflict with Russia?
• 
Is there vast public support in this country for fighting a proxy war in Syria with the Kremlin?
• 
How many American parents are anxious to send their children to die for the territorial integrity of Ukraine?
• 
If this were happening in a less developed country, we know exactly what to call it — an attempted coup.
• 
A political leader gets elected on a platform that law enforcement agencies don't like.
• 
So, those agencies try to put him in jail.  It happens all the time in other places.  Now it's happening here.
• 
If you were Russia - let's say you were Vladimir Putin - or would you try to undermine American interests?
• 
You'd probably try to get America stuck in costly, expensive foreign wars.
• 
You'd see that Iraq and Afghanistan have left us much weaker.  Why not replicate that experience in Syria and Libya?
• 
You might also encourage America to adopt a self-destructive energy policy.  You'd have the government sharply restrict the exploration of oil and natural gas, in the name of the environment, so that America produces less energy.
• 
Why would you do that?  Because global energy prices would rise, and we'd have to import more.
• 
Who would that benefit?  Russia, a petrostate.
• 
Someday, we'll look back in shame and confusion wonder how so many supposedly smart people went completely off the deep end.
• 
That's the task for future historians.  For now, it's time for some radical transparency. 
• 
This endless shadow investigation has caused vastly more harm to our country than any Russian Facebook ad.
• 
The president should order the declassification of all documents related to this.  It is clearly an abuse of federal power.
• 
The president appears afraid to do this.  He seems intimidated by his own lawyers.
• 
But why?  What can official Washington do to him now?
• 
Call him a Russian agent?  Plan to impeach him?
• 
Too late.  They already have.
      Reported FBI probe of Trump was led by anti-Trump fanatics who betrayed Constitution  (Fox 01/12/2019)
• 
A group of bureaucrats – elected by no one – sat in a room and decided they would investigate the new president of the United States for possible treason.
• 
Let me repeat: treason.
• 
This group of bureaucrats reports to no one in elected authority.
• 
In a Justice Department where employees gave 97 percent of their presidential campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton, the hostility toward – and fear of – newly elected President Trump was deep.
• 
The senior members of the Justice Department (all promoted under the Obama administration) were clearly prepared to go all-out to repudiate the verdict of the American people in the 2016 election.
• 
Further, these were Justice Department bureaucrats who had ignored the Clinton Foundation scandals, minimized the investigation into the Clinton email and Internet scandal, and ignored former President Clinton collecting money from Russians overseas while his wife was secretary of state.
• 
Suddenly, these hitherto passive, dispassionate, and tolerant "law enforcement" bureaucrats were galvanized into investigating a president for possible treason.
• 
"The (New York) Times story is an unwitting disclosure and verification of the utter corruption of their oaths by (fired FBI Director James) Comey and his colleagues to undermine the free election of the President of the United States.  It was apparently done under the supervision of the Deputy Attorney General, who was reportedly ready to wear a wire to ensnare President Trump.  This is the stuff of banana republics and dictatorships. This despicable, unlawful, official conduct undermines our entire federal criminal justice system which protects our liberty as a free people."
• 
This rogue investigation eventually mutated into the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that has ruined lives, kept Americans in solitary confinement, and coerced confessions through threats of life-destroying and financially bankrupting prosecutions.
• 
President Trump was not betraying the Constitution.  There is no evidence he ever considered betraying his country for the Russians.
• 
It is the Justice Department bureaucrats who have been betraying the Constitution.
• 
Leaking this report to The New York Times rather than submitting it to the Congress is just one more example of the willingness of Justice Department officials to violate the rules and undermine the rule of law in favor of the rule of power.
• 
It also lays bare their alliance with the liberal media to undermine and, if possible, destroy the duly elected president of the United States.
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Democrats feel illegal immigrants who ignore our laws are more American than you are  (Fox 01/10/2019)
• 
What worked for Hadrian will work for us.  It works for Israel right now, and a lot of other places.
• 
Walls work.  That's why people still build them.  Everybody knows that.
• 
This is all a charade.  We should at least admit what's happening.
• 
... wasn't two parties bickering over the best way to solve a shared problem.  No.  In this case, one side's problem is the other's side's solution.
• 
Democrats feel good about letting in poor people from around the world.
• 
These are people who don't make a lot of complicated demands about health care, dental or unfunded pensions or what their kids should be doing for a living.
• 
They're not whiny, like Americans.  They're not living reminders of how politicians have failed to fulfill their promises.
• 
No.  They're just grateful to be here.
• 
"The women and children on the border that are trying to seek refuge and seek opportunity in the United States of America with nothing but the shirt on their backs are acting more American than any person who seeks to keep them out ever will be."
• 
So, people who show up here and ignore our laws are more American than you are.
• 
That's how Democrats feel.  Keep that in mind as you watch this debate.
      Democrats keep proving how detached they are from reality  (NYP 01/05/2019)
• 
In its common definition, the job of president of the United States is to deliver peace and prosperity.
• 
Donald Trump is doing well on both fronts, so let's impeach the bastard!
• 
As insane as it sounds, that and only that is what many Democrats have in mind.
• 
Impeachment, or death by a thousand investigations, is the heart of their plan.
• 
Some advocate for open borders, others for tax hikes or Medicare-for-all, but ending the Trump presidency ASAP is the glue holding the party together.
• 
It unites the leadership with the rank and file, including many of the socialist-leaning newcomers. 
• 
The implications are staggering — and a potential disaster for America.
• 
... the Democrat making the biggest news Friday was a foul-mouthed new congress member from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib, who had celebrated her swearing-in by promising that "we're going to impeach the motherf–ker." The leftist crowd was jubilant.
• 
Never in modern times has there been such a disconnect between the opposition party and the realities of national life.
• 
The very talk of removing Trump, without evidence of an impeachable offense, is a stick in the eye to history and most Americans.
• 
To be clear, the disconnect is not the product of policy differences, though they exist too.
• 
This is instead a mass outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome that, for those infected, can be cured only by undoing the results of the 2016 election.
• 
How does any of this help the country address its infrastructure needs, reform entitlement programs or ensure better schools and more opportunities?
• 
And what message does it send to our allies and adversaries about America's resolve?
• 
The relentless fixation on impeachment is a destructive decision that sacrifices national progress and security on the altar of partisan madness.
• 
All politics, all the time is great fodder for the media and consultant class, but is usually a disaster when it comes to getting things done for the country.
• 
"No" is always a safe vote because nobody ever got elected saying "yes" to controversial ideas or, in this case, voting for anything that Trump can claim as a victory.
• 
Trump is clearly right that there can be no national security without border security and that border security is not possible without barriers to block and deter illegal crossers.
• 
Schumer and Pelosi would rather share a glass of hemlock than give Trump a win on the wall.
• 
Unfortunately, they are leaders in name only.
• 
If they had the courage to stand up to the lynch mob setting their party's agenda, they would have spent the last two years negotiating with a president who likes nothing better than cutting deals.
• 
But by caving into the demands of the fanatical resistance movement, Schumer and Pelosi painted their party — and the nation — into a corner.  Unless they inject sanity into the chaos, the shutdown will be a mere taste of the trouble ahead.
      A mob of angry children doesn't want you to know why the American Dream is dying  (Fox 01/04/2019)
• 
... take a minute to talk about the biggest issue facing this country going forward.
• 
No, it's not higher GDP growth, despite what some think tank people will tell you.
• 
It's not some obscure Middle Eastern hellhole our leaders claim we should be policing forever.
• 
It's not even illegal immigration, as big of a problem as that is and as much time as we spend talking about it.
• 
The real problem is families.  America used to be the best country in the world for families.
• 
Americans could get married and afford to raise their own children.
• 
If your kids worked hard, you could expect that maybe they'd be a little more successful than you were.
• 
That was what we called the "American Dream."
• 
For a small group of affluent people, it still exists.  They're still living like it's 1965.  Good for them.
• 
But for everyone else, that dream is dying.  America's middle class is in decline because middle class American families are declining.
• 
So the question is why is that happening?  There are lots of reasons, but a major driver of family collapse, the one nobody ever talks about for some reason, is simple economics.
• 
"Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.  Now maybe they should want to marry them but they don't.  Over big populations, this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow.  More drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed to the next generation."
• 
... a study by the decidedly-non-conservative Brookings Institution found that falling male wages caused about a quarter of the decline in marriage rates over the last 35 years.
• 
... MIT researchers found that when factories close, marriage rates go down and single parenthood becomes more common.
• 
This causes a higher proportion of children to wind up on drugs or in prison, so it's not a small thing.
• 
If you're wondering how we wound up in the dark age we're currently living through right now, this is how.  This is why important science is no longer being done.  It's why art isn't being made.  This is why comedy is dying.
• 
It's why people aren't thinking for themselves anymore, which means the end of creativity.
• 
It's why the rest of us stand by like cowards as the innocent are punished for crimes they didn't commit.
• 
Because we're all terrified.
• 
We're terrified of being denounced by some mindless ideologue on TV or shamed and ostracized on social media for stepping out of line.
• 
Or silenced completely by a big tech firm.
• 
A mob of angry children is suddenly in charge of the country.
• 
These aren't people seeking a revolution.  They're fighting for the status quo to protect their own status.
• 
They're drunk on power and looking for new people to hurt.
• 
Someday, we're going to look back on this moment with shame and horror.
• 
But we should remember that terror only works if we play along with it.
• 
So, what if we decided not to.  What if all of us decided to tell the truth about something, every day, in public?
• 
What would happen then?  What could they do about it?
• 
They can't punish everybody.  We're the majority.
• 
Let's try that.
      How dumb are the politicians who want to remove your right to self-defense?  (Fox 01/02/2019)
• 
Most of the mass killings by guns in the United States in recent years ... took place in venues where local or state law prohibited carrying guns, even by those lawfully licensed to do so.
• 
The government cheerfully calls these venues "gun-free zones." They should be called killing zones.
• 
We know from reason, human nature, and history that the right to defend yourself is a natural instinct that is an extension of the right to self-preservation, which is itself derived from the right to live.
• 
Life is the great gift from the Creator, and we have a duty to exercise our freedoms to preserve life until its natural expiration.
• 
But the lives we strive to preserve should not be those actively engaged in killing innocent life.
• 
The Framers recognized this when they ratified the Second Amendment ... — the pre-political right to own and use modern-day weapons for self-defense or to repel tyrants.
• 
... the Framers recognized that the right pre-existed the government because it stems from our humanity.
• 
That's why pre-political rights are known as fundamental or natural rights.
• 
Because the right to use modern weaponry for the defense of life, liberty and property are natural, we should not need a government permission slip before exercising it, any more than we need one to exercise other natural rights, such as speech, press, assembly, travel and privacy.
• 
... the government has taken the position that it can care for us better than we can care for ourselves.
• 
So it has severely curtailed our rights and left us reliant on the government itself for protection.
• 
The modern-day massacres are proof beyond a doubt that the government cannot protect us.
• 
We have a government here that is heedless of its obligation to protect our freedoms.
• 
We have a government that, in its lust to have us reliant upon it, has created areas in the U.S.  where innocent folks living their lives in freedom are made defenseless prey to monsters — as vulnerable as fish in a barrel.
• 
And we have mass killings of defenseless innocents — over and over and over again.
• 
How dumb are these politicians who want to remove the right to self-defense?
• 
There are thousands of crazies in the U.S.  who are filled with hate — whether motivated by politics, self-loathing, religion or fear.
• 
If they want to kill, they will find a way to do so.
• 
The only way to stop them is by superior firepower.
• 
Disarming their law-abiding victims not only violates the natural law and the Constitution but also is contrary to all reason.
• 
All these mass killings have the same ending: The killer stops only when he is killed.
• 
But that requires someone else with a gun to be there.
• 
Shouldn't that be sooner rather than later?
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      2019 could be an incredible and historic year for the Supreme Court – Here’s why  (Fox 12/30/2018)
• 
... originalism is the only legitimate way for judges to exercise the "judicial power" granted them by the Constitution.  That power is abused – or more accurately, legislative power is usurped – if, as Alexander Hamilton warned, "courts ... exercise WILL instead of Judgment, the consequence (being) the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body."
• 
President Abraham Lincoln warned that "if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
• 
The Constitution, as written and understood when enacted, is our supreme law.  The Supreme Court has long viewed its own pronouncements as on a par with our founding document.
• 
The high court can restore judicial humility by following the Constitution's original meaning, until the people choose to change it.
      After Mattis, Trump needs a very different kind of defense secretary  (Fox 12/26/2018)
      Col.  David Hunt: Maj.  Golsteyn deserves a presidential pardon on an unjust murder charge  (Fox 12/25/2018)
      Back to Discipline: Disparate impact reflects disparate reality  (JWR 12/24/2018)
      What you need to know about the Barr memo and Mueller's obstruction investigation  (Fox 12/22/2018)
• 
... the Barr memo is a brilliant piece of legal craftsmanship, thoughtfully outlining the damage Mueller's theory of obstruction – to the extent it is publicly known – could do to the administration of justice and the institution of the presidency.
• 
He does not prejudge Mueller's conclusions or question the legitimacy of his investigation. 
• 
Moreover, Barr does not doubt that a president theoretically could be guilty of obstruction.
• 
The issue addressed in the memo is Mueller's expansive theory of obstruction.
• 
As Barr understands it, based on public reporting, the special counsel assumes the president's lawful exercise of his constitutional prerogatives – e.g., to fire subordinate executive officials, to issue pardons, or to weigh in on the merits of an investigation – could be grounds for an obstruction charge if a prosecutor assessed the action to be improperly motivated.
• 
As Barr correctly points out, this interpretation of the law would not only impair the president's capacity to carry out his Article II duties.
• 
It would apply to every subordinate executive official, including Justice Department prosecutors.
• 
They would face potential prosecution based on charging decisions they make, the strategic manner in which they guide investigations, the tactics they choose to use or forbear from using, as well as personnel and management decisions.
• 
Moreover, Barr makes an incisive point about cohesion in a free, self-determining society
• 
If a Justice Department investigation is going to be responsible for removing a democratically-elected president, then it must be over a clear, egregious crime.
• 
A prosecution based on an aggressive, dubious theory of obstruction, particularly if no underlying "collusion" crime can be proved, would leave much of the nation believing the political class was arbitrarily seeking to oust a president not to its liking.
• 
In the memo, which is dated June 8, 2018, Barr argued that "Mueller should not be permitted to demand that the President submit to interrogation about alleged obstruction."
• 
Barr's position on this point is entirely correct.  ... a prosecutor does not get to subpoena the president just because it might be interesting.
• 
The president's duties are unparalleled in their centrality to American governance.
• 
Consequently, the Justice Department normally would not permit a prosecutor to divert the president from those duties and attempt to compel him to answer questions in the absence of: (a) a serious crime in which the president is clearly implicated, and (b) the existence of critical evidence or testimony that the prosecutor can only get from the president – i.e., no other source is available.
• 
To argue, as some do, that this puts the president above the law is nonsense.
• 
What it means is that a prosecutor does have the power to issue a grand jury subpoena to the president, but only after we've balanced competing public interests: the vital interest in enabling the president to tend to his responsibilities, and the important interest in providing essential evidence in the investigation of a serious crime.
• 
We do not spare the president, but we heed his weighty duties.
• 
The same reasoning undergirds the Justice Department's long-held guidance that a sitting president may not be indicted – no one is saying a president can never be indicted; we simply do not want the president dealing with criminal process while he is responsible for national security and the execution of the laws.
• 
... The same reasoning undergirds the Justice Department's long-held guidance that a sitting president may not be indicted – no one is saying a president can never be indicted; we simply do not want the president dealing with criminal process while he is responsible for national security and the execution of the laws.
• 
Former Attorney General Barr's memo is an impressive piece of legal craftsmanship.
• 
It is not an attack on the Mueller investigation.  It is a plea that the Mueller investigation be conducted within the bounds of constitutional law, congressional intent, and venerable Justice Department guidance.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: James Comey may be the only one who believes the stories he’s selling  (Fox 12/18/2018)
• 
Only an audacious and arrogant man accuses others of lying when he is guilty of the same.
• 
... to accuse President Trump of "lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI, and attacking the rule of law in this country."
• 
This from the man who was fired for abusing his authority and usurping the power of the attorney general...
• 
"Comey's lack of integrity and defiance of rules and principles of law were his downfall.  His unchecked ambition and desire to thrust himself into the public limelight only exacerbated his mistakes of judgment and deed."
• 
But don't take my word for it.  Read the 500-page report by the Justice Department's Inspector General who cited Comey for his bias, insubordination and unprofessionalism.
• 
It is a damning indictment of how Comey committed multiple acts of misconduct and "refused to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken."
• 
To this day, Comey refuses to accept responsibility for his misdeeds.  Instead, he shifts blame to others or attempts to cover it up.
• 
He can't recall who drafted the document that launched the Trump-Russia investigation.
• 
He claimed he never knew as FBI Director that Clinton, Fusion GPS, and the Democratic National Committee were all responsible for the anti-Trump "dossier."
• 
As for Bruce Ohr's role at the Department of Justice in peddling the document, Comey replied, "I don't know anything about that."
• 
Comey testified he hardly knew anything about the involvement of Christopher Steele, the former British spy who composed the phony "dossier."
• 
He said he didn't know when the FBI fired Steele for lying.
• 
Nevertheless, Comey was all too willing to use the "dossier" as a pretext to spy on a Trump campaign associate, Carter Page.
• 
As FBI Director, he affixed his signature to the warrant application, even though he and bureau agents never verified the authenticity and veracity of that document.
• 
In the process, Comey and others concealed vital evidence and deceived the FISA court.
• 
Comey's amnesia is either a clever feint or he is the most clueless and incompetent director in the history of the FBI.
• 
I'm betting on the former.  Comey has become the master of deception and prevarication.
• 
Comey said, "Good people lie.  I lay out, I think I'm a good person, where I have lied."
• 
"Comey loves to sermonize about lies and lying people.  This is perversely ironic coming from a man who, more than anyone else, is responsible for the most notorious hoax in modern American history."
• 
... the FBI had discovered no evidence of a crime which is a legal prerequisite for invoking the special counsel.
• 
But that did not stop Comey from filching presidential memos, delivering them to a friend who then leaked them to the media for the sole purpose of triggering the appointment of a special counsel who just happened to be his long-time friend and ally, Robert Mueller.  In an interview on Fox News, Comey insisted it was "not a leak."
• 
Really?  Then what was it?
• 
A full two months before the FBI ever interviewed Clinton, Comey began drafting the statement he used to exonerate her.
• 
Comey is not the heroic or noble figure that he imagines.
• 
He twisted the facts and contorted the law to clear Clinton.
• 
He launched an investigation of Trump without legally sufficient evidence.
• 
He deceived the FISA court by withholding evidence in order to wiretap a Trump campaign associate.
• 
He misappropriated government documents and leaked them to the media to precipitate an illegitimate special counsel investigation.
• 
And he has repeatedly given false or misleading statements to both Congress and the media.
• 
Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, until at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him."
      When Supplements Become Substitutes: A theory of nearly everything  (JWR 12/17/2018)
      Why ‘No Hate Here’ signs are actually pretty hateful  (NYP 12/09/2018)
• 
I can't see inside their hearts, but what I do know is that the people with their "No Hate" signs sow more division than they do comity.
• 
It's also clear that this constant slicing and dicing of the American people along lines of race, sex and gender makes it that much harder to talk about the common good.
• 
And if you're a conservative, how should you respond?  Not by being defensive.
• 
Instead, tell them you have nothing to apologize for.  Tell them to look into their own souls.
      Victoria Toensing: Why has Mueller ignored Obama administration crimes?  (Fox 12/09/2018)
      Tucker Carlson: Our ruling class has clamped down on freedom of speech as never before  (Fox 12/06/2018)
• 
Freedom of speech.  A lot of people voted for Donald Trump in the hope they'd have more of it.  But two years into his presidency, the opposite has happened.
• 
Our ruling class has clamped down as never before on personal expression.  Gone is the free exchange of ideas we were promised as Americans.
• 
In its place: Mandatory, soul-deadening conformity.  An entire population forced to repeat the same mindless platitudes, or else.
• 
An axis of left-wing corporate power, academia, media, and lawmakers have all aligned to curb your right to speak freely - your right to think for yourself.
• 
When they control your words, they control your mind.
• 
The left used to deny that this was their goal.  However, they're not even pretending anymore.
• 
They're baring their teeth and snarling.  Get in line or we'll hurt you.
• 
... Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged that his company, one of the biggest and most powerful in the world, will do whatever it takes to silence dissenting opinions.
• 
"Hate tries to make its headquarters in the digital world.  At Apple, we believe that technology needs to have a clear point of view on this challenge."
• 
"There is no time to get tied up in knots.  That's why we only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence: You have no place on our platforms."
• 
Hate.  It's a real thing and there's a lot of it out there right now.
• 
But hate is also the word they use for views they don't like, or questions they can't answer.
• 
Cook's real message is simple: We are holy; you are fallen.  Shut up and obey.
• 
CEOs didn't used to talk this way.  They were in the business of selling products, not preaching sermons.
• 
Then, over time, conventional religion receded from public life, and people like Tim Cook and his fellow CEOs stepped forward to fill that void.
• 
It wasn't an upgrade.
• 
Apple has a lot more power than the Episcopal Church ever had, and much less humility and restraint.
• 
Leaders 100 years ago could tolerate dissent.  They thought God would sort it out in the end — they didn't have to.
• 
Members of our modern ruling class consider themselves gods.  They render their own judgment.
• 
They view disagreement as equivalent to apostasy, an attack on the one true faith.
• 
"If we make this law and you have to allow the state government to look at your social media posts, you could decide on whether you want a pistol license or not.  You don't have to have a pistol license."
• 
True.  You don't have to vote, either, or go to the church of your choice, or be tried by a jury of your peers.
• 
What other constitutional rights will soon be contingent on saying the right things?
      Democrats are now the smartest people in the room even if you're too stupid to understand that  (Fox 12/06/2018)
• 
"...  We Democrats know so much — that is true.  We have the kind of tell everybody how smart we are, and so we have a tendency to be very left brain."
• 
"Do you really think Donald Trump has the temperament to be commander-in-chief?  Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis."
• 
"He just says, I'm going to negotiate a better deal.  What magic wand do you have?  And usually, the answer is, he doesn't have an answer."
• 
"This office has a way of waking you up.  His positions or predispositions that don't match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick."
• 
The obvious implication being that Donald Trump and those Americans who voted for him are just a bunch of dumb (inaudible).
• 
"The problem here is that the president doesn't read.  We know that."
• 
"Isn't it remarkable how little confidence Donald Trump's own lawyers have in him?  That they think he is too stupid to sit across the table with Robert Mueller?"
• 
"...  almost caveman-like.  It really is.  He is like Fred Flintstone running the country."
• 
"It's man without curiosity.  It's a man who doesn't read, and it's a man with an attention span of a rabid Tsetse fly"
• 
... they said similar things by the way about Reagan, until he died, of course, and then they all pretended that they never said any of the mean stuff they said about him for his two terms in office.
• 
Liberals claim to be for the little guy.  They are the champions of the average person.  But they are really elitist snobs at heart.
• 
Remember all the dire predictions made by all those political and business savants about a Trump presidency?
• 
"If the unlikely event happens and Trump wins, you will see a market crash of historic proportions." ...
• 
"In the event Donald wins, I have no doubt in my mind, the market tanks." ...
• 
"Donald Trump is moving us toward World War III."
• 
"The lack of a diplomatic and serious engagement strategy, in my view, has us sliding toward war by next summer."
• 
Democrats and their allies imply that they have a monopoly on intelligence and brainpower.
• 
But if that's true, why have they screwed things up so badly when they have the chance to fix them?
• 
While Trump identified the threat, for instance, posed by China and has challenged them, who can forget Bill Clinton pushing for China's acceptance on the world stage with his misguided WTO push?
• 
Disagreement is a good deal for America.
• 
Our products will gain better access to China's market.
• 
If China gains no new market access to the United States, we will gain tough new safeguards against surges of imports and maintain the strongest possible rules against dumping products that have hurt Americans in the past.
• 
China has manipulated and distorted world markets, engaged in the blatant ransacking of our intellectual properties, and dumped heavily subsidize products into the United States, leading to the loss of millions of U.S.  jobs.
• 
"They are subsidized by their government.  The People's Republic of China is not a friendly participant in a free enterprise economy in America.  They subsidize their companies, they run their banks, they are state-owned and they are going after American manufacturing."
• 
Remember when he designated the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate Islamist in Egypt and he called Iran's president Rouhani a moderate reformer?
• 
"We are encouraged that President Rouhani received from the Iranian people a mandate to pursue a more moderate course.  Iran's genuine commitment to go down to a different course will be good for the region in the world."
• 
And how about all the geopolitical geniuses that Hillary's State Department, allowing our ambassador to travel to Benghazi when we knew about repeated security threats and an unstable situation on the ground?  He and three others ended up dead.
• 
Trump removed the rose-colored glasses and what he did is he confronted the rogue powers in the region as they exist.
• 
Trump's foreign policy is more pragmatic and prudent.
• 
He doesn't believe in nation-building, nor does he believe passivity is the answer in the face of real threats.
• 
... they have not come to terms with the fact that their decades of errors paved the way for Donald Trump.
• 
... before you sweat the warnings of the expert class, remember just how much they screwed up over the past 30 years or so.
      Miseducated or Stupid?  (JWR 12/05/2018)
• 
... survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country.
• 
Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favorably.
• 
Half of millennials have never heard of Communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1959 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people.
• 
The number of people who died at the hands of Josef Stalin may be as high as 62 million.
• 
However, almost one-third of millennials think former President George W.  Bush is responsible for more killings than Stalin.
• 
By the way, Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was responsible for the deaths of about 20 million people.
• 
The Nazis come in as a poor third in terms of history's most prolific mass murderers.
• 
According to professor Rudolph Rummel's research, the 20th century, mankind's most brutal century, saw 262 million people's lives destroyed at the hands of their own governments.
• 
There was such leftist hate for former President George W.  Bush that it's not out of the question that those 32 percent of millennials were taught by their teachers and professors that Bush murdered more people than Stalin.
• 
America's communists, socialists and Marxists have little knowledge of socialist history.
• 
... "Socialists and Fascists Have Always Been Kissing Cousins."
• 
Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1925, "It would be better for us to end our existence under Bolshevism than to endure slavery under capitalism."
• 
Goebbels added, "I think it is terrible that we and the Communists are bashing in each other's heads"
• 
When the tragedies of socialist regimes — such as those in Venezuela, the USSR, China, Cuba and many others — are pointed out to America's leftists, they hold up Sweden as their socialist role model.
• 
Americans might be surprised to learn that Sweden's experiment with socialism was a relatively brief flirtation, lasting about 20 years and ending in disillusionment and reform.
• 
Our young people are not the first Americans to admire tyrants and cutthroats.
• 
Walter Duranty called Stalin "the greatest living statesman" and "a quiet, unobtrusive man."
• 
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as "a very remarkable man, a very able man."
• 
President Franklin Roosevelt called Mussolini "admirable," and he was "deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished."
• 
In 1972, John Kenneth Galbraith visited Communist China and praised Mao and the Chinese economic system.
• 
His Harvard University colleague John K.  Fairbank believed that America could learn much from the Cultural Revolution, saying, "Americans may find in China's collective life today an ingredient of personal moral concern for one's neighbor that has a lesson for us all."
• 
Are Americans who admire the world's most brutal regimes miseducated or stupid?
• 
Or do they have some kind of devious agenda?
      Liz Peek: Trump scores big wins at the G-20  (Fox 12/03/2018)
• 
Specifically, the community of nations agreed in their official communique to "necessary reform" of the World Trade Organization, a top White House priority, and recognized the decision of the U.S.  to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, and to still utilize "all energy sources and technologies, while protecting the environment."
• 
In addition, the Chinese promised to up their purchases of U.S.- made goods and to discuss other demands in exchange for postponing an expected hike in tariffs; President Xi also committed to designating the deadly drug Fentanyl as a controlled substance in China, and vowed to help with de-nuclearizing North Korea.
• 
Trump's signature efforts to reboot the tepid economy – efforts which have been by any standard hugely successful – have lately collided with his trade battles with China and other countries.
• 
Over the past several months, anti-Trump hyperventilating by the left has obscured the progress the administration has made in boosting growth, hiring and wages.
• 
Hanging over the booming economy, though, has been the ongoing battle over trade, which some describe as a self-inflicted wound by the White House.
• 
But President Trump is correct: the international playing field is not level and it needs to be fixed.
• 
From demanding that our companies operating there share their trade secrets to sending scientists to spy on our universities to hacking into our corporations' most proprietary information, Beijing has engaged in a decades-long pursuit of our intellectual property, no holds barred.
• 
They have also used subsidies of state-owned enterprises to crush international competition and thrown up endless barriers to companies wanting to compete in China.
• 
... the ongoing theft of IP is "the greatest transfer of wealth in history." Millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in valuable intellectual property were vanishing into China each year.
• 
The relentless quest for technology that allowed China to climb the value chain, to rise from manufacturing t-shirts to fighter jets, has been aided and abetted by our biggest businesses, and by the World Trade Organziation.
• 
Multinational corporations have put up with Beijing's cheating because they wanted access to China's growing consumer market.
• 
The WTO has put up with it because no one demanded a change.
• 
Until now.
• 
President Trump is not intent on overthrowing the rules-based order, as critics charge; he wants to make it better.
• 
It could not have happened without the clear threat of punitive tariffs on Chinese exports. 
• 
China cannot be trusted to follow through on its promises.
• 
But Americans can celebrate the determination of the Trump White House to keep the pressure on.
• 
... exposing and correcting a serious problem that has hurt American workers and businesses and should be applauded by all; I'm not holding my breath.
      Ned Ryun: Migrant caravans and the American taxpayer  (Fox 12/03/2018)
• 
... while it cannot be ignored that there are many heart-rending cases and situations in these caravans and in Central America, we also need to be asking our elected officials and leaders why they are insisting it is the moral responsibility of already-overburdened American taxpayers to prioritize these issues over the many others we already face here at home?
• 
It is the moral responsibility and obligation of every elected official, funded by the American taxpayer and entrusted with the taxpayers' monies, to prioritize the interests of the American people first and last.
• 
To prioritize anyone else above them is deeply immoral.
• 
Why, exactly, is it humane to demand that American taxpayers pay for the costs of those coming in illegally?
• 
Why is it humane to demand that our children bear the cost of the impending economic disaster that our current quasi-open borders and essentially open social welfare systems will bring about?
• 
So what happens in the very near future when this low and unskilled labor force, many who have come and continue to come via our broken immigration system and porous border, have no work?
• 
Violent protests in the streets?
• 
Those thrown out of work being thrown instead into our already failing social welfare systems?
• 
Guess who funds the results of all that?  The American taxpayer, us, our children, paying life-crushing, draconian taxes.
• 
If we allow such immoral political leadership to continue, in both Republican and Democratic circles, then all of us will be working for the government.
• 
Every last one of us.
• 
And that will be the end of our free society.
      The Mueller investigation has come up empty on Russia — You won’t believe what's coming next  (Fox 11/30/2018)
• 
The pattern and purpose of Mueller's investigation and the endgame is becoming clear, and yes, it's clearly get the president at all costs.
• 
Trump's first team of lawyers with their "don't worry and cooperate" strategy set the president back, and let the whole thing spiral out of control.
• 
The investigation, I believe, has come up truly empty on its central charge related to the president — collusion with the Russian government.
• 
They are now trying to find someone, anyone who had any contact with Julian Assange with the aim of calling that collusion-lite.
• 
But mostly what Mueller's team is doing is bludgeoning witnesses on unrelated charges to piece together a case against the president.
• 
They are shaping that case through the indictments — and threats of indictments — that are being used to get guilty pleas to make the president seem like an obstructor or co-conspirator.
• 
They are literally creating the crimes.
• 
Sure, there are some anonymous Russians who will never be tried to add on top of this record.
• 
But it's clear now Mueller is no longer looking for crimes in the presidential race of 2016.
• 
He is simply creating a narrative to delegitimize the president...
• 
There's no doubt that the outline of Mueller's report was written a long time ago and is being filled in.
• 
For those who thought Mueller would deliver a balanced and thoughtful report, these latest actions suggest that instead, we are seeing an all-out attack on the president and the presidency the likes of which we have never seen.
• 
Get ready for the fight of the century coming soon and it will be about everything except collusion with the Russian government.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Laura Ingraham: Barack Obama's failed reset  (Fox 11/29/2018)
• 
The Obamas left the White House almost two years ago.  Can you believe it?  But they don't want you to forget how awesome they were.  Excuse me, are.
• 
... came off as a man who is obsessed with himself and obsessed with taking credit for another guy's (Trump's) success.
• 
"And by the way, American energy production, you wouldn't always know it but, you know, it went up every year when I was president.  And you know that whole, suddenly America is like the biggest oil producer and the biggest — that was me, people.  I just want you to... Sometimes you go to Wall Street and folks would be grumbling about anti-business.  I said have you checked where your stocks were when I came into office and where they are now.  What are you talking — what are you complaining about?  Just say thank you please."
• 
No, thank you.  Obama's efforts at legacy building notwithstanding the difference between the two president's economic records are stark.
• 
"GDP growth staggered along at 1.5 percent in Mr.  Obama's final six full quarters in office.  But growth doubled to 3 percent during Mr.  Trump's first six full quarters...  The increase in job openings over Mr.  Trump's first 21 months has averaged an impressive 75,000 a month.  But over Mr.  Obama's last 20 months in office, the number of job openings increased an average of 900 a month.  Well, during Mr.  Obama's last 21 months, the number of employed Americans increased — not bad — an average of 157,000 a month.  But under Mr.  Trump, the increase has accelerated to 214,000 a month.  A whopping 36 percent improvement."
• 
Obama's pathetic attempt to take credit for the fruits of his successor's policies while Obama criticizes most of those very same policies is just patently ridiculous.
• 
"Michelle and I and our girls, we came out intact.  — And what I mean by that is that the core values that we brought into the office, pretty homespun values of, you know, tell the truth and try to see the other person's point of view and treat people kindly and with respect."
• 
"Think of how much better off our country would be if Republican politicians hadn't spent years precisely trying to scare voters."
• 
Oh, that's all Republicans did.  And that was the nice stuff he said by the way.  And as far as his "homespun values" that he bragged about ... values like, I don't know, telling the truth, remember this statement from our 44th president?
• 
"If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period...  If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.  Period."
• 
And Solyndra is going to be a really good investment — $500 million down the tube.
• 
"Whether it was Cronkite or Brinkley or what have you, there was a common set of facts, a baseline around which both parties had to adapt and respond to.  And by the time I take office, what you increasingly have is a media environment in which if you are a Fox News viewer, you have an entirely different reality than if you are a New York Times reader."
• 
Oh yes, it is entirely different.  We see the world as it is, while The New York Times and certain other networks sell their own version of reality.
• 
... he prefers life kind of the way it was or is today on college campuses.  You know, where diversity of thought is largely nonexistent and where violators of vague community standards are punished or shunned.
• 
And meanwhile, where sycophants and toadies, certain liberal ideals or people, enjoy special privileges and nonstop accolades from professors for their "courage" and their insight.
• 
Well, guess what?  Millions of Americans were actually glad either they even didn't go to university or they are glad that they live now in something called the real world.
• 
... Barack Obama kind of has contempt for a lot of those values, at least in a lot of the values you and I hold dear.  And he doesn't have all that much respect for any American who doesn't think like he does.
• 
"You start getting the politics based on a nationalism that's not pride in country but hatred for somebody on the other side of the border."
• 
OK, so let me just get this straight.  Anyone who supported Donald Trump — especially his immigration policy, border enforcement and the like — is basically a racist, xenophobic bigot or maybe you are just a run of the mill stupid hick.
• 
At bottom, it's a negative and cynical view of about half of the American population currently.
• 
You know when you think about the dark, cynical view of America, do you know what it reminds me of?  Remember this from Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago?
• 
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and they want us to say God bless America.  No, no, no.  Not God bless America.  God damn America.  It's in the Bible.  They are killing innocent people.  God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."
• 
Now, President Obama said this on March 2, 2008: "I don't think that my church is actually particularly controversial, it's a member of the United Church of Christ."
• 
Well, I guess you can take the man out of Reverend Wright's church but you can't take Jeremiah Wright's mind-set, sometimes, out of the man.
• 
Beneath all the polished and the smooth talk and kind of side jokes, Obama still can't see that there are substantive reasons why not everyone loves him.
• 
See related Miss Me? (Glenn McCoy, 02/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Please stop playing with my Holocaust, Geraldo/Cortez  (INN 11/28/2018)
• 
For those who haven't heard, Ocasio-Cortez, neither our best nor our brightest, compared the migrants crashing our borders to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.
• 
There is only one Holocaust, sweetheart.  You might learn that when you grow up.
• 
"At the same time," Geraldo continued, these "poor people" have no choice but to come as they can because they have no legal system upon which to rely.
• 
Personally, I was carried in a rucksack across the Pyrenees... and coming to America, through Canada...
• 
In fact, the doors were closed.  "None is too many," declared Canada's Mackenzie King.  Likewise, the sainted FDR in America.
• 
We were "the lucky ones," as my mother often said – long story.  We were lucky to get out in the nick of time.
• 
But some 77,000 French Jews stayed a day too long and were handed over to the Gestapo.
• 
What they did – they rounded up Jews throughout Europe and shot them through the head.  When they ran short of bullets, they built the ovens.
• 
Think Babi Yar.  There, in Kiev, the Jews were ripped from their homes, rounded up, and in a single day, 33,721 were massacred...September 29-30, 1941.
• 
Multiply that several hundred thousand times – and there's the Holocaust.
• 
Is anything like that happening in Central America?
• 
Spare me the sob stories.
• 
Those of us who did survive – the very few – we waited our turn.  We did not come as a mob carrying the French flag or the German flag, or any other flag...as do these of today.
• 
We were grateful to stand in line on the chance that here and there a door might open – and usually, as with my father, we were standing in the wrong line with insufficient papers.
• 
Eight and a half years – at the cost of his health – he was tossed from this queue to another, until something finally cracked open
• 
But he never complained.  The Survivors never did.  They were grateful for anything and everything.  They never felt that they were OWED.
• 
They never felt that America owed them any favors.  That is the entire difference in a nutshell.
• 
The people who were spared Auschwitz were not seeking a better life... they were seeking life, period.  Any kind of life.
• 
Geraldo Rivera is a man in his 70s.  By this time he should be less of a fool.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in her 20s and the product of our Progressive schools.
• 
She cannot help but be an ignoramus.
• 
But either way, their beliefs are poisonous, indefensible and unconscionable. 
      Newt Gingrich: The border struggle is real.  And it's a war  (Fox 11/27/2018)
• 
It is largely a psychological war.  Foreigners are taunting the American government and trying to get the news media to focus on American law enforcement rather than the people trying to break into our country.
• 
This struggle is historic.  It is the tip of a wave of lawbreaking foreigners who would love to move into the United States and dictate to law-abiding Americans the terms under which the lawbreakers will be accepted, supported and subsidized.
• 
The foreign invaders have a huge advantage.  Most of the American news media and the American left are on their side.
• 
Most of the news media do not want to explore the aggressiveness – and in some cases criminality – of those seeking to come into the United States illegally.
• 
Most of the news media do not want to examine how many billions of dollars the Mexican cartels have made from human trafficking and assisting people to break American laws.
• 
Nor do they want to widely report stories about law-abiding Americans who are killed or harmed by people who are in our country illegally...
• 
For the last several decades, the left has tried to change the terms of the entire debate.
• 
On the left, every illegal immigrant becomes a "refugee seeking asylum."
• 
There is an entire network of left-wing organizations dedicated to recruiting and helping people break American immigration laws.
• 
... "in the last five months, we have a 314 percent increase in adults and children arriving at the border fraudulently, claiming to be a family unit."
• 
Many of the adult male-and-child groups crossing the border are not family.
• 
In a number of cases, the child is being trafficked and brought to the United States to be sold into slavery or forced into prostitution.
• 
The news media are constantly looking for new ways to embarrass the American government and put the illegal immigrants in the best possible light to build sympathy for them.
• 
If the American government succeeds in closing down the caravans headed toward our border and blocking them from entering the United States, then these would-be immigrants may conclude they have to wait and follow the legal rules for coming to America.
• 
The future is going to be very different depending on who wins the current war on our southern border.
      Steve Hilton: Trump is fighting the elitist enemy within his own White House  (Fox 11/26/2018)
• 
Over the Thanksgiving break, I read Bob Woodward's "Fear: Trump in the White House."
• 
When it came out in September the snooty elitists on the East Coast salivated over its juicy gossip: "Trump watches TV a lot!" and the story it told of a president they see as an ignorant, dangerous barbarian.
• 
"It is a stunning look inside the Trump presidency, exposing a chaotic White House led by a man who has said he believes the key to power is fear."
• 
"I think what Woodward has presented here is a devastating portrait...  We've heard about chaos, we've heard about dysfunction, but the details of this book are like nothing we've heard before...'
• 
"All the anecdotes certainly ring true to the man we know and the man who never evolved or stepped up when he won the presidency."
• 
The East Coast elite held up this book as evidence of why Donald Trump is not fit to be president.
• 
Well, either they haven't read the book, or they're deliberately distorting what's in it.
• 
What Bob Woodward has actually done is write a book in praise of President Trump.
• 
The Woodward account, in fact, tells the story of a president who is totally focused on his agenda, clear about his priorities, and obsessed with delivering the promises he was elected on — but blocked at every turn by almost everyone around him.
• 
... these men were in President Trump's inner circle and they literally plotted and schemed with each other to overturn the result of the 2016 election.
• 
"We are going to stop the TPP, totally re-negotiate NAFTA, one of the worst trade deals ever made by mankind, and protect every last American job."
• 
From day one the president wanted to deliver on that by introducing tariffs and renegotiating trade deals.
• 
But globalists including Gary Cohn and General Mattis did everything in their power to stop him.
• 
Another central theme of Donald Trump's campaign was his promise to stop America's involvement in endless foreign wars.  This is how he said it in 2016 :
• 
"I will never send our finest into battle unless necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, and will only do so if we have a plan for victory with a capital V."
• 
And yet the globalists in his team tried every trick in the book to get the president to break his promises and carry on with the failed policies of the past.
• 
One of the most distinctive elements of the Trump 2016 agenda was its promise to end the elitist consensus for uncontrolled immigration that for decades delivered cheap labor to big business Republicans and easy votes to establishment Democrats.
• 
"As far as the wall is concerned, we're going to build a wall.  We're going to create a border.  We're going to let people in, but they're going to come in legally.  They're going to come in legally.  And it's something that can be done."
• 
... far from undermining democracy, as the East Coast elites scream every day, President Trump has been battling to uphold democracy by delivering the policy changes that people voted for.
• 
Far from describing an unfit and clueless idiot in the Oval Office, the Woodward book portrays a clear-eyed and resolute president fighting exactly the elitist enemy he was elected to fight.
• 
The only problem is: the enemy is within.  Not just within his own administration — but within his own White House.
• 
Now, some of those people have gone.  ... But far too many are still there.
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Marc Thiessen: Chief Justice Roberts is wrong.  We do have Obama judges and Trump judges.  (Fox 11/23/2018)
• 
For someone trying to demonstrate that the judiciary is not political, getting into a political fight with the president sure is a funny way to do it.
• 
After President Trump called a judge who ruled against him an "Obama judge," Chief Justice John Roberts issued an extraordinary public rebuke of the president, declaring in statement "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges."
• 
Roberts was not only wrong to speak out, but also his claim that there are no Obama judges or Trump judges was wrong.
• 
If we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, then why did Senate Republicans block President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia in the final year of Obama's term?
• 
And why did Democrats filibuster Trump's nominee, Neil Gorsuch, to fill Scalia's seat?
• 
If there were no Obama judges or Trump judges, then why did Anthony Kennedy wait for Trump's election to announce his retirement?
• 
And why doesn't Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just retire now and let Trump nominate her replacement?
• 
Because they both want a president who would appoint a successor who shares their judicial philosophy.
• 
In the 2016 election, exit polls showed that 70 percent of voters said Supreme Court appointments were either the most important or an important factor in deciding their vote. 
• 
Roberts is correct that we should not have "Trump judges" or "Obama judges."
• 
It would be better for the country if every judge, regardless of which president nominated him or her, strictly interpreted our laws and the Constitution.
• 
While conservative presidents tend to nominate judges who exercise a philosophy of judicial restraint — follow our laws as written — liberal presidents tend to nominate judicial activists who legislate from the bench and shape the law to reach their preferred outcomes.
• 
The left believes in a "living Constitution," which can be interpreted to mean whatever they want it to mean without being formally amended.
• 
Democratic presidents have been much more successful than Republicans in nominating judges who hew to their judicial philosophy.
• 
Over the past three decades, nearly half of all Republican Supreme Court nominees have either become "swing votes" ... or defected to the court's liberal bloc entirely...
• 
Even Roberts has joined the court's liberal bloc at key times, abandoning his judicial philosophy that judges should not legislate from the bench to provide the swing vote to uphold ObamaCare.
• 
By contrast, not one liberal justice during the past three decades has defected to the conservative bloc or turned into a regular swing vote.
• 
What is true of the Supreme Court applies even more to the appellate courts.
• 
Trump is right, the U.S.  Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is a disgrace.
• 
This is the court that ruled that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional, that the Second Amendment doesn't recognize an individual right to bear concealed arms and that bans on assisted suicide are unconstitutional.
• 
We do have an independent judiciary.  Judges are not beholden to any president, including the one who appoints them.
• 
The judiciary plays a key role in our system of checks and balances.
• 
"Trump judges" should rule against Trump when he is wrong.
• 
That is why it is so important for the chief justice stay above politics.
• 
See related Who Are You Voting for? (Glenn McCoy, 08/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Lauren Appell: I’m thankful for Trump … and I’m not alone  (Fox 11/20/2018)
• 
... that's exactly who I'm thankful for this year — a president who has done what few "politicians" do, he's sought to keep every promise he's made to the people who voted for him.
• 
When he was running for office we knew his name, his business background, but he had no political background that we could gauge.
• 
We were flying blind and had no idea if he was serious or if he really intended to do anything he said.
• 
We held our breath, gave him a chance, and two years later our country and our families are better for it.
• 
While it's easy to get caught up in the politically contentious times we're living in and the alarming behavior of an increasingly inflamed left, this is a man who fights an uphill battle for everything he promised us.
• 
He is constantly pushing back against a hostile media and belligerent Democrats working overtime to destroy him.
• 
And he does it all for free.  Let that sink in.
• 
During the campaign, Trump vowed to protect religious liberty, and uphold the rule of law by nominating judges who would interpret the Constitution as written, not rewrite it according to their political whims.
• 
He did not disappoint.  One of his first acts as president was the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, signaling to his base that he was with them.
• 
President Trump has put several women in prominent roles in both his cabinet and his administration.  These women act as his voice and have his ear.
• 
President Trump has remained committed to his four pillars of immigration: building a wall, ending chain migration, defunding sanctuary cities and getting rid of the visa lottery.
• 
He's been undeterred in his efforts to keep our country safe, even in the face of backlash. 
• 
President Trump's tax cuts and regulation rollbacks have stimulated economic growth and led to record low unemployment. 
• 
... 750 companies have decided to hand out bonuses, raises, add more money into their employees' 401K accounts, as well as grow their businesses or slash costs for consumers thanks to the Trump Tax Cuts.
• 
Thanks to President Trump our new standing of strength in the world has led to trade deals that benefit us...
• 
President Trump was also the first president to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and as a result he's so far stopped him from shooting missiles over Japan and threatening to start a third world war.
• 
There's a lot to be thankful for over the last two years.  Of course you'd never know it if you turned on the TV.  The media doesn't like to give him credit for anything.
• 
We're thankful for a president who's fighting to make this country safer for our kids, who's protecting our freedoms, and who got our economy thriving again.
• 
We're thankful for a president who works a thankless job.
• 
See related Gets Me Where I Want (Michael Ramirez, 02/25/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Trump vs.  Macron: What the French president doesn't understand about nationalism  (Fox 11/15/2018)
• 
The French president said, in a clear reference to President Trump: "Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism.  Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.  In saying ‘our interests first, whatever happens to the others,' you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: Its moral values."
• 
Nothing could be further from the truth.
• 
Nationalism is actually the epitome of morality for a national leader.
• 
It is the moral imperative for any national leader to prioritize the security and interests of his or her citizens above all else.
• 
To place any other nation before one's citizens is in fact immoral and a betrayal of the nation.  It is in fact unpatriotic.
• 
Some of our past presidents have at times became so interested in nation-building abroad, creating global consensus for trade deals, negotiating nuclear deals and working on other international agreements that they have become disconnected from prioritizing the interests of the American worker and taxpayer.
• 
Diplomacy and deals are not good things in and of themselves; what matters is if they are pursued in the interests of the United States and our people. 
• 
The U.S.  president is certainly not advocating for the tribal, brutish perversion of nationalism embraced by the Nazi mass murderers who ruled Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
• 
Instead, President Trump is embracing the nationalism of American Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill and great leaders of other nations who have dedicated themselves to serving their people and making their countries great.
• 
It is not jingoistic or isolationist to suggest that the leaders of nations should be first and foremost concerned with their own nations and citizens.
• 
The nationalism President Trump calls for is one that seeks an even playing field for all nations – not special deals and preferred treatment for the global elite.
• 
It means countries should engage with each other – and where interests align, stand together as partners.
• 
The partners should enter into mutual defense treaties like NATO and pay their fair share and contribute equally.
• 
And President Trump understands that he should not be sacrificing American sovereignty and our national priorities and wealth on the altar of globalist fairy tales.
• 
The globalist kumbaya of Western European leaders is based in the idea that we can all leave behind the borders of our nation and our history and heritage for a bright global future.
• 
Fortunately, voters the world over are rejecting these ideas, reminding their leaders that we should be a community of unique nations, not a global one-world government.
• 
America has prioritized our national interests throughout our history, with an adherence to the ideals that have made us a singular nation – from the rule of law to free markets.
• 
This has been a blessing to the world.
• 
We must never sacrifice the health and wealth of Americans to satisfy a global consensus.
• 
Our politicians should always have before them, as their utmost priority, the interest of the American worker and taxpayer and the desire to make America great.
• 
Decline is a choice.  Greatness is a choice.  We choose not to decline.  We choose to be great.
• 
President Trump understands this and is acting in our nation's best interests and in the best interests of the American people.
• 
      Macron is wrong, there's nothing wrong with populist nationalism, American-style  (Fox 11/14/2018)
• 
... was seen as a rebuke of President Trump, whose opposition to "globalism" and embrace of "nationalism" are held up as signs of the decay of American conservatism and U.S.  global leadership.
• 
Sorry, but American conservatives were opposing the globalist project long before Trump arrived on the scene.
• 
Conservatives ... don't see America as a temporary social arrangement.  They recognize the march toward supranational global authority as fundamentally undemocratic, because it represents a growing concentration of power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats presiding over unaccountable institutions further and further removed from the people affected by their decisions.
• 
"If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington," because "if I do not like what my local community does ... I can move to another local community.  If I do not like that my state does, I can move to another.  If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations."
• 
Where, exactly, is one supposed to move when one does not like what global institutions impose?
• 
American conservatives believe in international cooperation to address common challenges.
• 
But they refuse to cede American sovereignty to supranational institutions, or to see America tied down with thousands of Lilliputian threads spun out of treaties and institutions that constrain her freedom of action.
• 
They understand that what stopped the march of Nazism and Communism in the 20th century was not international law but the principled projection of power by the world's democracies led by a sovereign United States.
• 
And what prevents China from invading Taiwan, or North Korea from attacking South Korea, today is not fear of U.N.  censure but fear of the U.S.  military.
• 
A strong America is the only guarantor of world peace.
• 
American conservatives have always been populists, because we believe that millions of individuals can make better decisions about their own lives than a cadre of elite central planners ever could.
• 
"I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the ... faculty members of Harvard University."
• 
American conservatives have always been nationalists, but while European nationalism is based on "blood and soil," ours is a creedal nationalism built on an idea — the idea of human freedom.
• 
That is why America can make the audacious claim that we are an "exceptional" nation.
• 
European nationalism is inherently exclusive; American nationalism is inherently inclusive.
• 
And there are millions across the world who are already Americans in their hearts, even though they have not arrived here yet.
• 
The Declaration of Independence says that "all men" — not all "Americans" or all "citizens" — "are created equal." America has no "Volk."
• 
The American body politic will reject the false nationalism of the alt-right like the foreign virus that it is.
• 
But it does not follow that we must also reject American-style nationalism or embrace the globalist project.
• 
If that does not please, Monsieur Macron, tant pis!
      Psychiatrist, Heal Thyself  (JWR 11/13/2018)
• 
... on the question of whether it is ethical for a psychiatrist to diagnose a public figure whom he has not personally examined.
• 
There are no prizes for guessing which public figure provoked the debate...
• 
For an American to compare contemporary life in America, no doubt unsatisfactory as it is in many respects, with life in a fascist or Nazi dictatorship is self-dramatizing, self-pitying, and an implicit insult to those millions who suffered or died under totalitarian dictatorships.
• 
It is perfectly legitimate to oppose the government and to despise the person of the president; it is another thing entirely to claim jurisdiction over whether he should be entitled to be president and whether he ought to be removed by committal to a mental institution.
• 
In the Soviet Union, psychiatrists occupied the kind of commissarship that Gartner is appealing for now.
• 
So who is the real fascist here?
• 
... shows an implicit contempt for American institutions and history if he thinks that the election of one allegedly unstable man can turn his country into a fascist dictatorship almost overnight.
• 
And if this really were the case, surely a psychologist might be expected to ask how such an unprecedented situation (he admits it is unprecedented) arose?
• 
"Has Professor Gartner put even the slightest thought into why 63 million voted for a man that dozens have described as sexist, racist, abusive, denigrating, incompetent, lazy and untruthful...?  Perhaps ... those voters were sick of aˆ?elitist' experts making all the decisions about their country, and his was the only way they had to show their anger?"
• 
... Gartner is ... a cause of the disease he pretends to cure — to be fair, a minor cause or manifestation of it.
• 
Gartner believes that people who show instability, anger, paranoia, feelings of persecution, and cognitive confusion would and should be involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation.
• 
I suggest that he read "Ward 6" by Chekhov, in which Dr.  Ragin is committed to his own ward.
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Trump needs to get out of his funk if he wants to be re-elected  (NYP 11/13/2018)
• 
Donald Trump ... been punched hard by voters, and his enemies are lining up to take their shot.
• 
Following the midterm rebuke, the rude scoldings in Europe and the mob mentality of congressional pipsqueaks reflect a new bravado among his tormentors.
• 
... no man who sat in the Oval Office ever faced such a ruthless onslaught from the opposition party and its media handmaidens.
• 
But if the fever of recent days is any indication, the past will prove to be mere prologue for the coming storm.
• 
Even the understandable personnel move Trump has made — firing the hapless Jeff Sessions as attorney general — opened another battle, with his appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting AG proving to be a ripe target for Democrats.
• 
The Dem takeover of the House was close to the historic average loss for a president's party, and the GOP hold on the Senate remains a firewall.
• 
But Trump is in a uniquely bad spot in several regards, especially because of the ongoing probe by special counsel Robert Mueller and the plan by House Dems to use subpoena power to tie him up in knots, if not to bring him down.
• 
Combined with the fact that about half the country hates Trump's very existence, those realities narrow his paths forward.  But they do not eliminate them.
• 
He went so far as to offer to sign legislation he found acceptable even if most of the votes for it in both houses came from Dems.
• 
That posture is the right one, and could actually showcase Trump's deal-making skills in ways GOP control didn't.
• 
That will work, however, only if Trump doesn't abandon the GOP entirely for ephemeral partnership with Democrats.
• 
After all, it's not Republicans who are threatening to impeach him.
• 
Which brings us to what must be the second element of Trump's new approach: He must show he can, at least on occasion, turn the other cheek.
• 
With many on the left absolutely crazed with Trump hatred, they are likely to overplay their hand, as they did during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation.
• 
Then the character assassination attempt based on false charges became the defining issue, and it united the GOP to put a crucial fifth constitutional conservative on the Supreme Court.
• 
But the left's bad habit will benefit Trump only if he keeps his cool and stays focused on the nation's business.
• 
It doesn't mean he can't hit back, it just means he has to pick his spots with an eye toward winning the war, not just the battle.
• 
Anything that moves his agenda forward and keeps another promise is the best course, even if he has to swallow some insults and compromises.
• 
If he can do that, voters are more likely to remember why Trump was elected and notice that Dems face problems of their own.
• 
Polls suggest most of the country opposes the job-killing tax hikes needed just to make a down payment on massive new spending programs that Ocasio-Cortez and others want.
• 
Trump, then, is down, but far from out.  Anybody who thinks otherwise has learned nothing from the last three years.
      Racism, revised  (Claremont Institute, 11/06/2018)
• 
Upon being named a member of the New York Times editorial board earlier this year, Sarah Jeong immediately became that greatest of rarities, a famous editorialist.
• 
"Dumbass f***ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants."
• 
It's "kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men."
• 
I'm "just imagining being white and waking up every morning with a terrible existential dread about how I have no culture."
• 
(Jeong was born in South Korea in 1988 and emigrated at the age of three when her parents came to the United States to study.  She became a U.S.  citizen in 2017.)
• 
"Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically only being fit to live underground like groveling bilious goblins?"
• 
"Have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren't cultural appropriation?  There's literally nothing."
• 
"The world could get by just fine with zero white people."
• 
"As a woman of color on the internet, I have faced torrents of online hate.  I engaged in what I thought of at the time as counter-trolling.  While it was intended as satire, I deeply regret that I mimicked the language of my harassers."
• 
"For a period of time," Jeong responded to online harassment "by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers.  She sees now that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media.  She regrets it, and the Times does not condone it."
• 
"A 17-year-old can drive or serve in the military, and is a year away from voting.  That does not describe a child." (The tweets Jeong apologized for had been written in her late 20s, after she completed law school.)
• 
... encompasses the like-minded people who dominate American journalism, education, and culture, both low- and highbrow.
• 
From their various platforms, they have delivered jeremiads every day since November 8, 2016, decrying Trump's victory as a civilizational catastrophe, not just a political occurrence.
• 
The cultural power possessed by this social stratum, the milieu that nurtured and elevated Sarah Jeong, is indeed formidable.
• 
It is the power to name and shame, to demand abject apologies, to obliterate reputations and careers.
• 
It is brought to bear against people accused of violating rules, often vague but always severe, about what may or may not be said, and who may or may not say it.
• 
Cultural power, like power in general, becomes more dangerous in the absence of clear principles and goals.
• 
Without them, its exercise adheres to no strictures beyond the political tactics and evolving moral sensibilities of the powerful people who wield it.
• 
... take note of Sarah Jeong's most vigorous defenders, who denounced the Times for conceding that she had written anything that merited apology or regret.
• 
They called it unfair, absurd even, to find Jeong's greatest hits objectionable, or to criticize them by imagining how they would be received if the word "black," for example, were substituted every time she had used "white."
• 
"When people of color rail against white people, that's often shorthand for speaking out against the existing racial structure that serves to keep white people in power."
• 
Because social justice leftists declare eradicating racism to be their highest, most urgent aspiration, it's imperative to understand that term as they understand it.
• 
As matters stand, "racist" is one of the most common, most severe accusations made against a person, but is at the same time among the vaguest terms in our political lexicon. 
• 
... chief political correspondent ... required only one week after the 2016 election to announce that he had lost patience with anyone who doubted the racism of Americans who had voted for Donald Trump.
• 
Any solicitude "in defense of Trump supporters — who voted for a racist who promised racist outcomes — is perverse, bordering on abhorrent."
• 
"Trump campaigned on state repression of disfavored minorities.  If you voted for Trump, you voted for this, regardless of what you believe about the groups in question."
• 
... recently declared that it was racist for Tucker Carlson of Fox News to cast doubt on the proposition that diversity is good — so good that we must not even ask whether it entails costs that should be weighed against its benefits.
• 
"How, precisely, is diversity our strength?" Carlson asked on air in September 2018.
• 
"Can you think of other institutions, such as marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are?"
• 
"QED, he is himself a racist, or at least his questioning of diversity is an expression of racism.
• 
Such uses of "racist" are not intended to shed light, guide the perplexed, or persuade the undecided.
• 
They are, rather, allegations meant to delegitimize political opponents, devices to shut down debate rather than efforts to win it.
• 
And they take us very far from the definitions given in modern dictionaries.
• 
... "a belief that one's own racial or ethnic group is superior, or that other such groups represent a threat to one's cultural identity, racial integrity, or economic well-being."
• 
... denotes "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against people of other racial or ethnic groups."
• 
"a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."
• 
In his own voice, King was more polemical than clinical, but described racism similarly, as "the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission."
• 
By these standards, to assert that white people have no culture, or that the world could get along fine without them, is an expression of racism, reflecting antagonism against members of a particular racial group, which is held to be inferior to one's own and others.
• 
By contrast, to question the proposition that diversity is always a national strength, to point out the countervailing benefits of mutual understanding, shared assumptions, and cohesion, is to commit no offense other than offering a contestable proposition.
• 
... in the eyes of social justice leftists, who are coming to dominate American liberalism's thoughts, words, and deeds, Carlson is a racist for questioning diversity, but Sarah Jeong is not a racist — is, indeed, an anti-racist — for repeatedly disparaging white people.
• 
Activists and scholars began to reject the older understanding of racism, "a set of overt individual-level attitudes" ... in favor of a broader sense encompassing "implicit biases and processes that are constructed, sustained, and enacted at both micro- and macro-levels" in ways that "perpetuate racial inequality."
• 
For social justice leftists indoctrinated in this viewpoint, it is now self-evident that racism has nothing to do with a person's attitudes about racial groups, and everything to do with where one stands on questions of redistributive justice among such groups.
• 
"In a system of white supremacy, which is what America was founded on and continues to be, it is impossible to be truly racist against white people."
• 
In short, those people belonging to any non-white group cannot possibly be racist toward whites, while white Americans are unique in their capacity to be guilty of racism.  But there's more: whites are not only singularly capable of racism, but people unable, despite the most earnest, protracted efforts, to be innocent of it. 
• 
"Your first step is to accept that ‘a hatred or intolerance of another race' is not the definition of racism.  The dictionary is wrong.  Get over it." ("When I use a word," said Humpty Dumpty, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.")
• 
"As a result of being raised as a white person in this society, I have a racist worldview.  I have deep racist biases.  I have developed racist patterns, and I have investments in...the system of racism that has served me so well."
• 
To be white in America means "not being held accountable for the pain that you cause people of color," while also "being relentlessly reinforced in superiority."
• 
... leftist politics is coming to be dominated by "identitarian dogma — the view that the morality of almost any given situation depends on the participants' place in the oppression/privilege hierarchy."
• 
... insisted that "punching up" is satire, while "punching down" is bigotry.
• 
By any measure, a Korean-American journalist with a J.D.  from Harvard, who joins the editorial board of one of the world's most influential media outlets, is a powerful person.  The same cannot be said of the online adversaries who trolled her, or the white working-class Trump voters she berated as "literal Nazis."
• 
... wants things both ways, to exercise power while retaining the moral authority and expressive latitude that come from claiming oppression.
• 
An unemployed factory worker in the Rust Belt, by contrast, is obliged by his vast white privilege to self-censor constantly, lest some unguarded remark betray his bigotry and fortify the power structure that victimizes non-whites.
• 
If he proves too obtuse to recognize this duty, or too hateful to discharge it, that's only further proof of racism — his and America's.
• 
... tendentiousness and bad faith pervade the effort to replace the old understanding of racism with the new one.
• 
It is a renunciation of intellectual honesty and responsibility to posit that someone's words and beliefs should be evaluated, not according to whether they are factually accurate, logically sound, or morally admirable but, instead, on the basis of whether the person putting forward the idea is privileged or oppressed.
• 
The illogic of this position leads the social justice Left to demand that people ignore plain facts in front of them.
• 
As nicely summarized by Sarah Jeong in a tweet less than three months before she joined the New York Times, "‘I am not a racist' is now a surefire confirmation of racism."
• 
In other words, dumbass f***ing white people accused of racism can either admit their guilt or, by denying the charge, confirm it. 
• 
"Racism," then, turns out to be opposition to, or merely skepticism about, the entire social justice project.  Social justice leftists doubt their ability, for the foreseeable future, to win assent to that project by advocating its merits.  Instead, they attempt gains by stigmatizing its opponents.
• 
... out of a desire not to be a racist in the dictionary sense of the term, people are put on the defensive for being racist in the social justice sense of the term.
• 
Thus intimidated, they are meant to be made more amenable to the social justice cause.
• 
"...  progressives appropriate the tragedies of history in order to summon rhetorical gravitas in the present."
• 
"...  racism has become a conserved quantity akin to mass or energy: transformable but irreducible."
• 
"Progress means getting nearer the place you want to be," C.S.  Lewis wrote, which means that, "If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road."
• 
Thanks to the political and moral victories of the civil rights movement, America was on the right road, the one that led to "colorblind individualism."
• 
The daunting but noble goal was to make America more equal without making it less free and democratic.
• 
The goal had been laid out in 1863 by Frederick Douglass: "Can the white and colored people of this country be blended into a common nationality, and enjoy together, in the same country, under the same flag, the inestimable blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as neighborly citizens of a common country?"
• 
In 1965 ... President Lyndon Johnson declared the beginning of "the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights," which would seek "not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and... a result."
• 
Yes, politics is about who gets what.  If that becomes all it's about, after we jettison considerations of justice, rights, consent of the governed, and national cohesion as quaint relics and pathetic delusions, then our bitter achievement will be the reversal of Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum: politics becomes war, carried out by other means.
• 
Even as reactionaries sometimes make the best progressives, in certain circumstances conservatives find that they are the best liberals, if not the only ones.
      Hypocritical Obama and liberal media's efforts to condemn Trump have backfired  (Fox 11/03/2018)
• 
"In the closing weeks of this election we have seen repeated attempts to divide us with rhetoric designed to make us angry and make us fearful," Obama said.
• 
"It's designed to exploit our history of racial and ethnic and religious division that pits us against one another and makes us believe that order will somehow be restored if it just weren't for those folks who don't look like we look or don't love like we love or pray like we do...  But in four days, Florida, you can reject that kind of politics ... you can choose a bigger, more prosperous, more generous vision of America, an America where love and hope conquer hate."
• 
The liberal media paint Trump as the most divisive president in history in their comprehensive daily smears of every action he takes and every statement he makes.
• 
It makes no difference that he's often just responding to their daily invective because, by definition, they can't be divisive.
• 
They're just presenting the facts – or so they tell us.
• 
They point to President Trump's tweets and his condemnation of "fake news" – but what really agitates the liberal media is that this president has the audacity to hit back, even though they've drawn first blood.
• 
They're not used to being served their own medicine.
• 
To liberals, divisiveness means a refusal to acquiesce to their leftist policy demands.
• 
They never consider their own dogmatic, uncompromising agenda to be divisive.
• 
President Obama talks a good game now, but don't forget that in office he regarded his own ideas as sacrosanct and was incredulous that anyone could possibly oppose him in good faith.
• 
He considered his policies to be self-evidently superior, so told us that Republicans opposed him solely out of crass partisanship.
• 
And when Republicans objected, Obama arrogantly reminded them that he won the election and didn't want them to do a lot of talking.
• 
From their hermetically sealed echo chamber where uniformity of ideas is nearly absolute, the liberal media don't regard their opinions as political.
• 
According to the liberal media, those who disagree with the wise men and women who bring us the news don't have a legitimately differing opinion; they are just wrong and immoral.
• 
There is the reasonable (liberal) view and there is the aberrant view.  Those are the only two choices.
• 
Rational people understand, the leftist media tell us, that liberal taxing, spending and redistribution are reality-based.
• 
So too are expansive government dependency programs, expansive abortion "rights," and a slavish devotion to "climate change" policies.
• 
Those who oppose these views?  They are fact-challenged, we are told.
• 
Liberal conceit has been around for ages, which explains the liberal media's shock that anyone could accuse them of bias.
• 
Bitter division isn't new to the republic; it has been with us from the beginning.
• 
Indeed, the framers of our Constitution – knowing that human beings are not angels and that power corrupts – designed our constitutional system with checks and balances to pit competing interests against one another as part of their scheme to limit government and maximize liberty.
• 
Hiding behind their self-declared status as "journalists," those in the liberal media berate the president around the clock and demand that he passively submit, lest he criticize them back and threaten their First Amendment rights.
• 
President Trump has done nothing to suppress their liberties and they know it.
• 
They insist on smearing President Trump as divisive even when he's trying to be conciliatory.
• 
The liberal media's efforts to discredit Trump have backfired because they have lost their credibility.
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      If the Synagogue Shooter were Muslim, the media would be defending him  (INN 11/01/2018)
• 
Two types of people plot attacks against Jewish synagogues and community centers: Nazis and Muslims.
• 
The media isn't just exploiting the murder of Jews to attack Trump.  It's even sickeningly exploiting the murder of Jews to attack Jews. 
• 
That isn't opposing anti-Semitism.  It's engaging in it. 
• 
When you oppose anti-Semitism, then you oppose the murder of Jews.  By Nazis and by Muslims. 
• 
By anyone.  Period. 
• 
The Left's position on the murder of Jews is wholly politically opportunistic.
• 
It opposed the murder of Jews by Hitler, and supported the murder of Jews by Stalin.
• 
And now it opposes the murder of Jews by neo-Nazis and supports the murder of Jews by Islamic terrorists.
• 
The same journalists and activists lecturing on Trump's complicity in the massacre were outraged when he cut funding to the Palestinian Authority terrorists who are being paid to murder Jews.
• 
President Trump has called for ruthless action against the Muslim and Neo-Nazi murderers of Jews.
• 
If the media wants to sincerely oppose anti-Semitism, it could take a lesson from him. 
• 
Or it can go on exploiting the Neo-Nazi murder of Jews to promote the agenda of the Islamist murderers of Jews.
• 
See related First Responders (Mike Lester, 04/28/2013) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: This is how free speech dies [and free thought along with it]  (Fox 10/30/2018)
• 
That's the America that you grew up in, a decent place full of decent people trying to do the right thing.
• 
But there's another America, too.  It's the America of cable news and social media, of CNN and Twitter.
• 
In that America, political operatives rushed to the scene of human tragedy hoping to leverage it for political gain.
• 
They make snap judgments on the basis of incomplete evidence in order to implicate their political opponents in crimes they did not commit.
• 
They use fear and rage to accomplish what reasoned argument could never accomplish.  They commit moral blackmail.
• 
Typically, their aim is gun control.  A crazy person committed an evil act, therefore you must be disarmed.
• 
But this time that's not their goal.  This time, their goal is more comprehensive than that.
• 
They want to take charge of what you are allowed to say and think.
• 
How are they trying to do that?  By blaming you and your opinions for the crime.
• 
"This man was — the flames of his hatred were fanned by a president who kept talking about this caravan of refugees, as if they were terrorists or as if they were coming to commit atrocious crimes in our country, which they're not."
• 
So, did you catch the message there?  It wasn't subtle.  The murderer was angry about illegal immigration.
• 
If you oppose illegal immigration, you are very much like the murderer.
• 
Even if you've never killed anyone, your views have inspired others to kill.
• 
You are implicated in this atrocity.  You are a monster, just like the lunatic in Pittsburgh.
• 
You must change your beliefs.  Otherwise, you will be punished.
• 
This is how free speech dies, and free thought along with it.
• 
The range of acceptable opinion narrows until it mimics the CNN script.
• 
Before long, everyone is nodding piously along in unison.  There is no disagreement.
• 
There is only conformity.  We all just become obedient serfs chirping the party line.  — That's the goal.
• 
After a century of defending free speech, the left is now its enemy.
• 
... American politics is no longer really about politics, which is to say about competing ideas of what might work and what doesn't work.
• 
Instead, politics is a spiritual battle between light and dark, between God and Satan himself:
• 
"It's now become a struggle about good versus evil.  And the president of the United States is evil."
• 
Evil.  Now, that is not the language of American civic life.  It never has been.
• 
That is the language of Holy War, evil.  Well, evil people can't be reasoned with.
• 
They shouldn't be listened to.  They must be crushed and destroyed.
• 
We're hoping all of them have lost their senses temporarily and, at some point, they're going to wake up feeling chastened, and ashamed, and ready to rejoin the adult conversation in progress.
• 
Either way, we do not plan to stop talking, no matter what they say, no matter what they demand.
• 
Every American has an absolute right to express his or her views, regardless of what Twitter thinks.
• 
It's our birthright.  It's the most important freedom we have.
• 
Free expression does not cause extremism.  It solves extremism.
      Yes, Be Very Worried Over Growing Polarization  (JWR 10/29/2018)
• 
The lesson from the American Civil War and the French Revolution, the rise of Nazism in Germany or of Bolshevism in Russia, is not that clear majorities of partisans and countless news junkies are needed to foment extremism and tear apart a country.
• 
Instead, it is that zealous and sometimes warring tiny minorities can escalate tensions, nullify opposition, and bully the silenced majority to sanction — or at least not object to — the violence by which they eventually make their illiberal agendas go mainstream.
      Laura Ingraham: Media rolls out red carpet for invading horde - I mean 'caravan'  (Fox 10/24/2018)
• 
Who is funding these efforts?  How has it grown so quickly and what did the Democrats have to offer besides a bunch of cliches and bromides, and of course grandstanding?
• 
Mainstream news networks have dispatched teams of embedded reporters who are not so much covering the migrant mob as covering for it.
• 
They highlight the wonderful camaraderie and welcoming spirit of the masses bent on breaking into our nation.
• 
If you are skeptical, or dare to think our border should be secure, you are a "fear-monger" who doesn't treat people with proper respect.  Why, you may have even turned your back on the teachings of Christ, according to the previously militantly secular media.
• 
Their latest gripe is President Trump's suggestion that Middle Eastern terrorists might be part of this peace-loving group of traveling mothers and children.
• 
"Take your camera, go into the middle and search," Trump counseled what he calls the "fake news" media.
• 
"You are going to find MS-13, you're going to find Middle Easterners, you're going to find everything."
• 
... accusing the president of "seizing on unsubstantiated right-wing media reports that the caravan has been infiltrated by criminals and unknown middle easterners."
• 
Well, it turns out the president may be privy to more information than the bright lights at CNN headquarters and their reporters.
• 
The spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the caravan includes "citizens of countries outside of Central America, including countries in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and elsewhere."
• 
"What the president of Honduras told me was organized by leftist groups in Honduras, financed by Venezuela and sent north to challenge our sovereignty and challenge our border."
• 
So why aren't journalists doing their jobs and vetting this horde, investigating who actually organized it and finding out who is financing it?
• 
Rather than doing actual reporting, it's easier to take up the mantra of the left, embed yourself with the migrants - actually act like you are a migrant - emotionally manipulate the audience and then dismiss Trump as just a heartless fear monger.
• 
Check out these quotes, and guess who said them:
• 
A) "We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked."
• 
B) "The day when America could be the welfare system for Mexico is gone.  We simply can't afford it."
• 
C) "People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who enter the U.S.  legally."
• 
If you said A) Barack Obama, B) Dianne Feinstein and C) Chuck Schumer, give yourself a hand.
• 
If you thought all three quotes were from President Trump, you have been brainwashed by the liberal media.
• 
It's all up to the American people.  We can either allow Democrats to continue to ignore the obvious and promote lawlessness on the border, or we can empower the president with the majority he needs to protect our country.
• 
And as for the invading horde headed our way, they must be intercepted and sent back to their countries of origin.
• 
If that doesn't happen, the real blue wave we have to worry about will be the Honduran flag mocking our lost sovereignty.
      The Electoral College Debate  (JWR 10/17/2018)
• 
... lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W.  Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.
• 
Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College.  ... "You won't be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it's time to abolish the Electoral College."
• 
Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminently fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities.
• 
Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College reflects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. 
• 
Regarding miseducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
• 
His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, "Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
• 
A large part of Americans' miseducation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy.
• 
The word "democracy" appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
In fact, our Constitution — in Article 4, Section 4 — guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."
• 
The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy.
• 
James Madison, in Federalist Paper No.  10, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual."
• 
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Gov.  Edmund Randolph said that "in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy."
• 
John Adams wrote: "Remember Democracy never lasts long.  It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.  There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide."
• 
At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton said: "We are now forming a republican government.  Real liberty" is found not in "the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments.  ... If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy."
• 
The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admitted would be coequal with every other state.
• 
The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, whether large or small in area or population, has some voice in selecting the nation's leaders
• 
Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states. 
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Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware.
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Why?  They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S.  population.
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We would no longer be a government "of the people"; instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states.
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Political satirist H.L.  Mencken said, "The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic."
      Lessons from the Kavanaugh chaos — What my father, Justice Antonin Scalia, would have...  (Fox 10/12/2018)
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Although I don't think my father (or anyone) could have predicted the twists and turns of the past several weeks, I don't think he would have been shocked by the no-holds-barred fight over a Supreme Court vacancy, either.
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He long ago warned Americans about the excessive intrusion of politics into the judicial appointment process.
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And he explained that a large share of the blame belongs to the justices themselves.
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My father believed that a major reason the judicial confirmation process has become so heated is that federal judges too often exceed the role envisioned by our nation's founders and usurp the power of elected representatives.
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Alexander Hamilton famously argued "that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power" and that "the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from" the judicial branch.
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But Hamilton qualified that claim.  He said it would only be true as long as "the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive."
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Hamilton agreed with the French political philosopher Montesquieu, who warned that "there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers."
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Maintaining that separation means limiting the role of judges.
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My father explained that for most of American history, Supreme Court justices recognized that the meaning of legal texts – including the Constitution – did not change.
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Judges understood that their job was to interpret that original meaning – referring to tradition, history and precedent when necessary.
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When dealing with laws and statutes, this approach is known as textualism; in reference to the Constitution, it is called originalism.
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... the Constitution establishes democratic processes, both in the states and in Congress, with the flexibility necessary to adapt to changing circumstances.
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This can happen through new laws and through constitutional amendments.
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... if the Constitution is a living document, consider who ends up determining its new meaning: unelected judges with lifetime appointments – men and women who are intentionally protected from the will of voters at the ballot box.
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As a result, many debates and compromises that should have occurred in the political realm have been short-circuited by the judicial branch for decades.
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When Americans realized that lower court judges and Supreme Court justices were exercising their will rather than just their judgement, judicial nominations became much more heated.
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"A freedom-loving people respectful of the rule of law may be expected to let lawyers decide what a constitutional text means; but they cannot be expected to let lawyers decide what a Constitution ought to say."
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... "no court can expect to remain immune from severe political pressure ... if it assumes the role of inventing solutions for social problems instead of merely applying those solutions prescribed in democratically adopted statutory or constitutional text."
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One way to help make our judicial confirmation battles less polarizing, then, would be for judges to return to the more limited role they had held for most of our nation's history: applying laws and statutes according to their text and interpreting the Constitution according to its original public meaning, using history, tradition and precedent as guides.
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... if federal judges returned to the more modest approach our Founding Fathers envisioned for them, they would be less likely to rule according to their preferred policy preferences and more likely to leave political decisions to our elected representatives.
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... persuading people to this way of thinking would help return the judicial branch to its proper status as what Hamilton famously called "the least dangerous branch" and help subdue the intensity of the nomination process.
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See related Who Are You Voting for? (Glenn McCoy, 08/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Is Ford's Kavanaugh story rooted in a 'recovered' memory?  It's not the only fair question to be...  (Fox 10/04/2018)
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Why has Ford apparently told different stories about whether she showed her therapy notes to The Washington Post or simply described their contents to the paper?
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That's significant because it bears directly on her credibility.  And Ford's credibility is literally the only reason to believe that her story is true.  So that matters.
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Ford says the assault defined her entire life.  Apparently, she thought about it every day.
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It affected her academic performance and all of her personal relationships, yet she says she told not a single other human being about it for fully 30 years.
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How can that be?  Well, here's an idea.  In a Washington Post profile, Ford says that she "came to understand her assault and the significance during a psychotherapy session."
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What does that mean exactly?  Is Ford's story at least in part a recovered memory?
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This is a critical question, because most psychiatrists consider recovered memories, however sincere, as roughly as reliable as dreams.
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It's worth getting a clear answer, but so far nobody has, because nobody has asked that question.  Why is that?
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When an adult makes a serious allegation, asking real questions is the only correct response.
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It's not an attack to ask for follow-ups or probe inconsistencies, it's not victim shaming.  In fact, it's patronizing not to.
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Instead of gathering facts about this story, they are busy moralizing and lecturing the rest of us about how Kavanaugh's very existence proves that an entire class of people is evil.
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The real evil is the way that our elites stoke race and gender hatred in order to divide this country.
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And that is another thing that people of good faith ought to be questioning.
      Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship  (10/02/2018)
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Scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances has become firmly established, if not fully dominant, within these fields, and their scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview.
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... we have come to call these fields "grievance studies" in shorthand because of their common goal of problematizing aspects of culture in minute detail in order to attempt diagnoses of power imbalances and oppression rooted in identity.
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We undertook this project to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research.
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While our papers are all outlandish or intentionally broken in significant ways, it is important to recognize that they blend in almost perfectly with others in the disciplines under our consideration.
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The goal was always to use what the existing literature offered to get some little bit of lunacy or depravity to be acceptable at the highest levels of intellectual respectability within the field.
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... it's a forgery of knowledge that should not be mistaken for the real thing.  The biggest difference between us and the scholarship we are studying by emulation is that we know we made things up.
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Sometimes we just thought a nutty or inhumane idea up and ran with it.  What if we write a paper saying we should train men like we do dogs — to prevent rape culture?
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At other times, we scoured the existing grievance studies literature to see where it was already going awry and then tried to magnify those problems.
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Feminist glaciology?  Okay, we'll copy it and write a feminist astronomy paper that argues feminist and queer astrology should be considered part of the science of astronomy, which we'll brand as intrinsically sexist.  Reviewers were very enthusiastic about that idea.
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We used other methods too, like, "I wonder if that ‘progressive stack' in the news could be written into a paper that says white males in college shouldn't be allowed to speak in class (or have their emails answered by the instructor), and, for good measure, be asked to sit in the floor in chains so they can ‘experience reparations.'"
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Another tough one for us was, "I wonder if they'd publish a feminist rewrite of a chapter from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf." The answer to that question also turns out to be "yes," given that the feminist social work journal Affilia has just accepted it.
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As we progressed, we started to realize that just about anything can be made to work, so long as it falls within the moral orthodoxy and demonstrates understanding of the existing literature.
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The papers themselves span at least fifteen subdomains of thought in grievance studies, including (feminist) gender studies, masculinities studies, queer studies, sexuality studies, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, critical whiteness theory, fat studies, sociology, and educational philosophy.
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To many not involved in academia, particularly those who are skeptical of its worth generally, it may seem like we're addressing yet another obscure academic squabble of little relevance to the real world.
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You are mistaken.  The problem we've been studying is of the utmost relevance to the real world and everyone in it.
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After having spent a year immersed and becoming recognized experts within these fields, in addition to witnessing the divisive and destructive effects when activists and social media mobs put it to use, we can now state with confidence that it is neither essentially good nor sound.
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We have stated firmly that there is a problem in our universities, and that it's spreading rapidly into culture.
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The problem is epistemological, political, ideological, and ethical and it is profoundly corrupting scholarship in the social sciences and humanities.
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This problem is most easily summarized as an overarching (almost or fully sacralized) belief that many common features of experience and society are socially constructed.
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These constructions are seen as being nearly entirely dependent upon power dynamics between groups of people, often dictated by sex, race, or sexual or gender identification.
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All kinds of things accepted as having a basis in reality due to evidence are instead believed to have been created by the intentional and unintentional machinations of powerful groups in order to maintain power over marginalized ones.
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This worldview produces a moral imperative to dismantle these constructions.
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... for grievance studies scholars, science itself and the scientific method are deeply problematic, if not outright racist and sexist, and need to be remade to forward grievance-based identitarian politics over the impartial pursuit of truth.
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These same issues are also extended to the "Western" philosophical tradition which they find problematic because it favors reason to emotion, rigor to solipsism, and logic to revelation.
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As a result, radical constructivists tend to believe science and reason must be dismantled to let "other ways of knowing" have equal validation as knowledge-producing enterprises. 
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Radical constructivism is thus a dangerous idea that has become authoritative.  It forwards the idea that we must, on moral grounds, largely reject the belief that access to objective truth exists (scientific objectivity) and can be discovered, in principle, by any entity capable of doing the work, or more specifically by humans of any race, gender, or sexuality (scientific universality) via empirical testing (scientific empiricism).
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Although knowledge is always provisional and open to revision, there are better and worse ways to get closer to it, and the scientific method is the best we have found.
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Any scholarship that proceeds from radically skeptical assumptions about objective truth by definition does not and cannot find objective truth.
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Instead it promotes prejudices and opinions and calls them "truths."
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Because of critical constructivism, which sees knowledge as a product of unjust power balances, and because of this brand of radical skepticism, which rejects objective truth, these scholars are like snake-oil salespeople who diagnose our society as being riddled with a disease only they can cure.
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That disease, as they see it, is endemic to any society that forwards the agency of the individual and the existence of objective (or scientifically knowable) truths.
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Having spent a year doing this work ourselves, we understand why this fatally flawed research is attractive, how it is factually wrong in its foundations, and how it is conducive to being used for ethically dubious overreach.
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We've seen, studied, and participated in its culture through which it "proves" certain problems exist and then advocates often divisive, demeaning, and hurtful treatments we'd all do better without.
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... politically biased research that rests on highly questionable premises gets legitimized as though it is verifiable knowledge.
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It then goes on to permeate our culture because professors, activists, and others cite and teach this ever-growing body of ideologically skewed and fallacious scholarship.
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... the problem of corrupt scholarship has already leaked heavily into other fields like education, social work, media, psychology, and sociology, among others — and it openly aims to continue spreading.
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This makes the problem a grave concern that's rapidly undermining the legitimacy and reputations of universities, skewing politics, drowning out needed conversations, and pushing the culture war to ever more toxic and existential polarization.
      Michael Goodwin: Kavanaugh hearings are a national disaster — and the worst is yet to come  (Fox 10/01/2018)
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This is a golden age for cynics.  You will rarely go wrong in assuming an absence of decency and courage in the political class.  However low the bar is set, it will not be low enough.
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Witness how the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh started as cheap theater and ended in bloodsport.
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The process by which we elevate someone to the highest court in the land sunk to the lowest common denominator — and didn't stop.
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Friday's agreement to give the FBI a week to supplement its background check by looking into existing misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh guarantees the nightmare will continue, especially for him and his battered family.
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You don't have to be a cynic to assume the rabid left will come up with more outlandish accusations in an effort to make up in quantity what it lacks in quality.
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The extension is the devil's bargain Arizona Republican Sen.  Jeff Flake struck with his conscience.
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As popular as a rattlesnake in ­Arizona, Flake is "retiring" from the Senate, yet has outsized leverage because of the GOP's narrowest possible majority, 51-49.  He used it to reward those who debased the Senate he claims to love.
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Dems and their media handmaidens were quick to praise Flake for his "bipartisanship," a term they ­reserve for when a Republican crosses over to pass liberal initiatives.
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In fairness, Washington is fractured because the nation is.
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Our so-called leaders are in fact followers, and wouldn't behave as scurrilously as they do if there weren't an audience cheering them on and demanding more.
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More attacks, more confrontation, more outrage, more, more, more.
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We have the government we deserve, and here's the most revolting fact: The decline of our politics is not going to stop anytime soon.
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They hunt for an edge will go right up to Election Day, and no trick will be too dirty, especially for Democrats.
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The left used the same character-assassination tactics on previous occasions when they couldn't defeat strong conservative Supreme Court nominees on the merits.
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They did it against Robert Bork, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan, and against Clarence Thomas, nominated by George H.W.  Bush.
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As Sen.  Lindsey Graham (R-SC) reminded the nation in his fiery denunciation, he voted for both of Barack Obama's nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
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Looking at Democrats, Graham angrily declared, "I would never do to them what you've done to this guy!"
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True, but it had no effect except to remind Republicans that their opponents take no prisoners.
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While there is no moral or principled defense for the Dems' conduct, the explanation is that they are terrified of Kavanaugh because he would be the fifth constitutional conservative on the court.
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That scenario is why the attacks on Kavanaugh are so vicious, and why they won't stop.
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Schumer, who pledged to fight the nomination "with everything I have," aims to keep the court seat open and use it as a rallying cry to help retake the Senate in the midterms.
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He would then become majority leader and able to block anyone Trump picks.
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And if Dems also take the House and try to impeach Trump, Schumer would use that ­effort as a reason not even to consider any Trump nominations.
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In short, as bad as last week was, coming weeks will be worse because nothing was resolved.
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All that happened was that America got kicked down the road.
      Kavanaugh hearing shows divisive Democrats must be defeated before they destroy America  (Fox 09/29/2018)
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It is absolutely right to say that we are in a vital cultural moment.  Ending sexual misconduct and the abuse, exploitation and harassment of women by men is long overdue.
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But we are also in a vital political moment.  Just as we're moving in the right direction on gender equality, we're moving in the wrong direction when it comes to politics.
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And sadly, one party is overwhelmingly to blame.
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It was a small detail that gave the game away: the revelation that Sen.  Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., did not disclose the sexual assault allegations to Republicans, the FBI and Kavanaugh himself for weeks after she was contacted by Ford.
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And on top of this, Feinstein recommended anti-Trump resistance lawyer Deborah Katz to Ford, who went on to hire Katz and her law partner.
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Had Feinstein informed the Judiciary Committee back in July, when Ford contacted her, of Ford's allegations, the public hearing of those allegations could have been avoided.
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The committee could have investigated the allegations privately and confidentially, as Ford requested, and there could have been a thorough FBI investigation.
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This could have prevented the unimaginable pain and pressure on Ford, Kavanaugh and their families involved by airing the allegations that have dominated the news.
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But Feinstein chose not to do any of those things.  And that tells us what her true intentions were.  Now we know.
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By holding a public hearing on Ford's allegations in which she testified, Feinstein and her follow Democrats on the committee were preparing Ford for use as a political weapon.
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And as a result, when I watched that hearing Thursday something changed for me.  I woke up to the truth about today's Democratic Party establishment.
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For the Democrats, this whole episode is not actually about women's rights.  ... This is all about overturning the 2016 election.
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The Democrats fear that if they let President Trump fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, their power is lost for a generation or more.
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So as they have now shown us, Democrats will pay any price to keep their power.
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Ford can be thrown to the wolves.
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Kavanaugh can be destroyed – after all, he's just a white male Republican.
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Trust in the Senate and the Supreme Court can be casually undermined – as long as the Democrats win.
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Worst of all, the fabric of our society can just be ripped to pieces, as long as Democrats hold on to the biggest piece.
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... I have lost patience with the establishment Democrats.
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Their mania for identity politics is recklessly dividing this country: black against white, young against old, gay against straight, urban against rural.
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And yes, men against women.
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The Democrats strike me as truly cruel.  Calculating.  Crazed with their own self-righteousness.
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Before Thursday, I just disagreed with the Democrats.  Now I'm frightened of them.
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Frightened because the mask was ripped off.  Underneath all that pompous, sanctimonious, self-righteous preening about "social justice" and the "right side of history," they disdain actual justice.
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Democrats have overnight abandoned one of the foundational principles of a civilized society: the concept that everyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty.
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In fact the Democrats remind us of the snarling authoritarianism we have seen abroad all too often.
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It is a frightening future if these Democrats and their approach are allowed to prevail.  A future, to borrow from George Orwell, of a boot stamping on America's face – forever.
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These divisive, dangerous Democrats must be defeated before they destroy America.
      Kavanaugh hearing shows Democrats will stop at nothing to keep him off the Supreme Court  (Fox 09/28/2018)
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In the days of President Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings, I would frequently go toe-to-toe with Democrats on TV news shows, arguing for the president's removal while they rehashed well-worn talking points that toed their party line in support of him.
• 
Yet once we returned to the green room, my counterparts on the left would sometimes tell a different tale.  Their words were not seriously meant, they said; their retorts and barbs were simply attempts to deflect blame and quell public outrage through to the next election cycle.
• 
I had expected I might see in today's Democrats the same chastened response that I once observed from my TV sparring partners years ago.  But I saw no such indication of shame or remorse from senators on the left.
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On the contrary, I saw the shared principles that had once provided an undercurrent of inter-party unity overtaken by Democrats' entirely cynical, shortsighted willingness – if not enthusiasm – to abide by whatever practices necessary in order to ensure an ideological victory.
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They have called out the dogs, and the dogs are doing their nasty work.
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Democrats will stop at nothing to humiliate President Trump – and to keep a pro-life justice off the Supreme Court.
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Whatever disingenuous remarks the Democrats may make about victims' rights, or however many traditional catchphrases they employ to rally their base, those words are just window dressing.
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When that artifice is stripped bare, the American people can see the left's morally bankrupt tactics for what they are.
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We see that Democrats are clearly not interested in pursuing truth or justice, and are not interested in due process.
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What ends could the vindictive, cowardly means employed by Democrats possibly justify?
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Democrats are trading their own birthright as one of the formative parties of our nation's history for the pottage of becoming the resistance party of the moment.
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I regret to say that the party of Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has now devolved into the party of publicity-seeking anti-Trump attorney Michael Avenatti.
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Today it's almost as though we're operating with entirely different sets of people, bound not by any overarching sense of principle or narrative but tied only to garnering as many votes as possible.
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No moral guardrails govern the left.
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America's birthright principles – fairness, equality, the presumption of innocence, truth – are at stake, and it behooves us all to ask the Democrats directly what was asked of Esau: what are you prepared to sell your birthright for?
      Kavanaugh fights back — The Senate must reject this campaign of character assassination  (Fox 09/28/2018)
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As the father of two daughters, I want them to live in a world where they are treated with respect and never experience sexual abuse — and if they ever do, they are taken seriously.
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As the father of two sons, I want them to live in a world where their lives and reputations cannot be destroyed by allegations without corroboration.
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Thursday's hearing did not add an iota of corroboration to Christine Blasey Ford's allegations against Brett M.  Kavanaugh.
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It remains true that none of the people Ford named, man or woman, has confirmed that the gathering in question took place at all, much less that any assault occurred.
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The burden of proof is not on Kavanaugh to prove he didn't do it.  He cannot prove a negative.
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In the United States of America, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. 
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"This confirmation process has become a national disgrace," Kavanaugh declared.
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"The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy.  Since my nomination in July, there's been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything to block my confirmation."
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He called out Democratic committee members — like Sen.  Cory Booker, N.J., who called him "evil" — and accused them of unleashing the torrent of unfounded allegations.
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"Your words have meaning.  Millions of Americans listen carefully to you.  Given comments like those, is it any surprise that people have been willing to do anything to make any physical threat against my family, to send any violent email to my wife, to make any kind of allegation against me and against my friends?  To blow me up and take me down?"
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... after watching Kavanaugh be put through the gauntlet of personal destruction, good people of both parties will hesitate to answer the call to serve...
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As for Democrats' calls for an FBI investigation, their interest in an investigation is not to get to the truth; it's to stop Kavanaugh at all costs.  If they wanted the bureau to review Ford's allegation, they should have come forward with that request more than a month ago.
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The point, as Graham said, is that Democrats only want to drag this out so there is time for more fake accusers to come out of the woodwork.
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They want to run out the clock until the midterm elections, when they hope to retake the Senate and block Trump from putting anyone on the Supreme Court.
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And in the process, they want to "destroy this guy's life," Graham said.
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Regardless of whether he is confirmed, Kavanaugh said, they have already done that.
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"I'll never get my reputation back.  My life is permanently and totally altered."
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Whether our democracy is permanently altered depends on whether the Senate rejects this campaign of character assassination and confirms Kavanaugh.
      A catastrophic man-made earthquake threatens us all  (INN 09/26/2018)
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... we've had many warnings of a major catastrophic human-made earthquake that threatens the foundations of our American 242 year old existence as a free nation.
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The rumblings began with the Democrats contesting the 527 vote Florida game changing presidential win by Bush over Gore that eventually was confirmed by a recount.
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But thereafter, Bush was for his eight more years in the White House referred to and treated by the Left as America's first sitting "Non-President."
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Then we suffered the rattling election of Barack Obama, whose active membership in a White America-hating church was well known to the electorate.
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His close, personal relationship with the likes of his adored Rev.  Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan was no secret.
• 
Obama was open about his goals.  He told us he was out to "Fundamentally transform America" and the world.
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He did, with racial unrest, blacks against whites, attacks against law enforcement, hatred against people of wealth, the cover-up of Muslim hate crimes, the admittance of millions of illegals, the deliberate condemnations of our nation's history, the "Arab Spring" that turned the Middle East into a raging inferno of destruction and death, the support to the terrorist nation of Iran and the eight year unsuccessful effort to undermine the Jewish State of Israel.
• 
And recently the threats have increased in volume and intensity with the election of Trump in 2016.
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The forces of hate against our president have reached catastrophic number levels on the political seismic scale that threaten to take down the pillars of liberty and freedom.
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The fraudulently concocted charges of treason and collusion with an enemy nation against Trump have shaken the nation's stability.
• 
Calls for his impeachment, assassination and the physical attacks against his staff and supporters have rattled us all.
• 
And our Democrat elected leaders are feeding this frenzy.
• 
The recent live broadcasts of the funerals of Aretha Franklin and John McCain coming so close together should have knocked us off our feet with the eulogists standing over caskets attacking our legally elected president.
• 
The shock of having three openly white, America and Jew haters in the first row at the Franklin services seated purposely and openly right next to a former president rocked our senses.
• 
But it didn't...  and that's scary.
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Lastly and perhaps the most significant recent shudder came in the current Senate hearings for the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice.
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The well planned observer shout-outs requiring the dragging out of the violent demonstrators for the whole world to see and then the coordinated Democrat disruption from their official seats indicated a massive threat to our liberties.
• 
... the undermining rattling of our halls of justice, our Constitution, and our liberties for which so many have sacrificed their lives is occurring because we are permitting it to happen.
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Our willful ignoring, of closing our eyes to the ground swelling, shaking, warning signals of calamity, growing not only in frequency but in intensity will result in the irreparable cracks in the foundations of our liberties and freedom.
      Michael Goodwin: Kavanaugh chaos — What country are we in?  What country are we becoming?  (Fox 09/26/2018)
• 
With apologies to Rud­yard Kipling, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs .  .  ." you are Donald Trump.
• 
With Democrats going mad, Republicans going wobbly and the media mob acting like a lynching party, it was left to the president to call bulls–t on the Brett Kavanaugh allegations — and remind the nation of the enormous stakes involved.
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On a normal day, in a saner world, Trump's tough-love speech at the United Nations would deserve our full attention.
• 
It was a comprehensive outline of his America First doctrine, but the elephant in the room is that America cannot lead the world when it is unraveling at home.
• 
And so the president stepped away from the General Assembly and onto the bully pulpit to forcefully denounce the partisan attacks on his Supreme Court nominee as a "con game."
• 
He accused Dems and, by extension, the media of playing "a very dangerous game" by instantly embracing every charge as gospel.
• 
His aggressive and at times angry pushback amounted to a certain trumpet call for GOP senators to stiffen their spines and stop the hand-wringing.
• 
Yet the larger significance of Trump's comments was not about the hazy claims of the two accusers or counting votes in the Senate.
• 
This was at heart a plea for simple decency at a moment when it appears headed for extinction.
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That the plea came from Trump makes it easy for the left to mock it, as they mercilessly did when they didn't ignore it altogether.
• 
But this is not about him, or shouldn't be, nor is it just about the makeup of the Supreme Court, as important as that is.
• 
This is about whether there are any boundaries left in our politics.  Or whether this is a war where anything goes and the goal is the total annihilation of the other side.
• 
... Trump said, "His wife is devastated, his children are devastated.  I don't mean they're like, ‘Oh, gee I'm a little unhappy,' they're devastated."
• 
That could be any family sitting there, their world savagely ripped open because they dared to excel in their field and sacrifice material riches for the honor of public service. 
• 
As Trump said, if Kavanaugh is kept off the high court on charges that go back more than 30 years and that have no known proof or corroboration, "it'll be a horrible, horrible thing for future political people, judges, anything you want, it'll be a horrible thing.  It cannot be allowed to happen."
• 
Unfortunately, it is happening, which is why the president was right to drop his earlier more respectful tone toward the accusers and Dems.
• 
Being polite gets you nowhere with a wolf pack, and good faith is meaningless when the aim is complete character assassination.
• 
The coercive, intolerant rabble running left-wing politics could easily lead to serious violence.
• 
The thuggish activists who are driving Republicans out of restaurants and other public spaces are crossing lines of acceptable conduct that have been respected for the better part of two centuries.
• 
"This is a message to Ted Cruz, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump and the rest of the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic right-wing scum: You are not safe.  We will find you.  We will expose you.  We will take from you the peace you have taken from so many others."
• 
That threat should send chills down the backs of every American, and should unite all of Washington around the need for a time-out.
• 
Yet not a peep is heard from Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats who are orchestrating the attacks on Kavanaugh and thus spurring such open expressions of hate and vows of physical assault.
• 
What country are we in?  What country are we becoming?
• 
For conservatives, the answer is not to respond in kind.  The answer is to summon the courage to stand up for what is right.  And not to worry about the next damn election.
• 
To do less and to fold out of fear is to appease outrageous conduct in the false hope the wolf will be happy with one meal.
• 
History proves otherwise and shows that those who won't take a stand will get their turn on the menu.
      Newt Gingrich: The REAL question for Thursday's Kavanaugh hearing — Who governs America?  (Fox 09/25/2018)
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If this decent human being, with an exemplary record as husband, father, friend, and judge can be smeared and maligned, who is going to be capable of surviving the left's ruthless dishonesty and willingness to lie, intimidate, and destroy?
• 
Republicans should have no doubt what is at stake in the current desperate, despicable, dishonest smear campaign against Judge Kavanaugh.
• 
... the goal of the Thursday hearing will have nothing to do with seeking the truth.  When there is no corroboration for 36-year-old memories, how can the truth be the goal?
• 
Democrats have already practiced the politics of hysteria, defamation, and character assassination. 
• 
The character assassination of conservative judges first succeeded against Judge Robert Bork in 1987 and then failed against Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991. 
• 
This third character assassination campaign is desperately intense on the left because the balance of power on the U.S.  Supreme Court is at stake.
• 
For six decades, lawyers have dominated the American people and changed policies by judicial fiat, which they could not otherwise get passed through the political process involving American voters.
• 
Now, with Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, President Trump has threatened to move the balance of power on the Supreme Court to the right for the first time in two generations.
• 
Left-wing radicals understand that this nomination may be an even greater threat to their goal of a radical America than President Trump is.
• 
This potential three-decade shift in Supreme Court power is what has galvanized the left into frantic levels of desperate character assassination.
• 
Republicans should be under no illusions.  If they allow Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation to be defeated by this kind of character assassination, they will have rewarded a level of hatred, vitriol, and viciousness that has never before been seen in judicial confirmations.
• 
Given the left's willingness to malign even the most honorable nominees, what candidate would let his or her name be submitted?  Candidates would have to know that many left-wing activists would be willing to lie about them to destroy their confirmations.
• 
The question for this Thursday's hearing is: Who governs America?
• 
There is now no alternative to confirming Judge Kavanaugh if the politics of denigration are to be defeated.
• 
There is no clever moderate compromise.  There is victory for decency and the rule of law, or there is victory for hysteria, mob rule, and the maligning of decent people.
      Kavanaughs smart to fight back against Dems determined to destroy them over a lost election  (Fox 09/24/2018)
• 
I do believe something happened to Dr.  Christine Ford, and the new accuser from Yale, Deborah Ramirez.
• 
But after days of uncorroborated accusations, witnesses who contradict the accusers, zero evidence, and an obvious political apparatus facilitating the attacks, I do not believe Brett Kavanaugh was the perpetrator.
• 
What is clear is both women are being used as pawns by a political establishment that doesn't give a damn about them, and instead is using the epidemic of sexual violence against us as a political chit.
• 
What's happening to Dr.  Ford, Ms.  Ramirez and the Kavanaughs in this deliberately mangled process is deeply and fundamentally unfair.
• 
Just when you think you've heard it all, Amnesty International won the Smear Kavanaugh Follies on Monday night demanding a "halt to a vote" until his "possible involvement in human rights violations," like torture, is "declassified and made public."
• 
When the only thing that matters is an allegation, we can expect every allegation to be made.
• 
Smears can be especially successful when they are made against someone you don't know.
• 
The circus of the Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month ensured that the news coverage was of the protests during the hearing.
• 
Legacy media made sure you knew what protesters were screaming, but not so much what Judge Kavanaugh had to say.
• 
The interview with MacCallum is the first time the majority of Americans have a had a chance to hear directly from a man the Democrats and media are desperately painting as a frightening combo of Charles Manson and Pol Pot.
• 
... mocked for standing up for herself, her husband and her family in the midst of obscene attacks leading to grotesque attacks on social media and death threats.
• 
Mrs.  Kavanaugh's crime which exempts her from the "always believe" rule is that she's not the right type of woman.  She's a conservative.  She does not conform to the liberal narrative.
• 
In other words, she thinks for herself.
• 
"I want a fair process where I can defend my integrity, and I know I'm telling the truth.  I know my lifelong record and I'm not going to let false accusations drive me out of this process.  I have faith in God and I have faith in the fairness of the American people."
• 
Democrats are determined to destroy a man's life because they're mad they lost an election.
• 
Democratic senators are insisting Judge Kavanaugh prove his innocence, which is the antithesis of the system our Founders designed and what is necessary for a free people to remain genuinely at liberty.
• 
... they're conducting a worldwide smear of a man as a sexual predator because it serves a grotesque political purpose.
• 
If the Senate allows these uncorroborated and refuted smears to succeed, this insanity will be the new order, taking our system and justice for everyone, with it.
      The ‘deep state’ leaves Trump with no good options  (NYP 09/22/2018)
• 
President Trump is not generally given to understatement, but he soft-pedaled problems at the Department of Justice.
• 
There is, he said Friday, a "lingering stench" there.
• 
A "stench" doesn't describe the situation.  A snake pit is more like it.
• 
The report by The New York Times that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein plotted to remove Trump, either by wearing a wire or invoking the 25th Amendment, cements forever the fact that there was and still is a deep state centered in the nation's top law-enforcement agency.
• 
This was a plot by power-mad individuals who aimed to overturn the 2016 election and thwart the will of voters.
• 
Rosenstein, two weeks into his new job, reportedly suggested the ideas in a meeting with others at the FBI.
• 
... the Justice Department conceded Rosenstein made the comments, but insisted he was joking.
• 
I believe he was deadly serious based on the sequence of events before and ­after the meeting.
• 
It took place on May 16, 2017 — exactly a week after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
• 
Rosenstein had favored the firing and wrote a compelling memo laying out why it was justified.
• 
When the White House cited his memo to fend off critics, Rosenstein reportedly felt he was being set up as a fall guy.
• 
He supposedly called the meeting to explain himself to Comey's crew, including Andrew McCabe, who had been named acting FBI director.
• 
Instead, it became a gripe session about Trump and chaos at the White House.
• 
Rosenstein's offer to record the president is said to have included a suggestion that applicants for the FBI job also record him.
• 
Considering the gravity of the meeting, none of that sounds like joke material.
• 
... describes Rosenstein's state of mind as anything but jovial, saying he "appeared conflicted, regretful and emotional." He was also "angry at Mr.  Trump."
• 
It soon became clear just how angry.
• 
The next day, May 17, Rosenstein shocked Washington by appointing Robert Mueller as special counsel and directing him to take over the existing Russia collusion investigation and virtually anything else Mueller wanted to probe.
• 
Furious at the president and being attacked on all sides, Rosenstein suddenly had the power to strike back.  And he did.
• 
He was able to act unilaterally because his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, had recused himself from anything having to do with the 2016 campaign.
• 
Here we are, 16 months later, and Mueller has not revealed a shred of evidence against Trump or any other American involving actual collusion.
• 
Yet the unrelated charges filed against Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and others are a gift to Democrats and have led to endless damaging headlines about Trump, many of which turn out to be false or meaningless.
• 
And it all began because Rod Rosenstein was an emotional wreck and in a job too big for him.
• 
History might never have turned on a smaller hinge.
• 
This being Washington, there are other elements to the story.  McCabe is likely a prime source, with reports saying he and others wrote memos about the May 16 meeting.
• 
McCabe, of course, faces possible indictment for allegedly lying to Justice Department investigators about a media leak, and probably blames Rosenstein for his firing.  The story could be his revenge at his former boss and the whole department.
• 
And don't rule out a Comey role.  As chief snake, he did more to damage FBI credibility than any man or woman in America, yet has made no secret of his desire for revenge for being exposed and fired.
• 
Oddly, the timing of the plot story could also involve a link to Trump's decision to reverse his order for officials to declassify documents from the Russia probe.
• 
... the president has no great option, only two bad ones.  Keep the man who wanted to entrap and remove you, or fire him and bring on more trouble than you can handle.
• 
Welcome to the snake pit.
      Chaos or not, Trump is racking up a record of foreign policy success  (JWR 09/19/2018)
• 
When Trump was elected in 2016, many worried that he would usher in a new age of American isolationism and withdrawal.
• 
That hasn't happened.  Trump has pursued a foreign policy that is not only not isolationist but also a significant improvement over his predecessor's.
• 
In Syria, while Trump did not eliminate Assad, he did enforce President Barack Obama's red line against the use of chemical weapons, punishing violations not once but twice — and restoring America's credibility on the world stage.
• 
Last week, Trump launched the U.S.-led coalition's assault on the Islamic State's last stronghold on the Syrian-Iraqi border, which will eliminate its physical caliphate.
• 
And unlike Obama, Trump is not taking America's boot off the terrorists' necks. 
• 
In Israel, Trump moved the U.S.  Embassy to Jerusalem, which he recognized as the country's capital — something three of his predecessors promised, but failed, to do.
• 
He also withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and refocused U.S.  efforts in the Middle East on shoring up relations with allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia instead of courting Iran.
• 
In Afghanistan, after a careful deliberative process in which Trump (correctly) pressed his generals for answers to tough questions, the president reversed his campaign position favoring a troop pull-out and sent additional forces, with no timetable for withdrawal.
• 
In Turkey, Trump is taking a hard line with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's regime, imposing tariffs as the Turkish lira has gone into free fall. 
• 
Trump has also taken a surprisingly tough line with Russia.  He approved a massive arms and aid package for Ukraine, expelled 60 Russian diplomats and authorized new sanctions against Moscow at least four times for: (1) interfering in U.S.  elections, (2) violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, (3) launching a chemical-weapon attack against a Russian national in Britain and (4) violating North Korea sanctions.
• 
And the Trump administration recently warned Russia that it would face "total economic isolation" if Moscow backed the Assad regime's assault in Idlib.
• 
On North Korea, Trump issued credible threats of military action, which brought Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table.
• 
The chances of successful denuclearization are slim, but every other approach by Trump's predecessors has failed.
• 
And there is reason for hope that Trump will not sign a bad deal, because he set a very high bar for a good deal when he withdrew from Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran.
• 
Trump has taken a strong stand against the narco-dictatorship in Venezuela, and his administration even considered supporting coup plotters seeking to remove the Maduro regime.
• 
He strengthened NATO by getting allies to kick in billions more toward the alliance's collective security.
• 
He declared war on the International Criminal Court, which purports to have jurisdiction over U.S.  soldiers and citizens even though America is not a signatory to the treaty creating the ICC.
• 
Liberals might not like any of these developments, but long-standing policy goals of conservative internationalists are being achieved.
• 
There may be chaos in the Trump White House, but so far at least the chaos is producing pretty good results.
      Former CIA Officer: New York Times 'anonymous' op-ed is like a gift to Vladimir Putin  (Fox 09/18/2018)
• 
The essay has become another piece of political fodder for debate between opponents and supporters of President Trump.
• 
But interest in this controversial piece extends beyond our shores – especially to our nation's enemies.
• 
I learned it was that President Vladimir Putin, who directs the lion's share of Russia's military and intelligence actions against the United States, continues – like his Soviet predecessors – to view the U.S.  as Russia's "main enemy."
• 
I have a high degree of confidence that Putin analyzed the op-ed with the greatest of interest.
• 
And I believe he then directed his intelligence services to collect corroborating intelligence and prepare options for weaponizing its content, as a part of Russia's espionage and information attacks on the U.S.
• 
... outline three approaches to understanding government behavior:
• 
The rational actor model, where governments – like individuals – make the most rational decisions based on a cost and benefit analysis.
• 
The organizational process model, which focuses on the standard operating procedures inherent to any bureaucracy.
• 
The government politics model, which focuses on how the key "players" – both people and organizations – compete for influence.
• 
This best reflects the high priority Russian intelligence would attach to understanding how senior Trump administration officials relate to one another and the president.
• 
Understanding these internal dynamics – the alleged "two-track presidency" described in the New York Times op-ed – would help Russia understand and predict U.S.  policy with the highest degree of confidence.
• 
Russia invented the term "disinformation." The Kremlin is the most sophisticated purveyor of "fake news," including social media and networking manipulation and amplification through bots.
• 
Russia's goal is to sow cultural and political discord in the U.S.  and degrade trust in our democratic institutions.
• 
Russia would eagerly insert these themes into its information operations with an eye towards degrading both the U.S.  domestic political process as well as foreign governments' trust in the Trump administration.
• 
Russian intelligence would seek to use its media platforms to sprinkle corroborating "evidence" to buttress the op-ed's attacks on the president.
• 
Russian intelligence is ruthlessly focused on ensuring the anonymous op-ed is transformed into a Pandora's Box, which might appear to be a gift to some of the president's critics but becomes a Kremlin curse on us all.
      Trump is looking out for us by protecting Americans from unaccountable United Nations court  (Fox 09/14/2018)
• 
Should an unaccountable United Nations court, created by a treaty to which the United States is not a signatory, and that the Senate has not ratified, be allowed to investigate, try and imprison American citizens?
• 
Unfortunately, this is no longer a theoretical question.
• 
... a Gambian lawyer who is answerable to no government or institution — claims unbridled power to investigate, charge and prosecute American citizens, no matter what the U.S.  government says.
• 
A pretrial chamber of the court, made up of judges from Hungary, France and Benin, reportedly will approve her request in the coming days.
• 
Who gave these foreign magistrates the right to try U.S.  citizens, whose government never assented to the court's jurisdiction through our own democratic institutions?
• 
No one.  And, yet, they are preparing to exercise this supranational power for the first time.
• 
... national security adviser John Bolton delivered a stark warning to the ICC: "If the court comes after us ... this administration will fight back to protect American constitutionalism, our sovereignty, and our citizens.  No committee of foreign nations will tell us how to govern ourselves and defend our freedom."
• 
Should the court act against U.S.  citizens, Bolton said, the United States will bar ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the country, sanction their funds in the U.S.  financial system and prosecute them in the American criminal-justice system.
• 
... not only has the Senate not ratified the ICC treaty, it has explicitly authorized the president to use "all means necessary" — including military force — to shield American citizens from ICC prosecution.
• 
We were told back then that all of this was unnecessary, and that the idea a rogue ICC prosecutor would ever go after Americans was ridiculous.
• 
The court would focus on grievous human-rights abuses by the world's tyrants, not on democracies with robust and transparent legal systems capable of policing their own citizens.
• 
That was a lie.
• 
Not only is the ICC threatening Americans, it has our democratic ally, Israel, in its crosshairs.
• 
... opened a preliminary investigation of Israel for actions defending itself against Palestinian terrorist attacks in the West Bank and Gaza — despite the fact that the court has no jurisdiction because Israel is not a party to the treaty.
• 
The ICC is not just a threat to U.S.  citizens and our democratic allies — it is a hindrance to democratic change.
• 
Since the end of the Cold War, almost every peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy has involved some form of amnesty.
• 
The existence of the ICC makes it more difficult to convince dictators to step down, because the option of safety in exile has effectively been eliminated.
• 
Without a credible guarantee that they will remain unmolested abroad, dictators may well decide they are better off holed up in their palaces.
• 
By taking on the ICC, the Trump administration is not just protecting U.S.  citizens and American sovereignty — it is striking a blow for democracy across the world.
      Jason Chaffetz: President Obama tries to re-write history on Benghazi  (Fox 09/11/2018)
• 
In a brazen attempt to re-write history, President Barack Obama in a speech on Friday blamed "the politics of resentment and paranoia," which he said had found a home in the Republican Party, for "wild conspiracy theories – like those surrounding Benghazi."
• 
What a reprehensible way to frame an event that killed four Americans while they waited for rescue and protection they deserved from people Barack Obama never sent. 
• 
Kris "Tanto" Paronto, one of the heroes who watched his friends die that night in Benghazi, called Obama's comments "disgusting," tweeting:
• 
"Benghazi is a conspiracy @BarackObama?!  How bout we do this, let's put your cowardly ass on the top of a roof with 6 of your buddies&shoot rpg's&Ak47's at you while terrorists lob 81mm mortars killing 2 of your buddies all while waiting for US support that you never sent."
• 
He's right to be offended.  The real conspiracy of Benghazi was the false narrative that the whole thing was the result of an offensive video – an objectively proven lie born from the resentment and paranoia within Obama's own administration.
• 
They didn't think the truth was compatible with getting Barack Obama re-elected six weeks after the attack.
• 
With President Trump methodically erasing the Obama legacy, this bizarre attempt to reframe the narratives around Obama's greatest failures should fool no one.
• 
Barack Obama took us to war with Libya.  His State Department refused multiple requests to meet minimum security standards at the Benghazi consulate.
• 
President Obama never sent anyone to rescue or protect our ambassador or our own people during the 13 hours they were under attack.
• 
Four brave men died as a result and many other heroes had their lives forever altered.
• 
That is not a conspiracy.  That is fact – no matter how inconvenient Democrats may find it. 
• 
This is one part of the Obama legacy that Trump should not erase.
• 
We all need to remember the lessons learned from Obama's worst mistake.
• 
See related Height Marks (Glenn McCoy, 05/29/2015) cartoon from Government picture album
      Liz Peek: Angry Obama still doesn't get it as he hits the campaign trail  (Fox 09/10/2018)
• 
In a fiery campaign speech at the University of Illinois, the former president suggested that Donald Trump was elected in 2016 by the "powerful and the privileged."
• 
He also railed at voters for failing to show up, and for permitting such a damaging "threat to our democracy."
• 
But here's the truth: it wasn't the powerful elites that voted for Donald Trump in Michigan and Ohio.
• 
It was blue collar workers who felt they had been overlooked by Obama and by Democrats.
• 
Who were offended by the headlong rush into identity politics, and by policies that protected everything but their jobs and their livelihoods.
• 
It was voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania, who had seen local industries move overseas, and it was voters in Michigan, who were aggrieved that Hillary Clinton took their votes for granted.
• 
President Obama is angry that President Trump is getting credit for the booming economy; he figures he got the ball rolling.
• 
He is correct that his administration managed to stave off a depression but for years, even as voters listed jobs and the economy as their number one concerns, Obama's focus was elsewhere.
• 
Under President Trump, the economic expansion, already long in the tooth, has accelerated.  There is no denying that his election ushered in an immediate surge in business optimism, which has kicked off a steady rise in capital investment, key to productivity and wage gains.
• 
Wages rose 2.9 percent year-over-year, the fastest pace in 9 years.
• 
President Obama mocked President Trump's promise to bring back manufacturing jobs during the 2016 campaign, asking "What magic wand do you have?"
• 
But it didn't take magic; it took business managers knowing the government was working with them and not against them, that they were not likely to be shut down by some ill-advised regulation, and that our tax regime would no longer put them at a disadvantage. 
• 
In his speech, Obama warns that Republicans are "tapping into America's dark history of racial and ethnic and religious division."
• 
But then he has the temerity to rail about the "politics of fear and resentment;" one wonders whose politics he is talking about.
• 
He complains that "demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems," but it is his party that wants the government to provide free health care to everybody and to guarantee everyone a job.
• 
Those are simple fixes, but they are also unworkable and costly enough to bankrupt the nation.
• 
Above all else, President Obama is angry.  President Trump has systematically chipped away at his legacy, taking us out of the TPP, the Paris Climate Accord and the insufficient Iran nuclear deal and removing misguided regulations like the Clean Power Act and the guidance on how colleges should deal with campus sexual assault.
• 
Trump isn't doing this out of spite, but rather because these were bad policies.
• 
See related Miss Me? (Glenn McCoy, 02/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Steve Hilton: Unmask the anti-Trump Deep State working against America’s best interests  (Fox 09/09/2018)
• 
Members of the arrogant ruling class in Washington, furious that a populist interloper was elected by the people to dismantle the elitist policies that have hurt working Americans for decades, are fighting back.
• 
Elitist commentators have mocked talk of the "Deep State" as feverish conspiracy-mongering.
• 
Well, now we know the Deep State exists.  There really is a group of people embedded in the federal government actively working to block the policies that Americans voted for.
• 
At the same time, anti-Trump commentators have lectured us for two years about how this president is "undermining democracy" and "subverting" those famous "democratic norms."
• 
Well, now we know they are hypocritical idiots (intellectual idiots, of course – per Nassim Taleb's wonderful formulation.)
• 
I'm not sure what could undermine democracy more than a policy that was clearly articulated as part of a winning candidate's platform being blocked by bureaucrats or political appointees who no one voted for.
• 
Isn't it quite an important democratic "norm" that the policies of winning candidates and parties get implemented, rather than the policies of the losers?
• 
... the hilarious spectacle of the left cheering on Goldman Sachs veteran Gary Cohn for his efforts to protect the profits of the super-rich from President Trump's efforts to protect American workers.
• 
Now the hunt is on to identify who wrote the op-ed published by The New York Times.  But I fear that misses the point.
• 
Finding and even punishing this one individual is not going to solve the systemic and structural problem of the Deep State: the fact that we have permanent ruling class in our government that pushes forward an elitist policy agenda regardless of who actually wins elections.
• 
The first step in beating the Deep State is to unmask the Deep State.
• 
"You cannot overestimate the degree to which the civil service and the bureaucracy genuinely see themselves as the guardians of the national interest.  They think it's their duty to block and frustrate the here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians who come in with their crazy schemes. That is how they think.  You have to realize that they really are there trying to stop you doing what you want to do.  You've got to understand that, and be ready to fight them."
• 
And indeed, once we were in office, the civil service bureaucracy fought tooth and nail against the publication of any information at all about its scope and functions.
• 
The permanent bureaucracy, self-righteously convinced of its "noble" mission to protect the country from risk-taking, was never going to be an ally in the kind of radical change...
• 
The last thing they wanted was to decentralize power – that would mean less power for them!
• 
The elites never want to give up power.  But they must give up power – or have it taken away from them – if we are to make government truly accountable to the people.
• 
Anyone who has been to Washington has seen in city block after city block the sprawling physical landscape of bureaucracy.  But what exactly do they all do there?
• 
Many must do important work.  But let's find out exactly what.
• 
Let's open them up to scrutiny and hold them to account.  It's our tax dollars after all.
• 
Let's start by bringing into the open the secret world of the Deep State bureaucrats.
• 
Publish every civil service organization chart, along with salaries and job descriptions.
• 
Let's Unmask the Deep State.  That will provide the necessary intelligence for establishing the scale of the cut in its numbers that we need.
• 
In the process, let's clear out all the leeches and hangers-on – the useless elite management consultants who earn a fortune from the taxpayer for writing endless PowerPoint presentations for incoming administrations that really do nothing but rearrange the deckchairs on this bureaucratic Titanic that is the federal government.
• 
The result is a self-referential ruling class of mandarins stuck in acronyms, cost analysis reports, and legal jargon.  Hardly the government "of, by, and for the people" that the Founding Fathers had in mind.
      Kavanaugh might be the left's nightmare, but he will restore the Supreme Court to its proper role  (Fox 09/08/2018)
• 
There was a reason for all of this spectacle.  The left has finally awakened to what its members see as a horrifying reality: they are losing control for perhaps a generation or more of the Supreme Court, their favorite vehicle for expanding the administrative state.
• 
For decades, members of the left has viewed the Supreme Court as their super-legislative body, legislating by fiat from the bench, with the justices being veritable lawmakers in black robes instead of the interpreters of the law they are meant to be. 
• 
Those on the left have always been frustrated by the separation of powers between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government in our Constitution, as they seek to build a powerful administrative state.
• 
They've attempted to undermine it, gut it, destroy its essence and manipulate the legislative process via the judicial branch.
• 
By turning the Supreme Court into a super legislative body, the left has thrown off the balance of power among the federal branches.
• 
By using the courts to consolidate power in Washington, the left has turned the idea of federalism from a fact into a farce. 
• 
The Supreme Court can play an important role in restraining and dismantling the leviathan of the administrative state.
• 
Today we are not truly living under the Founding Fathers' vision of our constitutional republic.
• 
We've been operating more under the progressives' vision of statism, in which power is consolidated under a massive government that forces and compels progress toward what the left considers to be utopia here on Earth.
• 
One of the consequences of electing Donald Trump as president was to enable him to appoint originalist judges so that we might actually get America back to some semblance of a constitutional republic, with real separation of powers. 
      Anonymous NY Times op-ed shows Deep State thugs are working against the will of the American...  (Fox 09/07/2018)
• 
As usual, The Times was late in acknowledging the reality of individuals employed by the U.S.  government who are actively working against the will of the people and America's duly elected president.
• 
Once dismissed as a conspiracy theory by the biased liberal media, the Deep State is now exposed for all to see.
• 
The people spoke loudly and clearly in November 2016 and they chose President Trump – the ultimate political outsider – to confront the failed Washington status quo and shake it up.
• 
The rise of the dangerous and unaccountable Deep State is a reaction to Trump and his highly successful America First agenda.
• 
"I'm draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back.  Don't worry, we will win!"
• 
This op-ed is the work of an elitist who doesn't understand the American people or why they voted for Donald Trump in the first place – just like the New York Times.
• 
The president should educate the American people that Deep State thugs are being paid taxpayer-funded salaries to work against the will of the people!*
• 
It's the height of arrogance burrowed in our federal government.
• 
This destructive behavior by the unelected bureaucracy cannot stand.
• 
Reforming a broken Washington is a healthy and entirely necessary endeavor.
• 
President Trump is taking on powerful entrenched interests across the board in his own way and winning the battles one by one.
• 
See related Swamp Draining (Glenn McCoy, 10/21/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Newt Gingrich: Anonymous NY Times op-ed is a liberal media attack on President Trump  (Fox 09/07/2018)
• 
... is the most stunning proof we have seen so far of the liberal media's aggressive bias and the very real efforts by parts of the institutional establishment to undermine President Trump, the U.S.  Constitution and the will of the American people.
• 
... The New York Times happily eschewed basic journalistic standards and offered its page and waning credibility to a nameless, disgruntled, elitist coward who seems to believe he or she has the moral authority to ignore and undermine the elected leader of the free world.
• 
This is a naked endorsement of the subversive efforts described in the piece...
• 
The collusion between this supposed senior administration official ... and the newspaper ... is also clear evidence that members of the old guard, institutional establishment are working to protect old Washington power structures and prevent the changes that the American people elected President Trump to bring to our country.
• 
... the writer even describes himself or herself as a member of "the steady state." That's a catchy name for group of would-be mutineers.
• 
This op-ed is also a perfect depiction of the competing alternate reality the anti-Trump forces are trying to impose on the country.
• 
If the president is so unhinged and incapable, why has North Korea said it wants to work toward truly denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula?
• 
How are President Trump and the Republican Party so close to seating a second constitutionally focused Supreme Court justice?
• 
How is the economy in its best shape in decades?
• 
This coward who is hiding from the American people that pay his or her salary would have us believe the members of the so-called "steady state" are the ones achieving these goals – despite the fact that they've likely been in Washington for decades and were apparently incapable before President Trump took office.
• 
The anonymous op-ed is nothing but an extraordinary statement of arrogance from someone who didn't run for office and won't even tell the American people his or her name.
• 
If this supposed patriot wants to steer our country's future, he or she should ask the American people for permission first.
      The Birth Of Cultural Marxism: How The “Frankfurt School” Changed America  (The Standard, 09/07/2019 )
• 
... realized that if the family unit and sexual morals were eroded, society could be broken down.  ... In these lectures, graphic sexual matter was presented to children, and they were taught about loose sexual conduct.
• 
In classical Marxism, the workers of the world were oppressed by the ruling classes.  The new theory was that everyone in society was psychologically oppressed by the institutions of Western culture...
• 
Critical Theory is a play on semantics.  The theory was simple: criticize every pillar of Western culture — family, democracy, common law, freedom of speech, and others.  The hope was that these pillars would crumble under the pressure.
• 
Their works split society into two main groups: the oppressors and the victims.  They argued that history and reality were shaped by those groups who controlled traditional institutions.  At the time, that was code for males of European descent.
• 
From there, they argued that the social roles of men and women were due to gender differences defined by the "oppressors." In other words, gender did not exist in reality but was merely a "social construct."
• 
... Marcuse coined the term "liberating tolerance." It called for tolerance of any ideas coming from the left but intolerance of those from the right.  ... That is also a basic trait of today's political-correctness believers.
• 
The Frankfurt School's work has had a deep impact on American culture.  It has recast the homogenous America of the 1950's into today's divided, animosity-filled nation.
• 
In turn, this has contributed to the undeniable breakdown of the family unit, as well as identity politics, radical feminism, and racial polarization in America.
• 
... we now live in a hyper-sensitive society in which social memes and feelings have overtaken biological and objective reality as the main determinants of right and wrong.  Political correctness is a war on logic and reason.
      Marc Thiessen: To the New York Times op-ed writer: If you can't serve honorably, don't serve at all  (Fox 09/07/2018)
• 
The "deep state" exists after all.
• 
But it turns out that deep state is not made up of the permanent bureaucracy, shadowy intelligence officials, or even Obama administration holdovers; rather it is made up of President Trump's own senior appointees.
• 
In a New York Times op-ed, an unnamed "senior official in the Trump administration" admits that he and others "in and around the White House" are "working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda" and thwart "Mr.  Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office."
• 
The author declares that he and his co-conspirators are being "unsung heroes" fighting on the inside to "preserve our democratic institutions." In fact, they are doing precisely the opposite.
• 
... the writer and the other members of this "quiet resistance within the administration" have betrayed the solemn oath they took when they raised their right hands and pledged to "bear true faith and allegiance" to the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
The Constitution vests executive power in the president, not "senior officials."
• 
Any authority these appointees have comes from the president, at whose pleasure they serve.
• 
For an unelected appointee to hide documents or refuse to carry out the lawful orders of the elected president is not noble.  It is not patriotic.
• 
It is an assault on democracy.
• 
If you are a presidential appointee who strongly disagrees with something the president is about to do, you have a moral obligation to try to convince the president that he is wrong.
• 
If you can't do so, and the matter is sufficiently serious, then you have an obligation to resign — and explain to the American people why you did so.
• 
But there is no constitutional option of staying on the job and pretending to be a loyal adviser, while secretly undermining the president by failing to carry out his decisions — no matter how bad you think those decisions are.
• 
No one elected the economic adviser or the staff secretary.  They elected Donald Trump.
• 
It is important that good people serve in the administration and try their best to persuade the president to make good decisions and dissuade him from bad ones.
• 
But when you go from advising to subverting the president, you cross a moral and constitutional line.
• 
You are no longer defending democracy; you are subverting it.
• 
And to boast about your duplicitous behavior in the media is shameful.
• 
In our system of checks and balances, there are a number of options at the disposal of officials concerned about the president's fitness for office.  ... But seeking to thwart the president from within by extra-constitutional means is un-American.
• 
There is no shame in not serving a president you don't respect.  ... if you feel you can't serve the president honorably, then there is only one honorable thing to do: Don't serve at all.
      New York Times' op-ed and the unrelenting vendetta against Trump – RIP journalism  (Fox 09/06/2018)
• 
The senior Trump staffer, under the cloak of anonymity, spins a wildly unflattering tale of a president supposedly unhinged from reality, making impulsive decisions that supposedly blindside and frustrate top officials who are in perpetual damage control.
• 
The gist of the piece, by the way is that you, the people, are lucky that Trump is checked by a noble band of staffers, the writer included of course.
• 
They refer to themselves as part of the "resistance."
• 
The column further alleges that the root of the problem is the president's amorality.  He is not moored to any discernible first principles.
• 
Well, America First is either too difficult a concept for the columnist to understand or he just disagrees with altogether.
• 
The president's agenda was clearly laid out in the campaign and pursued aggressively in his first 20 months in office: Lower taxes, less regulation, stronger border enforcement, less military interventionism and fairer trade deals.
• 
Oh, and let's not forget his pledge to appoint judges who are faithful to their Article III duties under the constitution.
• 
If Mr.  or Ms.  Anonymous loathes the Trump agenda so much, well he or she has no business being in the White House. 
• 
This is not a loyal public servant.  This is a disgruntled employee — part of the failed GOP establishment that lost power and now want it back — by any means necessary.
• 
Anonymous is a mole and a fraud. 
• 
You know, this has the feel of the flimflammery of the Steele dossier, doesn't it?  Constructed in advance by Trump's vicious political opponents.
• 
And as with the dossier, the American people have no way of judging the veracity of its outlandish and defamatory claims.
• 
So we are supposed to just take the word of Trump's adversaries, no questions asked.  How convenient.
• 
The column is rife with all these dramatic flourishes intended to titillate and feed the media beast, like this line: "the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic."
• 
How about his actions?
• 
Policies that have improved the lives of millions of Americans, including African-Americans, Latino-Americans, women, small business owners, et cetera, et cetera.
• 
Is all that detrimental to the republic?
• 
Anonymous claims he wants the president to be successful and does admit some of these accomplishments, but he insists that these successes have come despite, not because of, the president's leadership style which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
• 
OK, sure, you know, Trump can be impatient and loses his cool.  You know, and he can be frustrated as all of us are with the pace of Washington.  And of course also with the media.  Big whoop.
• 
Two words: Man up.  If you think so highly of yourself and really stand by your claims, step forward and identify yourself.
• 
Well, make no mistake, this is part of a persistent drumbeat.  It started in the wake of the election, the deep state with its faceless nameless sources launched their own internal campaign against Trump.
• 
Then, the beat was taken up by everyone from Michael Wolfe to even the esteemed Bob Woodward.
• 
The president should be judged by his policies and the results that he delivers for the American people, not by the embittered tales of a would-be whistle-blower hiding behind the skirts of the Grey Lady.
      The left, media, deep state would undermine our constitutional republic to oust Trump: Varney  (Fox 09/06/2018)
• 
Imagine: You run a business.  You have appointed managers.  You tell them what you want done.  Your business thrives.  But, some managers don't like the way you are running things and they secretly undermine your decisions.  They sabotage your business and claim they are your moral superiors.
• 
This is precisely what is happening right now to President Trump.
• 
A "senior official" within the administration writes anonymously in The New York Times that the president is "impetuous, petty and ineffective," and makes "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions." This official, along with others, work to stall and reverse the president's policies.  It's called sabotage from within.  And it's going on now.
• 
I can't remember anything like this: The deep state conspirators are now actively frustrating the policies of a duly elected president.
• 
They think they know better than us.  They must save us from ourselves.
• 
The official writes: "We are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't." The arrogance is stunning.
• 
This is a stab at the heart of our democracy: The will of the people is being deliberately thwarted by a secret cabal.  And yet again, the media is complicit.
• 
The left, the media, and the deep state, hate our president.
• 
They will do anything to get him out, and that includes undermining our constitutional republic.
      Kavanaugh hearings, Times op-ed, Woodward book make it official — Washington elites have gone...  (Fox 09/06/2018)
• 
If you've been living your life rather than following the latest circus in Washington, you may have missed the fact that the Swamp's chief scribe has a new book coming out.
• 
Or maybe you're unaware that some anonymous, arrogant Trump administration staffer who no one voted for has written in The New York Times about how he or she feels entitled to overrule a president elected by the American people according to the Constitution.
• 
It turns out Bob Woodward doesn't have a flattering view of President Trump.
• 
It also turns out that there really is a deep state conspiracy to thwart President Trump's agenda, organized by his own administration's appointees.  Stop the presses!  I think we knew that already.
• 
What's more illuminating than Woodward's gossipy, exploitative book or the pompous, self-important preening of a presidential aide is the D.C.  media and political establishment's obsession with covering its own pathetic palace intrigue.
• 
It certainly reminds us of the very worst of Washington – the focus on style over substance, the personal over policy.  But it's even more serious than that.
• 
Political appointees (or civil service bureaucrats, for that matter) who actually take pride in subverting the democratic will of the people exemplify the frightening authoritarianism we face at the hands of an entrenched ruling class determined to cling to power regardless of who wins actual elections.
• 
It is a ruling class, moreover, entirely funded by taxpayers for whom it shows constant and complete contempt.
• 
This insider club, comprised of people in both parties and the Beltway establishment, has become so isolated from reality that it ignores substantive results – whether that's economic progress or foreign policy successes like the cowing of ISIS – and instead celebrates the most self-regarding and insignificant people, touting them as headline newsmakers and brave truth-tellers who can enlighten the benighted masses.
• 
President Trump was elected to sweep all of this away, to enact big changes on behalf of the American middle class who perceived, correctly, that for years it did not matter who they voted for, the same people would be in power.
• 
And with the same results, namely: the rich and well-connected get richer, while working Americans see their communities collapse, their incomes go down and their jobs go away.
• 
But now the president also risks being consumed in the shallow Washington obsession with anonymous briefings, leaks and tweets.  He risks losing sight of why he was sent to the White House in the first place.
• 
Meanwhile, on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue there's another circus in town: the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
• 
With red-hooded handmaidens and shrieking outbursts, the spectacle has descended into farce with constant interruptions by juvenile activists who, with the blessings and coordination of Senate Democratic leadership, think it appropriate to turn the hallowed offices of the world's most important deliberative body into the University of California, Berkeley campus.
• 
Insanely, the media elites even tried to smear one of Kavanaugh's staffers as a white nationalist by falsely claiming she flashed the "white power" symbol with her hands.
• 
Weren't these the same people who just last weekend were lecturing us during Sen.  John McCain's memorial service that we ought to be more civil to each other?
• 
President Trump, I say this as one of the earliest advocates of the populist revolution: your presidency is at an inflection point.
• 
Fortunately, Mr.  President, if the Bob Woodward book tell us anything new, it is that your instincts are correct.  Too many of your advisers have seen their job as preventing you from delivering on your promises.
• 
Hilariously, the Goldman Sachs veteran is now being lionized by the left for his efforts to protect the profits of the super-rich by blocking President Trump's plans to protect American workers.
• 
It's little wonder that the bold agenda for change that propelled Donald Trump to the White House has barely been delivered.
      Liz Peek: At Kavanaugh hearing, Democratic anger boils over  (Fox 09/05/2018)
• 
Every now and then, it's worth recalling what it is they are so angry about.  It boils down to this: they are powerless, unable to enact a progressive agenda disliked by the majority of the country.
• 
Since Democrats are in the minority in Congress, they cannot legislate.  Since President Trump beat Hillary Clinton, they lost the ability to whip up diktats through White House executive orders.
• 
And if Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Democrats won't be able to look to that branch of government to further their ends.
• 
The staged interruptions and complaints about the process by Democratic senators made a mockery of the calls for civility and bipartisanship that adorned the memorials for their late colleague, Arizona Republican Sen.  John McCain.
• 
Apparently, treating your ideological foes with courtesy is appropriate only if that graciousness flows right to left, not the other way around.
• 
The Democratic committee members say they are angry that they have not received more documents about the judge, and that some of the pages were delivered less than a day before the hearings were to commence.
• 
But it's all hogwash; the material provided was more than that received from the past five nominees combined.
• 
Kavanaugh has an extensive public record of decisions that Democrats are free to review.  They do not want to review them; they prefer to sulk and posture.
• 
After all, every single one of the Democrats on the committee has vowed to vote against confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court – so what difference would a few thousand pages make?  The Democratic senators have made their minds up.
• 
The fury of Democrats has nothing to do with missing pages or hurried timetables.  It has everything to do with being sore losers.
• 
They still cannot accept that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
• 
Doing so would demand coming to terms with why, under President Obama, the party lost not only the presidential election but also an unprecedented number of seats in the Senate, the House, in state legislatures and governors' mansions across the country.
• 
It would mean admitting that President Obama was a disaster for his party.
• 
They embraced environmental laws that could cripple the country's energy base, health-care mandates that were affordable only to those subsidized by the government, restrictions on law enforcement agencies that compromised our safety on our streets, regulations on small and big businesses that made them uncompetitive.
• 
They made it harder for entrepreneurs to succeed and create jobs, and they supported immigration programs that mocked the rule of law.
• 
The addition of Kavanaugh will almost certainly tilt the Supreme Court to the right, although over time judges can gravitate one way or another.
• 
For the moment, however, Kavanaugh is solidly conservative; he is, in particular, no fan of the endless spread and intrusion of Big Government.
• 
Kavanaugh's dislike of an overreaching government is catnip to conservatives, but anathema to liberals, who increasingly embrace a soft form of socialism, encouraging ever more federal control of our industries and our lives.
• 
The Supreme Court with Kavanaugh aboard would become a serious speedbump for progressives.
• 
And that, for sure, is why Democrats are so angry.
• 
See related The Meltdown (Michael Ramirez, 07/11/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Kavanaugh confirmation chaos offers a preview of what life would be like if Dems ran...  (Fox 09/05/2018)
• 
Partisan rancor reigned as outbursts, interruptions, protests, and juvenile political stunts broke out when opponents of the nomination attempted to highjack the day's proceedings.
• 
Each Trump-hating Democrat on the committee took his or her turn flaunting the left's radical anti-freedom agenda, as the American people got a glimpse of what life would look like if Democrats were entrusted with control of government.
• 
"My judicial philosophy is straightforward.  A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law.  A judge must interpret statutes as written.  A judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent."
• 
"The Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution."
• 
Unsurprisingly, committee Democrats began their rigged obstruction charade by asking for delays and requesting more documents to review.
• 
The Democrats on the committee are all going to vote against Kavanaugh's confirmation, and in large part have already publicly stated as much.
• 
If there was a chance at changing minds and getting to "yes," that might be a reason to look at more records from Kavanaugh's esteemed career – but that's a pipe dream.
• 
The crazed left-wing base and the entrenched D.C.  special interests driving this insanity won't permit such open-mindedness. 
• 
Reasonable American voters are keeping score.  They will not forget this disgraceful sideshow any time soon, but career Democratic Party politicians and the purveyors of their far left ideology are too far gone to care what anyone thinks.
• 
The truth is that President Trump made another outstanding pick for the Supreme Court.
• 
Kavanaugh is a supremely qualified jurist who will faithfully interpret the law and defend the Constitution.
• 
The Democratic machine's playbook is as well-known as it is stale.  Everyone knows what's going to play out and it's sad that the American people are going to have to stomach it yet again.
• 
Committee Democrats are going to take turns attacking Kavanaugh for his principled decisions – and in the process highlight their failed agenda for the American people.
• 
So if there is an upside to this pathetic display by the liberals, their dangerous agenda will bubble up to the surface for all to take in. 
• 
The Democrats will gladly take these hearings into the mud pit and the biased mainstream media will undoubtedly praise them for it.
• 
See related The Meltdown (Michael Ramirez, 07/11/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Michael Goodwin: What clueless New York Times still doesn't grasp about the FBI, Catholic Church  (Fox 09/03/2018)
• 
It is not my intent to suggest the FBI and the Vatican are in all ways comparable.  Far from it.
• 
Yet they are in similar straits because each faces a crisis of public confidence.
• 
Those crises are severe because of internal decisions to parse, obscure and withhold important facts.
• 
While a desire to protect historically valuable institutions from external harm is understandable, the goal cannot come at the expense of honesty and truth.  When it does, the damage grows.
• 
One result is that the same questions are being asked of both the Church and the FBI: What did their leaders know and when did they know it?
• 
The Vatican's failure to come clean about sexually abusive clerics has cost it dearly over the last 15 years, and the consequences are now engulfing Pope Francis.
• 
Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the US, calls on the pope to resign and declares that there are ­"homosexual networks" corrupting the Church from within.
• 
He writes that many current priests and bishops committed immoral, forbidden acts or protected the guilty from exposure.
• 
He accuses, by name, about 30 former and current officials, many of them in America.
• 
... Francis "associated himself in doing evil with someone he knew to be deeply corrupt.  He followed the advice of someone he knew well to be a pervert, thus multiplying exponentially with his supreme authority the evil done by McCarrick."
• 
The scathing letter requires a full Vatican response, but the pope declined, telling reporters: "Read it carefully and make your own judgment.  I will not say a single word about it."
• 
The letter is so explicit and specific about events and individuals that silence will be ruinous to the Church's credibility.
• 
Catholic news organizations are digging into the claims and some normally supportive lay Catholics already believe it's possible the pope's reign will be short as a result.
• 
A clear exception is The New York Times, which is politicizing the issue by accusing Vigano of being part of an anti-gay, conservative cabal, a sort of deep state within the Vatican.
• 
The pope, on the other hand, is depicted as a compassionate progressive out to save the Church from the ignorance of men like Vigano.
• 
By seeing the issue through the lens of its own prejudices, the Times, which never had much use for the Church, tries to obscure the only thing that matters: Is the pope guilty as charged?  Everything else is noise.
• 
Similarly, the Times and other liberal media are obscuring all that matters in the investigation of the FBI: Is the agency guilty of trying to sabotage Donald Trump before and after the 2016 election?  Yes or no.
• 
As with the Church, we can't say for certain if the FBI cover-up is worse than the crime because the cover-up continues.
• 
By releasing information drip by drip, and only when it's forced to, America's premier law-enforcement agency confirms the worst suspicions.
• 
Steele, of course, is the former British spy secretly hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to dig up dirt on Trump in Russia.
• 
Steele fed his salacious, unverified claims to the FBI, which then briefly hired Steele and used his work to get a surveillance warrant against Trump associate Carter Page.
• 
In leaked portions of his testimony, Ohr said he warned the FBI that Steele was determined to block Trump's election and that Ohr's wife, Nellie Ohr, a Russian specialist, was working with Steele in compiling the anti-Trump manifesto.
• 
This month marks the two-year anniversary of those events, but still the public remains largely in the dark about what appears to be a an illicit attempt by the FBI to block Trump's election.
• 
... the president demanded that officials come clean, warning that if they don't, "I will get involved."
• 
What's he waiting for?  He has the power to declassify the documents involved, and should use it immediately.
• 
By doing so, Trump would keep his promise of transparency.
• 
And perhaps the pope would take the hint and do the same with secret Church documents.
      Liberal Jews, the Party despises you  (INN 08/31/2018)
• 
What is this mysterious potent virus that has contaminated the minds of ordinary Americans to make them turn into mindless haters of all things revolving around their own America, their nation?
• 
Sitting, kneeling, doing everything but show respect for the National Anthem and our flag.
• 
Schools teaching our kids that America has a shameful history.
• 
Major politicians representing the Left Half of our citizenry knowingly putting down our nation.
• 
Andy-Boy Cuomo, the governor of the great state of New York demeaning our nation by stating to the world that our country is not and never was great.
• 
Why then did his grandfather come to this country as a legal, documented immigrant and have both his son and grandson rise to be national figures and even Andy-Boy himself, to have a good shot at running for president?
• 
Obama, who started this whole "Hate America" madness had a visiting African student studying in this country as his father.
• 
Stalin and Josef Goebels must be doing a joyful dance together in the fires of Hell right now seeing that their dreams of defeating American democracy are coming to fulfillment decades after their own failed attempts at fascism.
• 
And this is happening without the use of guns or poison gas.  Its modern architecture is American made, right in the heartlands of America.
• 
We have black hooded, masked young thugs throughout the country attacking peaceful citizens who have different political beliefs.
• 
They burn universities, firebomb cops, smash storefronts and intimidate without being called out by their smirking sponsors, the Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, Islamists and fascists who all hunker under the banner of the welcoming, winking and nodding Democrat Party.
• 
The mystery person who is leading that Party, be it Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett or Maxine Waters, says not a word to put the fire hoses on the conflagration they have caused.
• 
They want more of it.  Deaths through violence in the streets would hasten our downfall.
• 
Let me also toss a fastball at the heads of the Liberal Jewish community.  As a Jew, I feel it's my duty to call them to task for acting as useful idiots for the Radical Leftist Democrat Party with whom many so proudly goose step in solidarity.
• 
My brothers and sisters, the Party despises you.  They use you for funding and votes.
• 
All to support the Palestinians who would slit the throats of every Israeli (and you) if they had the chance.
• 
What have they done to protect your kids and grandkids who have no physical security nor right to speak out in defense of Jewish causes in their colleges because of Leftists who control their institutions?
• 
Your future under any Democrat administration is a bleak one.
• 
Your continued support of The Party will come back to bite you or your descendants.  Guaranteed!!
      America is being scandalized by four enormous events – Trump is just one of them  (Fox 08/29/2018)
• 
By scandalized, I mean that people are shocked and outraged at what they regard as breaches of acceptable behavior or morality.
• 
That wouldn't be a problem if the vast majority were scandalized by the same things.
• 
The vicious polarization stems from the fact that the country is split almost exactly in half over what people are outraged about.
• 
The first scandalizing event is Donald Trump — his candidacy, his election and his presidency.  And, on some days to some people, his existence.
• 
Trump is unlike any president in history, taking the Oval Office after a notorious business career and personal life.
• 
Still, Trump won the election fairly and the economy is booming, yet too many Americans can't accept those truths.
• 
Their attempts to bring him down define the three other scandalizing events.
• 
First is the conduct of the mainstream media, which has abandoned all standards of fairness and continues to embarrass itself with overt bias against the president.
• 
Another scandalizing event is the behavior of some federal agencies.  The Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA took liberties that were morally offensive, and possibly illegal, because they didn't want Trump to be president.
• 
Some individuals, like former top FBI agent Peter Strzok, were dumb enough to put it in writing — on government computers!
• 
That, in turn, outrages Trump supporters and others, with the result that among half the country, the FBI remains untrustworthy.
• 
The fourth scandalizing event is the reaction of Democrats to Trump.
• 
Dems' answers to his presidency can be divided into two: political assassination and political suicide.
• 
The assassination group is putting all its chips on special counsel Robert Mueller.
• 
Their hope, their dream, their fantasy — their everything — is that Mueller will find collusion, obstruction or anything that will lead to impeachment and removal.
• 
Political suicide is the path other Dems are taking, as shown by their embrace of any shiny new thing, including socialism.
• 
I predicted the coming months will be nasty but hoped that "people of good will on both sides remember that, in the end, we're all still Americans."
• 
"We have always been taught, and many of us believed until now, that our frustrations with government can be adjudicated at the ballot box.  This Mueller investigation and the actions by the deep state and media prove that to be a lie."
• 
"With a nullification of our vote, some of ‘we the people' know we have lost not only our voice, but our constitutional rights and probably our country."
      The scheme from Bruce Ohr and Comey's confederates to clear Clinton, damage Trump  (Fox 08/28/2018)
• 
Director James Comey knew the FBI was incorruptible.
• 
This is precisely why he seized control of the investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email practices covering her time as secretary of state, instead of allowing the FBI field office to conduct the probe.
• 
By commandeering control of the investigation, Comey and his confederates could twist the facts and contort the law to dictate the outcome they desired.
• 
Clinton was the beneficiary of what FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly described as the "HQ special."
• 
The same is true of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
• 
The very people who cleared Clinton of crimes – despite strong evidence that she broke the law – also assumed unfettered authority over the so-called "collusion" investigation to determine if Donald Trump's presidential campaign worked with Russia to help Trump become president.
• 
Bereft of probable cause and credible evidence, they nevertheless pursued Trump in a probe designed to damage his candidacy – and later to destroy his presidency in an effort to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.
• 
Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee furnished the necessary funds.  Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS acted as the facilitator.
• 
And ex-British spy Christopher Steele provided the fabricated "dossier" that served as a pretext for launching the investigation of Trump.
• 
This brings us to the steps of the Justice Department and a high-ranking official who was essential to the scheme.
• 
It is important to note that Steele was not only receiving money from the Clinton campaign.  He was also on the payroll of the FBI from January 1, 2016 to November 1, 2016.
• 
Thus, it appears the FBI and Clinton's campaign were working in concert to use a discredited source, who composed a fictitious document to harm her political opponent in the 2016 election. 
• 
Ironically, Clinton and her campaign are not being investigated for violating campaign laws.
• 
Documents also show that Steele kept feeding the FBI allegations about Trump – even after Trump became president – all the way through May 15, 2017.  Why?
• 
In a veiled reference to the partisan motivations behind his report, Steele cautioned that "its contents must be critically viewed in light of the purpose for and circumstances in which the information was collected."
• 
In plain language, it was an untruthful political attack intended to vilify an opposing candidate – Donald Trump.
• 
Is it any wonder that President Trump continues to express impatience, disgust and frustration with Attorney General Jeff Sessions?
• 
Sessions has failed to take aggressive action against those who appear to have broken the law with impunity.
• 
There is no investigation of Clinton's payments to a foreigner who was using Russian sources for the "dossier".
• 
The actions of Comey, McCabe, Strzok and others should have been presented to a grand jury.
• 
Abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gain wiretap warrants should have been pursued.
• 
Instead, of doing these things, Sessions spent months obstructing Congress by refusing to produce documents in response to lawful subpoenas.
• 
Sessions' only real achievement as attorney general has been to alienate his boss by his actions and inactions.
• 
President Trump was right when he said that choosing Sessions as attorney general was one of the "worst" decision he made.
• 
See related Hillary's Private Server (Mike Lester, 07/06/2016) cartoon from Government picture album
      Mark Penn was right about Trump, Hillary and double standards.  Trump should respond by...  (Fox 08/28/2018)
• 
Finding someone in Washington who is nonpartisan and puts the nation's interests ahead of their own is so rare these days that he or she, if found, might well qualify as an endangered species.
• 
But once in a while — call it the law of averages — someone speaks the truth.
• 
... claimed there is a big difference between how Hillary Clinton and President Trump have been treated when it comes to allegations of criminal behavior.
• 
spoke of the "double standard" applied to Trump and his associates compared to how Clinton was exonerated by FBI Director James Comey over her private email server and her handling of classified information.
• 
"The investigations related to the email were handled with kid gloves, and the investigations related to Trump ... with all-out prosecutorial force of government and deep state might."
• 
It doesn't matter.  The long knives have been drawn by those who want to reverse the results of the 2016 election and put themselves back in power.
• 
They will not be sheathed until blood is drawn, preferably the blood of the president, whose personality might not win him any good deportment citations on a grade school report card, but whose policies are making the nation stronger.
• 
Neither does it matter that no evidence of Russian "collusion" by the Trump campaign has yet to be uncovered.
• 
That train seems to have long ago left the station, replaced by other strategies to bring down the president, none of which were part of the special counsel's original mandate.
• 
"There's no allegation in this document that any American citizen committed a crime.  There's no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result."
• 
Rosenstein knows the indicted Russians will never be extradited and tried, so it looks to most conservatives like a public relations stunt designed to show that Robert Mueller was pursuing what he had been tasked with discovering.
• 
Having failed to achieve that objective, the tentacles of his office have spread out in other directions, now reaching the Trump organization where its CEO has been granted full federal immunity and will likely be required to divulge anything...
• 
"The biggest political threat to Mr.  Trump is a Democratic election victory in November, which will trigger a drive for impeachment.  Mr.  Trump isn't going to persuade anyone to vote for Republicans by railing against a Republican attorney general he selected."
• 
He should stop publicly admonishing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who early on recused himself from all things Russian.
• 
Yes, the DOJ has behaved differently under Sessions (and Rosenstein) than it did when Eric Holder, described as President Obama's "wing man," held that post, but nothing can be done about that now.
• 
The president should concern himself with what is being done on other fronts where he can credibly claim success.
• 
The problem is that his constant attacks on others, which achieve little, have obscured many of his accomplishments.
• 
Americans want to be happy about the present and optimistic about the future.  This president — any president — should see that as his main calling...
      Collusion, epitomized  (JWR 08/27/2018)
• 
Over 300 newspapers across the country recently coordinated a major editorial rant against President Trump.
• 
Of course these papers have always been against anything Trump, the only thing new here is the fact that they colluded together to do it all on the same day with the same theme.
• 
That theme being that Trump is attempting to suppress "freedom of the press." Leading the bogus charge was The Boston Globe.
• 
"Today in the United States we have a president who has created a mantra that members of the media who do not blatantly support the policies of the current US administration are the 'enemy of the people,'"
• 
"Insisting that truths you don't like are 'fake news' is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy.  And calling journalists the 'enemy of the people' is dangerous, period."
• 
The real charlatans here are the press themselves by setting up a straw man in order to discredit President Trump.
• 
The irony is that they run blatantly hateful editorials against Trump protesting that their rights to run blatantly hateful editorials against Trump are being denied them.
• 
Their contention that Trump does not allow nor believe in a free press is completely untrue.  Donald Trump has always made the distinction between "fake news" and honest unbiased reporting.
• 
The mainstream media purposely ignores that difference to promote the lie that Trump is against ALL legitimate news reporting.
• 
Trump never condemned the entire press.  He never said news organizations that do not support his policies are the enemy of the people.
• 
His problem is with FAKE news, which includes reporters, cable news outlets and newspapers who make up stories, distort his words, and literally avoid reporting any of his successes.
• 
... they seem not to care about writing and speaking their contempt for conservative Americans in general and with Donald Trump in particular.
• 
They whine about "Freedom of the press," which is nonsense because they HAVE freedom of the press.  Nobody has taken it away.
• 
But doesn't freedom of the press come with some responsibility to be objective and TO REPORT THE TRUTH to readers?
• 
Or does freedom of the press mean you can lie, omit important details, and twist words to advance the news organization's personal agenda and politics?
• 
Yes, I suppose freedom of the press allows that a paper can print just about anything it wants, but if it does print lies and spins stories which suppress the truth, then it deserves to be called out as FAKE NEWS.
• 
The disingenuous mainstream news media is twisting words once again in their ongoing effort to discredit President Trump.
• 
Fake news is what Nazi Germany, communist regimes like the USSR and so many other totalitarian governments engaged in.  It's called propaganda, propaganda based on lies.  Millions of people suffered and died because of fake news.
• 
The fact is, President Donald Trump is right.  FAKE NEWS is the enemy of the people.
• 
What we all should want and demand is honest, truthful, balanced news from the press.
• 
The future of America depends on it.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Trump replaces NAFTA and triumphs — New trade deal with Mexico is YUGE win for both countries  (Fox 08/27/2018)
• 
President Trump won a major victory on trade on Monday, supplanting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and replacing it with something far more beneficial.
• 
One of the most fundamental parts of Trump's campaign for president was his promise to change America's deeply flawed trade arrangements.
• 
These deals left us with massive $500 billion trade deficits — a huge drag on the economy — and devastated forgotten communities across America that are dependent on manufacturing jobs.
• 
Second only to the booming economy, Monday's announcement of a deal with Mexico is the most visible manifestation of Trump's fulfilment of his campaign promises.
• 
Last year, the USA had a large $71 billion trade in goods deficit with Mexico, owing in part to much lower worker pay.
• 
This new deal will limit Mexico's ability to take U.S.  manufacturing jobs by underpaying workers.
• 
More broadly, the deal vindicates Trump's approach to trade, which has been lambasted by voices ranging from Wall Street to the national security establishment to the Chamber of Commerce, as well as mavens from both political parties.
• 
They said nothing could come from Trump's unilateral imposition of tariffs in order to get foreign governments to negotiate seriously.  They said a "trade war" would be self-defeating.
• 
Trump understood the simple math that countries with which we have trade deficits would have to come to the negotiating table.
• 
By definition, we buy more from them than they buy from us, which gives us the power any major consumer has over a seller.
• 
These countries also cannot afford to lose access to our $20 trillion economy — the world's largest.
• 
Trump realized the power this gives us and decided to use it to level the playing field for American workers — unlike other recent presidents.
• 
This victory will lead to others.  ... Canada must now return, hat in hand, for a deal.  If not, Trump will advance the deal with Mexico and leave Canada behind.
• 
The European Union and China will also be greatly concerned about the Mexico deal — and more likely to negotiate seriously. 
• 
Europe last year had a $151 billion surplus with the USA.
• 
When combined with the fact that we pay for most of their defense through NATO, Europe has benefited greatly from past U.S.  administrations' willingness to let Europe leach off of American workers and taxpayers.
• 
The same factors apply to China, which is dependent on selling goods to the USA and stealing our companies' intellectual property.
• 
Trump has utterly flipped the script with China, which our elite effectively told us would supplant us economically and strategically, and with which we had to accept unfair trade factors.
• 
Looking ahead to Trump's reelection fight in 2020, the win on Mexico and other likely victories will position him extremely well.
• 
Trump flipped states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio from Democrat to Republican in 2016 by promising economic prosperity in part by improving trade deals.
• 
Delivering on that promise with plenty of time to convey facts to voters means his prospects for reelection look excellent.
      How Trump can survive the onslaught against his presidency  (NYP 08/25/2018)
• 
From Day One, President Trump has been fighting a war for survival on two fronts.
• 
One front involves law enforcement, led first by James Comey's FBI and now by special counsel Robert Mueller.
• 
The other front is political, where Trump faces the resistance movement led by congressional Democrats.
• 
But sift through the fog of last week's dizzying headlines about guilty pleas, immunity deals and possible impeachment, and a clear picture emerges: The two fronts have united, with the anti-Trumpers in the Justice Department and those in politics now openly working hand-in-hand against him.
• 
In the long slog to unseat the president, the official merger of the anti-Trump forces marks a dramatic turning point.
• 
For one thing, it shows beyond doubt that the Mueller probe is fundamentally tainted by partisan politics...
• 
... made the politically charged demand that Cohen accuse the president of criminal behavior in his own plea documents, illustrating how Cohen is a pawn and Trump is the real target.
• 
Perhaps most remarkable of all, this new legal-political landscape shows the power wielded by Lanny Davis, a decades-long friend, lawyer and fixer to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
• 
With Davis serving as Cohen's lawyer, the Clinton machine is effectively directing much of the assault on the president.
• 
After brokering Cohen's deal with prosecutors, Davis began a televised barnstorming tour where he declared that because Cohen said Trump "directed" him to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels and another woman during the 2016 campaign, it is certain the president broke campaign-finance laws.
• 
Leaving aside that the deal proves nothing about Trump, the fact remains that Davis' role is a delicious revenge scenario beyond anything Hillary could have imagined.  She now has a mole working with Mueller!
• 
But there is also rich irony because extramarital sex is at the heart of Trump's trouble, as it was with her husband's two decades ago.  Is she going to flip her script and insist now that sex is grounds for impeachment?
• 
As for Cohen, he once vowed to "take a bullet" for Trump but switched teams in early July, when he hired Davis.  At the time, it seemed an unlikely pairing, but it's now obvious they came together because they share the goal of ending Trump's presidency.
• 
"This is Michael fulfilling his promise made on July 2nd to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump."
• 
He quickly followed by saying that if his client's actions in the hush-money payments are "a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?"
• 
"I know that Mr.  Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the Oval Office."
• 
In response, Trump lashed out at his former friend, but saved his most bitter barbs for Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  He again expressed fury that Sessions recused himself from the Russia-collusion probe, setting the stage for Mueller's appointment and everything that has followed.
• 
Trump also battered Sessions over the one-sided nature of the investigation, citing Clinton's deleted e-mails, Comey's leaks, conflicts of interest involving Mueller, FISA court abuses and the Christopher Steele dossier as among the things that should be probed.
• 
The president concluded: "Open up the papers & documents without redaction?  Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!"
• 
Trump, of course, created the problems with his actions and shifting answers about the hush payments.
• 
And his choice to hire Sessions remains the biggest personnel mistake of his presidency.  (Hiring Omarosa was dumber, but less consequential.)
• 
Yet, for all the glee of his opponents and media doomsaying, only a fool would count the president out.  He's bounced back from the brink before and there are three reasons why he could do it again.
• 
First, it will take something more serious than alleged campaign-finance violations to overturn an election through impeachment.
• 
The two-thirds majority vote required for conviction in the Senate was designed to be a stumbling block to factions and passions, and it saved Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.
• 
Second, Trump can cure the injustice stemming from the one-sided probe by declassifying documents the Justice Department is hiding from Congress and the public.
• 
Everything he wants Sessions to release could become public with the president's signature.
• 
... revealing the dirty details of how insiders tried to steal the election could bolster his support.
• 
Trump's third reason for optimism is the possibility that predictions of a blue wave in the midterms will be as far off the mark as many 2016 polls were.
• 
Then he had his America First promises, and now he has major successes, especially the jobs boom.
• 
His record, combined with the sense that he is under siege by a corrupt deep state, could motivate his half of the electorate to show up in full force on Election Day and save his neck once again.
      Why do we keep calling illegal immigrants 'undocumented' in Mollie Tibbetts murder and other...  (Fox 08/24/2018)
• 
Cristhian Rivera, who entered America illegally from his native Mexico, is charged with first-degree murder in the brutal killing of college student Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa.
• 
Yet few news organizations call him an illegal alien or an illegal immigrant.  They either call him "undocumented" or avoid drawing attention to his illegal status.
• 
The terms "illegal immigrant" and "illegal alien" are considered too harsh and too politically incorrect by the mainstream media arbiters of good taste.
• 
"Undocumented" is so much more polite.  It makes it sound like a man stopped by police simply left his driver's license in another pair of pants at home, or a woman traveling lost her passport when her purse was stolen. 
• 
No, don't say these folks are illegal entrants at all – just say they don't have their documents handy.
• 
This is absurd and seeks to minimize the fact that people are breaking the law every day by entering the U.S.  from Mexico and elsewhere without authorization.  And many have documents – as Rivera did – but the documents are fake or stolen.
• 
... the story of a man arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in California while driving his pregnant wife to the hospital to give birth made headlines with the same coddling euphemism: "undocumented immigrant."
• 
What wasn't originally reported was that the federal laws enforcement officers arrested Joel Arrona-Lara on a homicide charge based on a warrant from his native Mexico.
• 
He is suspected of involvement in the beating death of a man in Mexico in 2006 – which, by remarkable coincidence, the same year his wife "stated she and her husband arrived in the United States from Leon (in Mexico) without proper documentation," CBS reported.
• 
In the Tibbetts killing, as with the Arrona-Lara incident, priority has been to preserve the hagiographic portrait of minorities, legal and "undocumented."
• 
As the son of Mexican immigrants, let me be the first to say this is unnecessary, condescending and paternalistic.
• 
Maintaining the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants – especially criminal aliens – is vital.
• 
Grouping me with the likes of Rivera and Arrona-Lara, both illegal immigrants and alleged murderers, is unfair and deceitful, even if it happens to appeal to some people's politically correct sensibilities.
• 
... placing legal immigrants and illegal aliens – even criminals – in the same column based on minority status alone has become a loathsome cornerstone of progressive policy.
• 
... the reality is that progressives are cultivating – rather than discouraging – animus for law-abiding immigrants, because the lines between the lawful and the unlawful have been blotted out.
• 
... some noncitizens, like some citizens, deserve no sympathy and no mercy.  When one person robs another of life by committing a murder, he dehumanizes himself in the process.
• 
My father knew this sort of violence intimately.  Three of his five brothers were murdered in Mexico.
• 
Little did he know that one day, the perpetrators of similar horrific violence (now being imported into his adopted homeland) would be lionized, while their innocent victims would recede into the background – mere footnotes or irrelevant details in the progressive narrative.
• 
But it is the natural consequence of the current progressive agenda that prizes clever euphemisms and Orwellian doublespeak over truth-telling and harsh realities.
• 
Thus, the Mexican victim of Arrona-Lara, along with Mollie Tibbets, have become casualties in the progressive war both on truth and the rule of law – sacrificial offerings to the cult of victimhood.
      Anti-Trump media can't handle 'the truth' as it piles on Giuliani comment  (Fox 08/20/2018)
• 
The anti-Trump media are in an uproar about a comment by President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that "truth isn't truth."
• 
"For a part of the country's population, the truth is not the truth anymore.  President Trump's accomplishment has been to destroy the notion of the commonly accepted set of facts.  The truth is what the president says that it is."
• 
But what was Giuliani really saying?
• 
"And when you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and he shouldn't worry, well that's so silly because it's somebody's version of the truth.  Not the truth."
• 
Giuliani's point was simple: even if you tell the complete truth, prosecutors can still go after you for perjury.
• 
It could be that the prosecutors truly believe some other witness.
• 
It could also be that the prosecutors are just hell bent on getting another conviction.
• 
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was charged last year with perjury after getting a date wrong in an interview with FBI agents.
• 
The agents who interviewed Flynn didn't think that he had lied, but merely made a mistake on dates.
• 
But perjury charges weren't brought against Flynn until Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election got underway months later in 2017.
• 
Mueller never alleged that Flynn perjured himself in an attempt to cover up some other crime.
• 
The hope was simply to get someone in President Trump's inner circle to crack and divulge evidence against the president.
• 
... there was not any reason for Flynn to lie, because what he was talking to the agents about didn't even involve a crime.
• 
Prosecutors often abuse their tremendous power in the belief that the ends justify the means.
• 
... Giuliani wasn't disputing that there is an ultimate truth.  What he said is that being truthful won't necessarily protect you from perjury charges.
• 
"The statement by Rudy Giuliani that 'truth isn't truth' is another step towards authoritarianism."
• 
But worrying about the power of prosecutors is, if anything, anti-authoritarian.
• 
"My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic ‘he said,she said' puzzle.  Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn't."
• 
However, it really doesn't matter how many time Giuliani explains what he meant.  The Trump-haiting media can't stop lying about what the president and those around him are saying.
• 
Instead of engaging in a thoughtful discussion about Giuliani's critique of prosecutorial power, the media would rather destroy their target.
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Newt Gingrich: Democrats have no idea what demons they are unleashing  (Fox 08/18/2018)
• 
A few weeks ago, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) wrote an article for Vox explaining the movement's goals – to end capitalism and radically change America.
• 
In normal times, the declarations of a fringe party and ideology in America would not merit much attention.
• 
However, these are not normal times.  A new Gallup poll shows that 57 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism – while only 47 percent view capitalism positively.
• 
... Democratic Party candidates have been increasingly attaching themselves to the ideology.
• 
... the liberal, big-government reforms the movement has chosen to rally behind in partnership with the Democratic Party are simply steppingstones to this eventual goal.
• 
"Social democratic reforms like Medicare-for-all are, in the eyes of DSA, part of the long, uneven process of building that support, and eventually overthrowing capitalism."
• 
... "capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world."
• 
This is a clear threat to the system which has made us prosperous and the envy of the world.
• 
If Day, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders want to try and convince most Americans to end capitalism and embrace a planned, totally redistributionist economy, they are welcome to use the democratic process to do so.
• 
It is up to those of us who know better to convince Americans of socialism's folly.
• 
However, the second notable item in Day's article suggests that Democratic Socialists don't value democracy all that much.
• 
Day also identified herself as a staff writer at a New York-based, socialist magazine called Jacobin.
• 
In fact, several members of the Democratic Socialists of America are writers and editors at Jacobin magazine.
• 
A magazine that would enthusiastically embrace this title is signaling that, like socialist movements of the past, the DSA is willing to drop the "democratic" part of its moniker and instead rely on the traditional method for socialist revolution – bloodshed, violence and tyranny.
• 
The Jacobins were the most violent and radical political group of the French Revolution.  Led by Maximilien Robespierre, the group responded to a growing backlash against the revolution by executing anyone their so-called Committee of Public Safety deemed insufficiently loyal.
• 
The Jacobin clubs located throughout the country were used as a secret police force to root out dissent among politicians and the general populace alike.
• 
... almost 40,000 people were killed under the Jacobin control of the French government.  Many were beheaded by guillotine in a grotesque public spectacle after a show trial, and others were brutally executed with firearms.
• 
In the case of one period in the city of Lyon, people were executed en masse by cannon fire.  This period of carnage was known as the Reign of Terror.
• 
... the Carmelite nuns who refused to denounce Christ at the peak of the Reign of Terror.  (The French Revolution was virulently anti-Catholic – many churches were closed and reopened as "Temples of Reason.")
• 
The nuns were beheaded for their unwillingness to denounce their faith.  Moments before the guillotine dropped, they displayed the power of God's love by singing hymns and renewing their vows.
• 
... "a woman was charged with the heinous crime of having wept at the execution of her husband.  She was condemned to sit several hours under the suspended blade which shed upon her, drop by drop, the blood of the deceased whose corpse was above her on the scaffold before she was released by death from her agony."
• 
Make no mistake: This is the history of violent revolution, religious oppression, and dictatorship that Jacobin magazine, the DSA, and opportunistic Democrats are embracing – whether they know it or not.
• 
It is hard to imagine a modern-day Reign of Terror happening in America.
• 
But consider the recent phenomenon of outrage mobs on social media demanding people be fired and ostracized for expressing un-PC points of view.
• 
Think about the left-wing activists taking over classrooms to prevent conservative voices from speaking.
• 
Think about the rash of people being attacked for wearing MAGA hats.
• 
Think about the violence of Antifa.
• 
Perhaps it is not so difficult to imagine.
• 
So perhaps Sanders and Democrats rushing to embrace Democratic Socialism should be a little more careful about the demons they are unleashing to win elections.
      The media’s hatred of Trump is only hurting itself  (NYP 08/18/2018)
• 
"If you're a working journalist and you believe that Donald J.  Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation's worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?"
• 
He admitted that "balance has been on vacation" since Trump began to campaign and ended by declaring that it is "journalism's job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history's judgment."
• 
... served as a dog whistle for anti-Trump journalists, telling them it was acceptable to reveal their biases.  After all, history would judge them.
• 
"I think that Trump has ended that struggle.  I think we now say stuff.  We fact-check him.  We write it more powerfully that it's false."
• 
Because the Times is the liberal media's bell cow, the floodgates were flung open to routinely call Trump a liar, a racist and a traitor.
• 
Standards of fairness were trashed as nearly every prominent news organization demonized Trump and effectively endorsed Clinton.
• 
This open partisanship was a disgraceful chapter in the history of American journalism.
• 
After the briefest of mea culpas for failing to see even the possibility of a Trump victory, the warped coverage continued and became the media wing of the resistance movement.
• 
The high-minded among the media mob insisted they were joining together to protect the First Amendment and freedom of the press.  In fact, the effort looked, smelled and felt like self-interest and rank partisanship masquerading as principle.
• 
True to their habit, most of the papers expressed contempt for the president and some extended that contempt to his supporters.
• 
... 63 million Americans are written off because they disagree with the media elite's politics.  Echoes of Clinton's "deplorables" comment ring loud and clear.]
• 
I agree that Trump is wrong to call the media the "enemy of the people" and wish he would stick to less inflammatory words.
• 
His favorite charge of "fake news" makes his point well enough without any hint that he favors retribution on individual journalists.
• 
But I am also concerned that media leaders refuse to see their destructive role in the war with the president. 
• 
Black unemployment stands at 5.9 percent, the lowest rate on record.  For Latinos, it is 4.5 percent, also the lowest on record.  For women, it's the lowest rate in 65 years and for young people, it's the lowest since 1966.
• 
Those statistics mean millions of people are getting their shot at the American dream.  How can that not be newsworthy?
• 
Rest assured that if Barack Obama had achieved those milestones, they and he would have been celebrated to the high heavens.
• 
Yet when it comes to Trump, nothing is ever good.  Having decided he is unfit to be president, most news groups act as propagandists, ignoring or distorting facts that contradict their view of him.
• 
Two-thirds of those who believe there is rampant false news say it usually happens because journalists "have an agenda."
• 
... instead of soberly examining their conduct, most in the media ratchet up the vitriol, apparently believing that screaming louder and longer will lead the public to hate Trump as much as they do.
• 
With media behavior undermining public trust more than anything Trump says or does, a return to traditional standards of fairness and a separation of news from opinion are essential.
• 
And urgent — for the good of a free press and America.
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Why Do Any Former Officials Get to Keep Their Security Clearances?  (JWR 08/21/2018)
• 
And why should they mind so much when it's terminated?
• 
The firestorm of liberal and media criticism of President Donald Trump for revoking the security clearance of former Director of National Intelligence James Brennan begs the question of why he kept the clearance in the first place after leaving his post.
• 
The answer is not political or legal.  It is financial.  Having security clearance underpins many lucrative jobs in the private sector.
• 
A staunch supporter of appeasement in the war on terror, he reoriented the intelligence community, turning it around to prosecute those who questioned terrorists rather than the combatants themselves.
• 
It was he who made the CIA and the other intelligence organs into functioning tools of the left.
• 
His appointees continue to leak classified information, doing their best to sabotage their nominal boss — the president.
• 
Brennan voted communist in the 1976 presidential elections...
• 
He lived extensively in the Arab world and rumors have circulated that he converted to Islam.
• 
He and former Attorney General Eric Holder are jointly responsible for converting the FBI and the CIA into hotbeds of leftist ideology.
• 
He used a clever ruse to do so.  Upon being appointed, he moved to "reorganize" the CIA.
• 
Formerly, the agency had been stratified by function.  Information gathering, counterintelligence, covert action and its other functions each had their own bureau with their separate chiefs.
• 
Brennan reorganized this plan into a vertical design where all those operatives who worked in a particular geographic region were put together in one bureau regardless of their function.
• 
Some say he did this re-shuffling to make it easier to fire the incumbents holding staff jobs so he could hire, in their stead, true leftist believers.
• 
In any case, it is a matter of record that a great many of the top operatives quit rather than be reorganized.
• 
The employees in the high prestige subdivisions like covert action did not want to be lumped in with the desk-bound paper pushers and put in for their retirement pensions.
• 
For Brennan to continue to get security clearance and have access to top-level information was always a mistake.
• 
His loyalties are very much subject to question.
• 
See related Russian Youth Vote (Chip Bok, 03/21/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Explaining the Left: Part II  (JWR 08/21/2018)
• 
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, did Americans a favor last week.
• 
He provided that which is most indispensable to understanding anything: clarity.
• 
"America ... was never that great," he announced.
• 
In one sentence, the governor revealed the left's true view of America.
• 
This is rare — because leftists are masters at hiding what they really believe.
• 
For example, the left's low regard for nonwhites is well-hidden under a mountain of "anti-racist" rhetoric.
• 
But people who consistently advocate lowering standards for blacks obviously do not think highly of blacks, and people who believe in separate black dorms and separate black graduation ceremonies obviously believe in a pillar of racism: racial segregation.
• 
Another generally denied — if not hidden — left-wing belief is contempt for America.
• 
On a daily basis, the left describes America as xenophobic, misogynistic, imperialist, greedy and homophobic.
• 
But for some reason, the average American does not see all this as proof of the left's contempt for America.
• 
So, we have to rely on the occasional unguarded and unambiguous statement to know what the left really thinks.
• 
Michelle Obama provided such a statement when, as her husband began racking up victories in early-voting states in the 2008 primary season, she proclaimed, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country."
• 
Hillary Clinton provided her example during the 2016 election when she described half of her fellow Americans as "deplorables."
• 
Then-President Barack Obama provided his example in 2015 when he spoke about racism being "part of our DNA."
• 
First, America has developed into the least-racist multiracial, multi-ethnic country in history.  Those who deny this have contempt for truth as well as for America.  So much for DNA.
• 
Second, can Barack Obama or anyone else on the left name a country or group in history that interacted with other races and was free of racism?
• 
Of course not.  So, singling out America as having racist DNA is an expression of contempt for America specifically.
• 
Third, how would Barack Obama or anyone else on the left react to someone saying, "Islamic civilization has racism in its DNA"?
• 
They would not only emphatically deny it; they would charge whoever said it with being Islamophobic.
• 
And now, Cuomo tells an audience that "America ... was never that great." Cuomo said publicly what virtually every leftist believes.
• 
... we all know what young people are taught from elementary school through graduate school by their left-wing teachers: America is a racist country founded by racists; Americans committed genocide against the American Indians; whites have unique privileges because of America's "systemic" racism; in the words of Sen.  Elizabeth Warren, "the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It's racist ... front to back"; police are racist — both white and black cops shoot blacks because of racism; and "American civilization" and "Western civilization" are no more than euphemisms for white supremacy.
• 
Contempt for America is so central to leftism that there would be no leftism without it.
• 
See related Evolution Protestors (Sean Delonas, 02/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump was right to revoke Brennan's security clearance  (Fox 08/16/2018)
• 
Brennan ... has no business browsing through our country's most important and sensitive national security secrets.
• 
Clearance to classified information is granted based on a "need to know."
• 
Brennan has none, so there was no reason to allow him continued access.
• 
He does have a long pattern of misuse of his authority and lying about it.
• 
It has been customary to allow former senior officials to keep their clearances so current officials can consult with them.
• 
No one in the Trump administration is or should be consulting with someone as partisan as Brennan, so pulling his clearance was right and proper.
• 
Some are claiming this is political retribution, but the overtly political nature of Brennan's attempts to undermine the Trump administration are a real problem.
• 
And even if he had a reason to keep his clearance, his actions and statements are grounds to cut him off.
• 
Extending Brennan's clearance was a privilege no longer justified by any value he provides to the government.
• 
His unhinged rants against President Trump would land any serving clearance holder with a suspension and possibly even a referral for psychiatric evaluation.
• 
These include an unfounded claim on television that President Trump is being blackmailed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying the Russians "may have something" on President Trump, and tweets that do not represent the communications of a stable person.
• 
"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.  You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...  America will triumph over you."
• 
Sen.  Rand Paul, R-Ky., pointed out that Brennan has a history of unethical actions around classified information and has lied to Congress.
• 
"I filibustered Brennan's nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information"
• 
... the blame for the revocation of Brennan's clearance lies with Brennan – not President Trump.
• 
Brennan is not being punished for his political views.  He is being removed from any proximity to vital information because he has shown clearly he cannot be trusted with it.
• 
It is almost certain that the Trump administration is conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Brennan to ascertain if – or more likely, how much – he leaked classified information.
• 
This investigation may have already led to more reasons to revoke his clearance than officials can make public.
• 
Brennan is dedicated member of the anti-Trump "resistance," which is chock full of people who actively oppose America's very nature.
• 
If he has shared his inside information with them, we have no idea where it could have spread.
• 
We need a full accounting of all his actions and if there were crimes committed he should feel the full weight of the criminal justice system.
• 
Brennan had every right to oppose the Trump administration and speak publicly about it.  No one has limited his freedom of speech or ability to criticize.
• 
But the former government official and current TV commentator and activist has lost a security clearance he no longer has any reason to be enjoying.
• 
His handling of classified information deserves a full and through investigation.
      Ex-CIA Director Brennan shouldn't have a security clearance - He's a national security risk  (Fox 08/16/2018)
• 
Brennan has repeatedly shown he cannot be trusted with classified or top-secret information.
• 
He has a history of leaking and exploiting confidential material for partisan reasons.
• 
Maybe it keeps him on TV, but it also jeopardizes national security.
• 
... Brennan politicized and weaponized what was false intelligence to damage the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.
• 
Brennan surely knew that the anti-Trump "dossier" paid for by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign was nothing more than a preposterous collection of rumors, innuendo, supposition and wild speculation.
• 
Yet Brennan did more than anyone to promulgate the fabricated and uncorroborated "dossier."
• 
The author of the document, former British spy Christopher Steele, was trained in deception and chicanery, and was inherently untrustworthy.
• 
Steele was on the record telling the U.S.  Justice Department that he was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected" and "passionate about his not being president."
• 
It is improper to use a discredited source with such severe and pervasive bias.  Yet Brennan and his FBI counterparts didn't care.
• 
Even after Steele was fired for lying, they continued to use him as a covert source in their illicit scheme to frame Trump for crimes he never committed.
• 
Brennan was the instigator.  By advocating the use of the "dossier," he managed to orchestrate the investigation of Trump that was formally launched by FBI Director James Comey and his underlings, including Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe.
• 
There is no good or legitimate reason for Brennan to maintain a security clearance.  We expect CIA directors to be nonpartisan and apolitical.
• 
Brennan, always the devoted Clinton acolyte and sycophant, was not.
• 
"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history."
• 
Tired cliches aside, is this the kind of person who should have access to classified information during a Trump presidency – or any presidency? 
• 
The former CIA director is clearly capable of malevolent action.
• 
He should not be armed with the nation's secrets to inflict even more damage than he has already wrought. 
      Don’t blame Ocasio-Cortez – blame her schooling  (INN 08/15/2018)
• 
Every time she appears on television she comes across dumber and dumber.
• 
We should not be amazed that this newly hatched Socialist Democrat is so clueless about the economy and international relations...
• 
On the economy, she's prepared to give everything away for free – healthcare and education gratis for all, with no mention from where the money is coming.
• 
On the Middle East, she's prepared to hand over territory that was Jewish since time immemorial.  In her lopsided view, the land belongs to the "Palestinians."
• 
On what topic is she the expert?  Nothing much, apparently, yet she will be sitting pretty in the next Congress after her surprising defeat over a veteran incumbent.
• 
First she came for a man named Crowley and now they are all coming, freshly minted, to run our world entirely.  There are plenty more where she came from.
• 
... seems that these days our schools of higher learning are high on diversity and low on a well-rounded education.
• 
Get them while they're young.  Brainwash them and bamboozle them while they are still fresh-faced, runs the motto from the Left.
• 
Hence yes to Cornel West and Noam Chomsky and no to Shakespeare and Maimonides.
• 
Says she earned a bachelor's degree in economics and international relations.  Really?  That's news to her, and to anyone paying attention.
• 
We read that for some time she worked as a "community organizer." Oy vey.
• 
Didn't we have one of those already?  Yes indeed, Barak Hussein Obama.
• 
He remains her thrill on blueberry hill and Bernie Sanders' communism is her notion of utopia.
• 
She is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America.  Stalin ran under a similar title.  His economic programs starved millions to death.
• 
Or didn't they teach that in school?  Or maybe she missed the class, so busy community organizing.
• 
So far as this citizen is concerned, it's not about Ocasio Cortez.  It's about the leftist pabulum being fed to our young campus to campus.
• 
Are they taking over our world knowing ANYTHING?
      Good news?  First Muslim woman set for US Congress  (INN 08/15/2018)
• 
To some of us, "Palestinian heritage" connotes suicide bombers and terrorists.  But that should not mean she rates that tag.  We simply don't know.
• 
Well, this is America.  Why not?  By the way, Palestinian Muslim men and women serve in Israel's congress, the Knesset, so something like this would be no news in the Jewish state.
• 
Or as some might say – That's how it starts.  Must say that Sadiq Khan and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK are not reassuring personalities.
• 
Another democratic socialist?  Obviously, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez isn't one and done.  They keep on coming.
• 
Excuse me?  What anti-Muslim sentiment rising around the country?  Where?  What country?  Not this country.  Jews are 40 times more likely to be harassed and hounded, especially on campus.
• 
Look, every house of worship deserves to be respected.  But sometimes when we hear the word mosque – we duck or run for cover.
• 
"Over the past six months, at least five prominent US imams have been caught on tape preaching violence against Jews in sermons at mosques across America.  Yet these radical preachers inciting anti-Semitic violence aren't prosecuted or even permanently banished by the leadership of their mosques."
• 
How does her "Palestinian heritage" feel about that?
      Former FBI official: Firing Strzok was justified – he, Comey and McCabe disgraced the FBI  (Fox 08/14/2018)
• 
Both supporters and opponents of President Trump should welcome the firing of disgraced FBI Agent Peter Strzok, announced Monday.
• 
He and fired FBI Director James Comey and fired Deputy Director Andrew McCabe have done more damage to America's premier law enforcement agency than anyone in its storied 110-year history.
• 
Because President Trump has frequently tweeted denunciations of this trio, it's understandable that many people view their firings as unjustified political vendettas by the president against his critics.
• 
But while their clearly is no love lost between the president, Strzok, Comey and McCabe, there is no doubt that by any objective standard, all three deserved to be fired for misconduct.
• 
All three of these rogue FBI officials put themselves on pedestals and cast themselves as noble heroes willing to sacrifice their own careers for the cause of truth and justice.
• 
That's great PR spin, and much of the media has fallen for it.  But it's simply not true.
• 
... Strzok was not fired for simply expressing his opinion privately.  According to the Department of Justice inspector general, Strzok also used his private email to send and receive classified information – exactly the misconduct by Hillary Clinton he was supposed to be investigating.
• 
... Strzok, Comey and McCabe broke rules that all FBI employees are required to follow – from the lowest level up to the director.
• 
The disgraced trio leaked to reporters for self-serving reasons.
• 
They put their thumbs on the scale of justice repeatedly to protect Hillary Clinton when investigating her improper handling of classified emails and the shady activities of the Clinton Foundation.
• 
At the same time, the trio aggressively pursued every spurious lead and rumor that mentioned Donald Trump, who they clearly did not want to see become president.
• 
On joining the FBI, every employee is told that politics have no place at this great law enforcement agency.
• 
FBI employees are required to treat every investigation equally without making judgments and regardless of the identity and position of each person being investigated.
• 
Moral judgments are the bailiwick of judges and juries – not FBI agents.
• 
Every American should want to know the full scope and extent of Russian actions designed to destabilize our democracy by interfering in our 2016 election, so that such interference never happens again.
• 
However, all investigations should be treated with the same integrity, thoroughness and objectivity that the FBI has been known for.
• 
Politics aside, it is now clear to any rational observer that the actions of "the skinny inner circle" were motivated by ego and animus and strayed far from the values that should anchor every FBI action.
• 
A "Friends of Special Agent Peter Strzok" GoFundMe page had already amassed over $315,000 by Tuesday afternoon in just in a single day, and donations were pouring in.
• 
All it takes for FBI executives to earn such golden parachutes is to violate their oaths of office and throw the agency into the vortex of politics and partisanship.
• 
The newly fired FBI agent, Comey and McCabe were clearly motivated by self-serving hubris and blind hatred of Donald Trump rather than rules and principals that are built into our criminal justice system to protect all Americans from the formidable powers invested in our federal investigative agencies.
• 
Strzok, Comey and McCabe should stand in shame and dishonor for their failure to live up to the core FBI values of fidelity, bravery and integrity.
• 
America is better off with the firings of these three from an outstanding law enforcement agency.
      Here's how Trump can end the whole Mueller investigation farce  (Fox 08/14/2018)
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller seems determined to press forward with some version of the Spanish Inquisition – an increasingly indefensible, apparently groundless, objectively debilitating inquiry into what was initially one question: Did the Trump campaign knowingly coordinate with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election?
• 
Barring something that has remained hidden for more than 20 months, Americans know the facts: Mueller's inquisition was triggered by several Obama-Clinton partisans, including anti-Trump appointees at the FBI and CIA.
• 
Comey, despite holding clearances as head of the FBI, contradicted himself before Congress, leaked documents through a secret cutout, proudly triggered Mueller's appointment, and then cashed in with a big-money book.
• 
Brennan traded his role as intelligence briefer in President Clinton's White House for political gain in President Obama's.  When he ran the CIA he fed partisan anti-Trump information to the FBI, possibly circumventing U.S.  laws by procuring foreign involvement.
• 
Clapper, already famous for misleading Congress under oath, became another vocal anti-Trump detractor.
• 
Then Andrew McCabe, No.  2 at the FBI under Comey, turned out to be a subterranean anti-Trump partisan, who was reproached by the Justice Department's inspector general for breach of integrity.
• 
And as for Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, despite FBI employment and centrality to an "investigation" clearing Hillary Clinton, both were prolific anti-Trump texting partners and made it clear that they did not want to see him become president.
• 
So I have a recommendation for ending the tragedy before our country is consumed by this third-rate play, an ever-widening, seemingly unlimited inquiry into everything and anything that could possibly justify more authority, taxpayer dollars, distraction, time and the civil disruption.
• 
Clearly, Mueller wants to build a case for impeachment, despite every indication that there is no evidence to support the cause.
• 
He wants to compel an incriminating presidential deposition, trap President Trump into a contradiction to warrant obstruction of justice charges, and use that as a pretext to help partisan Democrats in Congress lead a fight to impeach the president.
• 
It seems that Mueller wants to turn his team into heroes of the left ... by bringing down a Republican president
• 
It's time to bring this drama – or perhaps we should call it a farce – to a close.
• 
President Trump could offer a credible, workable compromise – perhaps some sworn answers to written questions and an interview on limited topics.
• 
For Mueller and President Trump: Do not put our nation through any more of this inquisition mess, even if Republicans continue to control Congress, even if the Supreme Court is likely to side with the president on personal testimony, even if both sides think they could win.
• 
This increasingly baseless, meandering, delegitimized inquisition is not only distracting, discouraging and a dangerous drag on democracy – exactly what Russia, China and Iran want – but it does no one any good.
• 
Let's find a way to end it, consistent with rule of law.  To get to that end state, President Trump may need to compromise and so will Mueller.  That outcome would be best for America.
• 
This is not medieval Spain circa 1478, but modern America 2018.  Is that too much to ask?
      The media’s blatant hypocrisy — even about media-bashing  (NYP 08/13/2018)
• 
Welcome to the age of self-congratulatory media.  "Democracy dies in darkness" goes the ridiculous tagline on the Washington Post's front page.  Reporters openly call themselves heroes and firefighters.
• 
Yet when it doesn't fit the standard left-wing narrative, our Guardians of the Galaxy are MIA.
• 
Antifa demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., who gathered to mark the anniversary of the first Unite the Right rally, threw eggs at Secret Service, were arrested for assaulting a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat, launched fireworks and smoke bombs at police and assaulted NBC reporter Cal Perry.
• 
Perry had his camera knocked out of his hands while the protester screamed profanities at him.
• 
The story appears on various media sites, and several reporters tweeted about the attack, but the outrage was muted.
• 
Instead, nearly every outlet went out of their way to gently describe the antifa mob.  ... made sure to call the group "anti-hate protesters."
• 
After two years of constant self-applause, and furrowed-brow concern about President Trump sowing mistrust in the media as well as possibly instigating violence against its members, where is the outrage when a reporter is physically assaulted?
• 
Had it been an alt-right member doing the attacking, is there any doubt the story would lead all news shows and make the front page of all the major newspapers?
• 
When de Blasio commented, "If you could remove News Corp from the last 25 years of American history, we would be in an entirely different place," some people reported it as an attack on the "press."
• 
Stelter made sure to clarify that this was merely an attack on Rupert Murdoch and his properties.  Doesn't count!
• 
... rump tweeted, "@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly.  The outside world does not see the truth from them!"
• 
Stelter described this tweet by Trump as "an invitation to undemocratic regimes around the world to harass CNN journalists" despite the fact that it was nothing of the sort.
• 
But somehow de Blasio openly wishing for the demise of media in the city he runs didn't rise to nearly the same level of concern.
• 
In June, following the shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland, Stelter was happy to speculate whether Trump might be the cause.
• 
Without naming anyone in particular, Stelter's daily newsletter noted "many people wondering if the incident was somehow inspired by [Trump's] anti-media rhetoric."
• 
It wasn't, but the media got two days to fantasize that it was until all the details were known.
• 
For some reason, those same journalists seem a lot less worried about de Blasio's rhetoric.
• 
Donald Trump didn't invent deep mistrust of the media, he merely capitalized on it.
• 
Over 70 percent of Americans think traditional media outlets report news they know to be fake.
• 
News consumers see media folks worrying about threats that don't exist while ignoring actual incidents of violence by people the media doesn't wish to offend.
• 
It should be very easy to care about the physical assault of a fellow journalist.
• 
It should be quite simple to defend local news from a power-hungry wannabe authoritarian mayor.
• 
But you'd have to be dedicated to the industry instead of your ideology — and this week we learned just how many in the press choose the latter when the two conflict.
      Ocasio-Cortez's vision to turn Uncle Sam into Santa Claus is impractical but poses a threat we can't...  (Fox 08/10/2018)
• 
The 28-year-old candidate advocates for guaranteed federal jobs, free college for all, Medicare for all, and the abolishment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
• 
She'd like to turn Uncle Sam into Santa Claus, handing out freebies 365 days a year – all paid for by crushing taxes on all of us, a skyrocketing national debt or ... hey, whatever.
• 
The surprising primary victory that turned this grossly unqualified and woefully uninformed young woman into a candidate likely to be elected to Congress in a heavily Democratic district shows that the real battleground this election cycle is in the classroom.
• 
If we continue to laugh off Ocasio-Cortez as an ignorant and delusional radical, we will be blindsided by the soon-to-be largest voting bloc in America – a generation of indoctrinated millennials.
• 
... Ocasio-Cortez's college experience probably taught her that being a socialist absolves her of knowing much at all.  All she needs to know is that anyone who opposes her is evil.
• 
And she needs to memorize a few bumper sticker slogans about the cruel and greedy 1 percent who aren't "paying their fair share."
• 
Ocasio-Cortez is among the majority of millennials who now say they would prefer to live in a socialist or communist country over a capitalist one.
• 
But can young people be blamed for having no memory of the widespread failures of socialism and communism if we never learned about them?
• 
Each year, more and more schools are doing away with basic economics and history courses and replacing them with anti-American, progressive propaganda.
• 
... 53 out of the 76 "best" colleges and universities in America no longer require history majors to take a single course on U.S.  history.
• 
Meanwhile, the Communist Manifesto is among the three most frequently assigned readings at American universities and Karl Marx is the most studied economist.
• 
Campuses across the country are creating a breeding ground for an entire generation of socialist-embracing voters.
• 
The University of Massachusetts currently offers a course on "resistance" to capitalism.
• 
... Ocasio-Cortez is "not the expert" on most of the issues she will have to deal with when she likely becomes a member of the U.S.  House of Representatives in January.  But did anyone expect her to be?
• 
Today's college students spend an average of just under three hours a day on education-related activities.
• 
They learn how to memorize talking points and slogans – but if you ask them to dive in and explain what they're saying they can't, because there's no substance.
• 
So long as they are virtuously fighting the hateful and the cruel, their grades remain high and they are never challenged to explain the validity of their opinions.
• 
As a result, we see an entire generation quick to adopt socialism, but slow to define what it is or what it looks like throughout history.  They're simply clueless.
• 
... we see radical ideas that fall apart on close examination becoming mainstream.  The problem is that the millennials never give socialism a close examination.
• 
In 2016, a Cornell University history professor was filmed telling students that "capitalism is an anti-human system," and then urging them to build a grassroots movement to "defeat capitalism altogether because it's not going to happen at the ballot box."
• 
Fast-forward two years to Ocasio-Cortez's upset primary victory over 10-term incumbent ... in New York and you find that it is in fact happening at the ballot box.
• 
With a continuation of far-far left indoctrination in our schools and colleges, the American Dream might be replaced by a nightmare.
• 
If the majority of millennials truly embrace socialism, candidates like Ocasio-Cortez are only one successful voter registration drive away from getting elected to our highest offices.
• 
And if that happens, we and future generations will get to experience the nightmare of economic failure and lack of freedom that the citizens of Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, the Soviet Union, East Germany and other socialist and communist states have suffered through.
      Why it’s time for Trump to play his ace in the hole  (NYP 08/07/2018)
• 
... the hapless Jeff Sessions is still the attorney general of the United States.
• 
... Rod Rosenstein, officially Sessions' deputy but really the boss of the Justice Department and FBI, continues to get away with the biggest partisan heist of modern times.
• 
Rosenstein is guilty of three main sins.  One, he gives his spawn, special counsel Robert Mueller, virtually unlimited time, scope and budget to target anybody who worked for President Trump's campaign or administration.
• 
... the tactic involves throwing the kitchen sink of charges with the aim of terrifying defendants so they will be more inclined to spill any possible beans on Trump in exchange for leniency.
• 
The zealous approach — and exorbitant legal fees involved for defendants or witnesses — serve as deterrents for anyone who might consider public service.
• 
And although there is still no indication the president did anything wrong, the search for a crime to pin on him creates a cloud over everything he does and could influence the midterm elections.
• 
Rosenstein's second sin is his arrogant stiff-arming of congressional attempts to ferret out the facts about how the Trump probe actually started.
• 
It is a national disgrace that, 19 months after the president took the oath, the public is kept in the dark about the most basic things, including whether the FBI had any credible allegations about collusion, or whether it relied exclusively on the Hillary Clinton-financed Russian Dossier to get a surveillance warrant against Trump associate Carter Page.
• 
We also don't know how much money the FBI itself paid Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, and why the agency continued to use Steele as a source after it fired him for leaking to the media.
• 
Nor do we know why the FBI sent at least one spy — and maybe two — to snoop on the Trump campaign. 
• 
All these events are unprecedented, yet Rosenstein continues to thwart all efforts to explain them or hold anyone accountable.
• 
His imperious refusal suggests he sees himself and the Justice Department as above the laws it enforces on all other Americans.
• 
Which brings us to his third sin — his complete lack of interest in the suspect handling of the Clinton email investigation.
• 
The numerous examples of misconduct and deviations from rules detailed in the inspector general report came and went as if they never happened.
• 
The excessive secrecy and hyper-partisan taint have come at a huge cost in credibility...  the shared distrust of the nation's premier law enforcement agency is the legacy of Barack Obama's presidency and James Comey's corrupt leadership.  Unless Sessions and Rosenstein reverse course promptly, that distrust will keep growing and be their legacy as well.
• 
Fortunately, there is one card left to play.  ... a president has almost unlimited powers to declassify any document within the executive branch.
• 
It is a mystery why Trump has hesitated to use that power, especially because he rails so frequently about the unfairness of both probes.
• 
He could, in an instant, strike a blow for accountability and transparency by ordering the Justice Department to give Congress everything it wants, subject to very limited restrictions.
• 
Embarrassment does not qualify as a reason for withholding information.
• 
... it would set a dramatic precedent for a more open government, something Trump promised to deliver.  Secrecy is an important part of the deep state's permanent power and, when invoked to extremes by law enforcement, veers toward a police state.
• 
Trump should make sure he is its last victim.
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: Should Trump voluntarily talk to Mueller?  (Fox 08/09/2018)
• 
When federal prosecutors are nearing the end of criminal investigations, they often invite the subjects of those investigations to speak with them.
• 
The soon-to-be defendants are tempted to give their version of events to prosecutors, and prosecutors are looking to take the legal pulse of the subjects of their work.
• 
These invitations should always be declined, but they are not.
• 
Special counsel Robert Mueller — who is investigating President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice, pre-presidential banking irregularities and conspiracy to solicit or receive campaign aid from foreign nationals (the latter is what the media erroneously call collusion) — has made it known ... that he wants to speak to the president.
• 
Should Trump voluntarily speak with Mueller?  In a word: No.
• 
Giuliani wants to limit the subject of questions to the alleged conspiracy between Trump's campaign and Russians.  After all, he argues, this is the stated purpose given by the Department of Justice for starting the special counsel's investigation.
• 
And he wants to limit the number of questions and the time for all questions and answers.  He argues that the president's constitutional obligations transcend the needs of Mueller's probe.
• 
Mueller argues that he has an ethical obligation to follow whatever evidence of criminal behavior lawfully comes into his hands, about the president or his colleagues.
• 
As such, because he does not know in advance what Trump's answers to his questions will be, he cannot consent to any limitations on his follow-up questions.
• 
If I were Giuliani, I would tell Mueller that the negotiations are terminated and the president will not voluntarily sit for an interview with him.  There are paramount and prudential reasons for this.
• 
First, when prosecutors want to talk to a person they are investigating, the talk is intended to help the prosecutors, not the subject of the investigation.  So why should Trump engage in a process that could only help those pursuing him?
• 
Second, the prosecutors know their evidence far better than the president or his legal team possibly could know it, and these prosecutors know how to trip up whomever they are interviewing.
• 
So why should Trump give prosecutors an opportunity to trap him into uttering a falsehood in an environment where doing so can be a criminal act
• 
... President Trump does not use an economy of words.  Experience teaches that the undisciplined use of words by the subject of a criminal investigation is a prosecutor's dream when it takes place in an official inquiry.
• 
It is Giuliani's job to prevent that dream from becoming reality by convincing his client, perhaps through an aggressive mock question-and-answer session conducted by Giuliani himself, that no good for Trump could come from a Mueller interview.
• 
But there is an elephant in the room.  That elephant is a grand jury subpoena.
• 
The Mueller interview is voluntary.  If Trump agreed to it, he would not be under oath, and he could consult with counsel during it.  Also, he could leave it whenever he wished.
• 
A grand jury subpoena compels a person to testify.  The testimony is under oath, takes place without counsel present and can go on for as long as prosecutors and the grand jurors want to question the person.  And they can ask him any questions they want to ask.
• 
Of course, Trump could accept the subpoena and then invoke his Fifth Amendment-protected right to silence.
• 
However, he once publicly said, "If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth?"
• 
So such an invocation would be catastrophic politically, but it would legally insulate him from helping Mueller to prosecute him.
• 
Ronald Reagan quipped many times that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
• 
Mr.  President, beware of prosecutors bearing invitations.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Sorry, Democratic Socialists — you're still pushing poison  (NYP 08/05/2018)
• 
In the crazy, topsy-turvy year of 2018, socialism is somehow on the rise in America.  To those of us unfortunate enough to have been born in the Soviet Union, this is troubling.
• 
The new socialists say it's different this time.  They have a new name and everything: "Democratic Socialism."
• 
Don't buy it: It's still based on the same old, failed redistributionist tenets as the old kind — the kind that gave rise to devastating failure in my family homeland.
• 
... does her best to explain the snake oil: It's "the basic belief" that "in a moral and wealthy America ... no person should be too poor to live in this country."
• 
Note the word "wealthy." How exactly does she think the US got that way?
• 
It certainly wasn't because of socialistic transfers from wealth producers to wealth consumers.
• 
In fact, whatever funds are shifted are available only because some Americans are motivated to produce wealth in the first place.
• 
Alas, all that escapes those pushing an economic system that has yet to work anywhere.
• 
Sure, Democratic Socialists take pains to disassociate themselves from the Soviet failure.
• 
Yet their ideas just aren't much different from those that formed the basis for that failed state: "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs."
• 
I happen to know a little something about the transfer of private industry to government control.  My grandmother's father had his bakery seized in the Soviet city of Gomel.  He was sent to a gulag, where he then died.
• 
Oh, that's crazy, Democratic Socialists would respond.  No one is planning to seize bakeries.  And no one will be sent to prison for owning a business.
• 
No?  What if those who own companies in industries that "necessitate some form of state ownership" don't want to give them up willingly?
• 
What happens when the state runs out of money from the industries seized and needs more?
• 
It's baffling how we can still be considering centralized control of industries when that has never worked anywhere.
• 
Fact is, "socialism" only works when it's paid for by capitalism.
• 
"The perfect version of socialism would work; it is just the imperfect socialism that doesn't work.  Marxists like to compare a theoretically perfect version of socialism with practical, imperfect capitalism which allows them to claim that socialism is superior to capitalism."
• 
... the idea that the USSR did not attempt its own form of socialism is a canard — much like the notion that the United States is purely capitalist: Remember, here we have subsidies, tax credits, transfers, welfare and bailouts for companies we consider too big to fail.
• 
Somehow, our imperfect capitalism defeats all versions of socialism every time.
• 
n the fall of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev gave a series of speeches here.  In one, he said, "We are catching up with you in economic progress, and the time is not far distant when we will move into the lead."
• 
In Russia, that prompted folks to joke: "When we finally catch up to America, can I get off?"
• 
That Democrats and millennials seem to have no idea about the horrors inflicted on the masses in countries like the Soviet Union and want to go in that direction is scary indeed.
• 
Let's just hope the majority of Americans reject that idea.
• 
There won't be anywhere to get off to if we don't.
• 
See related Socialism Illustrated (Mike Lester, 07/26/2007) cartoon from General picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump beat Hillary more than a year ago but the left can't let it go – and it's harming our country  (Fox 07/25/2018)
• 
In a constitutional republic like ours, every two years there are winners and losers at the ballot box.
• 
After a rigorous debate and exchange of ideas, "We the People" make the ultimate decision about who will do the governing until the next election.
• 
Historically, the party that loses the previous election licks its wounds, reboots its message and works with the majority party on issues where common ground can be found.
• 
This recipe that is the American miracle has worked remarkably well for 230 years – until now.
• 
Now there's a permanent Democratic obstruction campaign in Washington and a radical socialist resistance across the country.  What's driving this?
• 
Never before in American history have disgruntled leaders of the minority party sought to deligimitmize and bring down a duly elected president of the United States.
• 
From twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to former CIA Director John Brennan to actor Robert DeNiro to fake news, deranged leftists are determined to try to bring down a presidency.
• 
Their attacks are based on a false narrative and they don't care if they tank our country and system of government in the process.
• 
Clinton pushed the centerpiece of the Democratic agenda – Russia – when she disingenuously asked her audience: "Why didn't he (Trump) stand up for our country?  In this case it doesn't seem like our president cares.  He's trying to be friends with Putin for reasons we are all trying to figure out."
• 
Hillary Clinton is a lot of things.  She's dishonest; she's the embodiment of entrenched power and the failed Washington status quo; and of course, she's crooked.
• 
However, one thing she's not is stupid.
• 
Clinton knows full well that Christopher Steele's phony dossier is a steaming pile of political crap because she paid for the opposition research herself.
• 
She also knows that her cronies in the Obama administration pushed the fake dossier through official intelligence, diplomatic and law enforcement channels because a President Hillary Clinton would have rewarded the swamp creatures handsomely.
• 
This is why Brennan and his deep state ilk are running around labeling the leader of the free world a traitor – just because President Trump ruined Hillary's coronation and swept them all from power.
• 
Clinton also knows that she started her service as Obama's secretary of state with the failed Russia "reset" in an effort to improve relations between our two countries.
• 
She spent four years cozying up to Russia in search of a foreign policy success to hang her hat on and to line her husband's pockets and the Clinton Foundation with Russian cash.
• 
The once-respected actor Robert DeNiro goes ballistic and screams "f — Trump!" at a televised award ceremony.
• 
Wealthy comedian Bill Maher waxes on about how great an economic recession would be for Democratic chances to retake power – ignoring the fact that a recession would hurt millions of hardworking American families.
• 
These and other Trump-haters make it clear that the left is united in its effort to get rid of President Trump – no matter what.
• 
Whether it's turning their backs on our police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, or attempting to provoke a war with Russia, the Democrats have become totally unhinged.
• 
Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton is fueling the resistance and encouraging others to join in because she can't get over losing, despite the fact that she pledged to accept the results of the election.
• 
It's still all about Hillary – America be damned.
      San Francisco makes it clear what immigration debate is all about — votes for Democrats  (Fox 07/24/2018)
• 
San Francisco is permitting "undocumented immigrants," as political correctness demands we label them, to register to vote this November in local school board elections.
• 
Who doubts this is the first step by the left and Democrats toward full voting rights in state and eventually in federal elections?
• 
The claim by lawyers will be that it is discriminatory to allow undocumented immigrants to vote in local and state elections and not for members of Congress and for president.
• 
At bottom this is what the entire immigration debate is about.
• 
"What's incredible is these politicians, members of the legislature, would much rather abolish a law enforcement agency than fix the law.  ... ICE is enforcing the laws they enacted."
• 
"People want to ignore the data and the fact that ... 89 percent of everybody we arrested last year had a criminal history, either a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges."
• 
"We are prioritizing against the criminals.  And abolishing ICE, there are going to be (fewer) criminals locked up.  Over 100,000 criminal aliens have been arrested this year walking the streets of this country.  That wouldn't happen if ICE wasn't there."
• 
"I mean, to have protesters come and try to get in the middle of us doing our job, we had an office in Portland shut down for over a week.  That means criminals weren't being arrested, child predators weren't being arrested, victims of child trafficking and sex trafficking weren't being rescued, drug traffickers weren't being arrested."
• 
Here are some questions I would pose to the broadcast networks CNN and MSNBC: Why have so few in the mainstream media spoken to Homan, and why aren't you overpaid journalists asking some of the questions he is asking?
• 
Who are these demonstrators who show up at ICE offices, at the border with Mexico and in other places?
• 
How do they get there, and who pays for their signs, hotel rooms, transportation and food?
• 
Are any of them being paid?
• 
Do they have jobs, and if they do, how do they get time off to demonstrate?
• 
How many bosses would allow that?
• 
Not only is Congress failing to do its job, the major media are failing to do theirs.
• 
For Democrats, it's a perfect cover for their ultimate goal: importing votes.
• 
See related Dreamer (Glenn McCoy, 09/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump is right to pull security clearances from those actively undermining his administration  (Fox 07/23/2018)
• 
President Trump is considering the entirely proper move of pulling security clearances from a number of former government officials including disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper and several others.
• 
These are all people who have been abusing the credibility gained by their previous positions and potentially their continued access to our secrets in a partisan political manner.
• 
There is a longstanding tradition of granting former officials continued clearance to allow them to be consulted about actions they took and insights they might have.
• 
There is no requirement to do this but when all, regardless of party affiliation, are supposed to be working toward our security it provided a continuity of the institutional knowledge.
• 
That is no longer the case with these individuals.
• 
They seem to be wholly invested in undermining the national security priorities and policies of the Trump administration.
• 
And in some cases, it seems they were likely to have been undermining the Trump campaign while still members of the Obama administration.
• 
Taking security clearances from those who have professed to be actively hindering the president's lawful conduct of the country's business is a sad, but necessary, step.
• 
It is not a political move of itself, it is a reaction to the political moves of those acting against him.
• 
All of these people have every right to speak their minds and oppose every single action Trump takes.
• 
But they have zero right to continue to hold a clearance that gives them access to classified data once they show their true colors.
• 
As a member of the disloyal opposition, they have shown they should not be trusted.
      Trump knows more about dealing with bad guys than Congress, hysterical media combined  (Fox 07/19/2018)
• 
Some in the Democratic Party and some of my colleagues in the media have even accused Trump of treason.  How misunderstanding they are.
• 
For 18 months, Trump has sought to develop a personal relationship with Putin unlike any relationship that any modern American president has had with him or his predecessors.
• 
The Democrats and Republican never-Trumpers doubt Trump's bona fides and even his intellect.
• 
"Who could cut a deal with a monster?" they have bellowed.
• 
Make no mistake; Putin is a monster.
• 
He has invaded Ukraine, bombed rebels in Syria, shored up fanatics in Iran, imprisoned political opponents on false charges and stolen billions from Russian oligarchs and the Russian people.
• 
To this litany of criminality, Trump has wisely asked: How have any of his monstrosities harmed the United States?
• 
Answer: None of this is morally sound, and all of it is profoundly unlawful, but none of it has harmed us.
• 
This realization has led Trump — in defiance of the advice from his own secretary of state, CIA director and national security adviser — to try to understand Putin and to negotiate with him.
• 
There is much to negotiate about.  We want the Russians to stay out of our computers and away from our elections.
• 
We want them to stop trying to reorganize the Middle East.
• 
And we want them to reduce their nuclear and long-range offensive weaponry.  Of course, they want the same from us.
• 
I don't know whether Putin can be reasoned with.  But I believe that if anyone can do it, Donald Trump can.
• 
Negotiations are often fluid.  They take time and patience, as well as threats and flattery, and they cannot be successful under a microscope.
• 
Stated differently, Trump knows how to negotiate, and his skills cannot be assessed midstream — because midstream is often muddy and muddled.
• 
His public praise of Putin and giving moral equivalence to Putin and our intelligence services were not to state truths but to influence Putin's thinking in order to bend Putin's will — eventually — to his own.
• 
But the neocons in Congress will have none of this.  ... They depend on the threats of foreign governments to animate taxpayer funding of their armaments.
• 
So they have jumped on a fluid long-term negotiation at its inception by mocking the president's flattery.
• 
They would have mocked Franklin Roosevelt for calling monstrous Soviet dictator Josef Stalin "Uncle Joe" as he bent him to his will.
• 
We have impatient media that hate the president, a bipartisan majority in Congress beholden to the military-industrial complex, and a president who knows more about negotiating with bad guys than any of them.
• 
And unlike the warmongers, the president is willing to talk to anyone if there is a chance it could result in peace.
• 
President Lyndon B.  Johnson often remarked that there are two things in life you never want to watch being made and only want to see when completed: legislation and sausages.
• 
We should add international peace to that short list.
      Everyone is smart except Trump when it comes to Putin negotiations  (INN 07/19/2018)
• 
It really is quite simple.  Everyone is smart except Donald J.  Trump. 
• 
That's why they all are billionaires and all were elected President.
• 
Only Trump does not know what he is doing.  Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin.
• 
Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin.  The whole crowd at MSNBC does.  All the journalists do.
• 
Only Trump is incapable of negotiating with the Russian tyrant.
• 
Remember the four years when Anderson Cooper was President of the United States?  And before that — when the entire Washington Post editorial staff jointly were elected to be President?
• 
Remember?  Neither do I.
• 
Trump's voters get him because not only is he we, but we are he.
• 
We were not snowflaked-for-life by effete professors who themselves never had negotiated tough life-or-death serious deals.
• 
The Bushes got us into all kinds of messes.  The first one killed the economic miracle that Reagan had fashioned.
• 
The second one messed up the Middle East, where Iraq and Iran beautifully were engaged in killing each other for years, and he got us mired into the middle of the muddle.
• 
Clinton was too busy with Monica Lewinsky to protect us from Osama Bin Laden when we had him in our sights.
• 
Hillary gave us Benghazi and more.  And Obama and Kerry gave us the Iran Deal, ISIS run amok, America in retreat. 
• 
All to the daily praise of a media who now attack Trump every minute of every day.
• 
NATO is our friend.  They also rip off America.  They have been ripping us off forever.
• 
We pay 4% of our gigantic gross domestic product to protect them, and they will not pay a lousy 2% of their GDP towards their own defense.
• 
And then they have the temerity to cheat us further in trade.  Long before Trump, they set up tariffs aganst us for so many things.
• 
Every American President has complained about the cheating and imbalance — the NATO penny-pinching-cheapness, the tariff and trade imbalances.
• 
In more recent years, the various Bushes complained about it.  Even Obama complained about it.  But they all did it so gently, so diplomatically.
• 
Another four years of America being suckered and snookered.  All they had to do was give Obama a Nobel Peace Prize his ninth month in office and let Kerry ride his bike around Paris.
• 
So Trump did what any effective negotiator would do: he took note of past approaches to NATO and their failures, and correctly determined that the only way to get these penny-pinching-cheap baseborn prigs to pay their freight would be to bulldoze right into their faces...
• 
"...  I am not being diplomatic.  I am being All-Business: either you start to pay or, wow, are you in for some surprises!  And you know what you read in the Fake News: I am crazy!  I am out of control!  So, lemme see.  I know: We will go to trade war!  How do you like that?  Maybe we even will pull all our troops out of Europe.  Hmmm.  Yeah, maybe.  Why not?  Sounds good.  Well, let's see."
• 
They knew that Clinton and Bush x 2 and Kerry and Hillary and Nobel Laureate Obama never would do it.  But they also know that Trump just might.
• 
Putin is a bad guy.  A really bad guy.  He is better than Lenin.  Better than Stalin, Khruschev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Pol Pot, Mao.  But he is a really bad guy.
• 
Here's the thing: Putin is a dictator.  He answers to no one.  He does whatever he wants.  If there arises an opponent, that guy dies.
• 
Trump knows from his advisers what we can do.  If he sweet-talks Putin in public ... then everything that Trump has told Putin privately can be reinforced with action, and he even can wedge concessions because, against that background, Putin knows that no one will believe that he made any concessions. 
• 
That is why Trump talks about him that way.  And that is the only possible way to do it when negotiating with a tyrant who has no checks and balances on him.
• 
If you embarrass the tyrant publicly, then the tyrant never will make concessions because he will fear that people will say he was intimidated and backed down.  And that he never will do.
• 
Meanwhile, Trump has expelled 60 Russians from America, reversed Obama policy and sent lethal weapons to the Ukraine, and is pressing Germany severely on its pipeline project with Russia.
• 
He is a tough and smart negotiator.  He sizes up his opponent, and he knows that the approach that works best for one is not the same as for another.
• 
It does not matter what he says publicly about his negotiating opponent.  What matters is what results months later. 
• 
In his first eighteen months in Washington, this man has turned around the American economy, brought us near full employment, reduced the welfare and food stamp lines, wiped out ISIS in Raqqa, moved America's Israel embassy to Jerusalem, successfully has launched massive deregulation of the economy, has opened oil exploration in ANWR, is rebuilding the military massively, has walked out of the useless Paris Climate Accords that were negotiated by America's amateurs who always get snookered, canned the disastrous Iran Deal, exited the bogus United Nations Human Rights Council.
• 
He has Canada and Mexico convinced he will walk out of NAFTA if they do not pony up, and he has the Europeans convinced he will walk out of NATO if they don't stop being the cheap and lazy parasitic penny-pinchers they are. 
• 
He has slashed income taxes, expanded legal protections for college students falsely accused of crimes, has taken real steps to protect religious freedoms and liberties promised in the First Amendment, boldly has taken on the lyme-disease-quality of a legislative mess that he inherited from Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama on immigration, and has appointed a steady line of remarkably brilliant conservative federal judges to sit on the district courts, the circuit appellate courts, and the Supreme Court.
• 
What has Anderson Cooper achieved during that period?  Jim Acosta or the editorial staffs of the New York Times and Washington Post?
• 
They have not even found the courage and strength to stand up to the coworkers and celebrities within their orbits who abuse sexually or psychologically or emotionally. 
• 
They gave us four years of Nobel Peace Laureate Obama negotiating with the ISIS JV team, calming the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet.
• 
We will take Trump negotiating with Putin any day.
      The bold move Trump can make to get to bottom of Russian 'meddling' in 2016 election  (Fox 07/19/2018)
• 
... Trump said he had misspoken when he expressed doubt about Russian culpability — but several things need to be kept in mind.
• 
The first is that Russia and the United States have been meddling with, or spying on, each other for decades.  That is hardly a secret.
• 
Second, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, no votes were altered, and the election outcome was not affected by the alleged meddling.
• 
Third, the fealty most Democrats and some Republicans are showing for the credibility of U.S.  intelligence today was lacking after it was discovered that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
• 
Some older history might serve to prove that U.S.  intelligence findings are not always accurate, or worth taking at immediate face value.
• 
... Truman wrote, "I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department ‘treatment' or interpretations.  I wanted and needed the information in its ‘natural raw' state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it.  But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions — and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating."
• 
Now, many Democrats and most of the left are applauding Brennan for calling President Trump a traitor and demanding he be impeached.
• 
President Trump can diffuse much of the heat surrounding Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election by declassifying, as William McGurn of The Wall Street Journal suggests, "all material subpoenaed by Congress regarding Russia and collusion and possible FBI or Justice Department abuses."
• 
This controversy began when a special counsel was named under the false pretense that a "dossier" paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign was legitimate.
• 
This fiasco needs to be ended by getting to the truth contained in those classified documents the Justice Department has refused to share with Congress.
      Ex-CIA Director Brennan has flipped out with Trump Derangement Syndrome and is making crazy...  (Fox 07/19/2018)
• 
He has become so blinded by his intense and unbridled hatred for the duly elected president of the United States that he's now embracing crazy conspiracy theories.
• 
"Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous.  Not only were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.  Republican Patriots: Where are you???"
• 
So now it is an impeachable offense for presidents of the United States to meet with a Russian leader if they don't scream in his face, call him a liar, and maybe punch him in the nose?
• 
Does Brennan believe Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt should have been impeached for creating a World War II alliance with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to fight the Nazis?
• 
What about subsequent U.S.  presidents of both parties who met with their Soviet and later their Russian counterparts?
• 
Are all these presidents traitors?  Of course not.
• 
Like his predecessors, President Trump wisely recognizes that Russia can't be ignored.
• 
And like his predecessors, President Trump meets with many foreign leaders with the goal of advancing U.S.  national interests and increasing our security.
• 
"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.  You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you."
• 
Why would John Brennan make the consequential decision to forfeit his credibility with his extreme anti-Trump statements?
• 
He has gone way beyond the language of reasonable discourse or legitimate political disagreement.
• 
If Brennan wants to find a high-ranking U.S.  government official who has been overly sympathetic to Russia all he has to do is look in the mirror.
• 
... he voted for the Communist candidate for president of the United States when he was a college student in 1976.
• 
Brennan claims his support of the Communist candidate was "signaling my unhappiness with the system, and the need for change."
• 
The Communist Party, as every middle school student ought to know, is opposed to everything our constitutional republic stands for.
• 
At a time when America was knee deep in the Cold War, voting for liberal Jimmy Carter wasn't enough for John Brennan.
• 
Brennan really wanted to object to America by supporting the Communist Party – the U.S.  branch of the political party that ruled the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
• 
Shamefully, Brennan voted for the ideals of Karl Marx over the ideals of James Madison.
• 
He chose to ignore the actions of the mass-murdering totalitarian government that the United States was confronting around the globe and support a Communist for president.
• 
This disturbing peek into Brennan's mind makes it entirely plausible that one of the reasons he hates President Trump so much is because he dislikes our capitalist system that produces wealthy and successful entrepreneurs like Donald Trump.
• 
Did President Obama know Brennan was a political hack before he nominated him to be our CIA director for four years?
• 
Did he care that Brennan voted for a Communist for president of the United States?
• 
How did Brennan even get hired for a job at the CIA after making his admission about voting for a Communist?
• 
Maybe President Obama was just happy to have Brennan's help to spread the wealth around and fundamentally transform America.
• 
The failure of the Obama administration to confront Russian meddling before the 2016 election deserves much more scrutiny.
• 
The role of Obama officials at the State Department, Justice Department and other agencies played in facilitating political opposition research efforts against President Trump and his campaign also needs far more examination.
• 
Now that John Brennan has exposed his hyper-partisanship through his own inflammatory rhetoric, would it surprise anyone if he were part of the crew trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming president, along with disgraced FBI official Peter Strzok?
• 
President Obama, Brennan and many others should answer these questions – if the liberal media ever build up the courage and honesty to ask.
• 
Congress must also act.  Obama's senior advisers need to testify about their inaction on Russian election meddling and their anti-Trump political activity without delay.
• 
See related Russian Youth Vote (Chip Bok, 03/21/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Victims of 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' land in ICU after Putin freakout — Here's my prescription  (Fox 07/18/2018)
• 
As soon as President Trump concluded his successful summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland on Monday, the Washington swamp and liberal media launched a concerted effort to falsely portray our president's positive foreign policy achievement in the most negative light possible.
• 
... the media had little interest in delving into important issues that Presidents Trump and Putin discussed, including nuclear nonproliferation, destroying ISIS, ending the civil war in Syria, preventing Iran from building atomic bombs, and the security of Israel.
• 
Reporters could barely acknowledge the positive sight of former Cold War adversaries talking about peace and areas of agreement.
• 
... reporters at the summit were determined to prove the existence of something that doesn't exist – a grand conspiracy orchestrated by the Kremlin that put Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
• 
President Trump's political opponents are behaving like a rudderless mob, void of policy ideas, and hell-bent on provoking a confrontation.
• 
President Trump, on the other hand, tried to lower the temperature and manage expectations heading into the summit and following the meeting.
• 
Trump – the businessman, negotiator, and change agent – labeled Putin a "competitor" and stated quite reasonably that he's a believer in diplomacy and meeting with world leaders.
• 
Unfortunately, it's all too clear that the left has no interest in seeing America succeed under President Trump.
• 
Hillary Clinton – still not over losing the supposedly "unlosable" election to Trump in 2016 – even attacked the president in a tweet before the summit by questioning his loyalty to the nation he is so proud to lead.
• 
Not long ago this type of vicious partisan assault on the eve of an important international meeting would have been unimaginable.
• 
Someone should ask Clinton whose side she's on – but don't hold your breath.
• 
The media won't ask tough questions of Clinton any sooner than they'll ask President Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, or former CIA Director John Brennan about why they sat back and did nothing about the Russian meddling that happened on their watch.
• 
The media steer clear of sore subjects like Hillary Clinton's failed "reset" in relations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in 2009; Obama's enhanced "flexibility" hot-mic overture to then-Russian President Sergei Medvedev in 2012; and the Uranium One controversy involving Clinton.
• 
The intellectual dishonesty coming from the left and its allies in the media is simply jaw-dropping.
• 
Right on cue, unhinged Democrats called on President Trump to cancel the summit, an absurd demand he rightly brushed aside.
• 
If the president had decided to cancel the meeting on account of the charges of Russian meddling, he would have been criticized by the same politicians for showing weakness toward Putin.
• 
Instead, in the face of unrelenting criticism, President Trump soldiered on and did what he thought was right.
• 
Few will admit it, but this is what leadership looks like; nothing fazes this president – and that's one of the reasons he was elected.
• 
Before the Trump-Putin meeting, the media focused on Russian meddling in our election like a heroin addict in need of a fix.
• 
The truth is that all the left really cares about is delegitimizing President Trump, so that's what the media focus on, ad nauseam.
• 
Now it's time for the hyperventilating to stop and for cooler heads to prevail.
• 
As a nation, we must acknowledge this necessity, take meaningful steps to stop any future outside election meddling, and move on.
• 
It's in our national interest to let President Trump focus on his agenda to Make America Great Again, and not tie him up in endless investigations responding to baseless accusations.
• 
The torrent of angry rhetoric, absurd charges and hatred directed at this president has reached a dangerous level that is harming our nation.
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Newt Gingrich: The truth about Trump, Putin, and Obama  (Fox 07/18/2018)
• 
"I have, on numerous occasions, noted our intelligence findings that Russians attempted to interfere in our elections.  Unlike previous administrations, my administration has and will continue to move aggressively to repeal any efforts – and repel – we will stop it, we will repel it – any efforts to interfere in our elections.  We're doing everything in our power to prevent Russian interference in 2018."
• 
"President Obama, along with (then-CIA Director John) Brennan and (then Director of National Intelligence James) Clapper and the whole group that you see on television now – probably getting paid a lot of money by your networks – they knew about Russia's attempt to interfere in the election in September, and they totally buried it.  And as I said, they buried it because they thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win.  It turned out it didn't happen that way.
• 
"By contrast, my administration has taken a very firm stance – it's a very firm stance – on a strong action.  We're going to take strong action to secure our election systems and the process."
• 
... the very people who have been loudest in attacking President Trump about his performance at the Helsinki summit are the people who failed to protect America from Russian meddling in 2016.
• 
The very intensity and nastiness of former CIA Director Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence Clapper is an attempt to distract attention from their failure to protect America.
• 
It was their duty in 2016 – not candidate Trump's.
• 
... the Trump administration has been far tougher on Russia than President Obama ever dreamed of being.
• 
The Trump administration is taking real actions designed to weaken Russia and force Putin to change his aggressive behavior.
• 
The Trump administration has levied tough sanctions on Russia.
• 
Also, President Trump's public lecture about Germany not buying natural gas from Russia was aimed at cutting Putin off from hard currency worth tens of billions of dollars and further weakening the Russian economy.
• 
... President Trump's efforts to get our European allies to increase their defense spending has a direct impact on Putin.  The stronger NATO is, the less maneuvering room Russia has.
• 
Where President Obama refused to provide serious weapons to the Ukrainians to help them defend themselves (his response was weakness on a pathetic scale), President Trump has approved the sale of offensive weapons to enable the Ukrainians to increase the cost of Russian aggression.
• 
When the Russians used chemical weapons in Great Britain, President Trump joined our allies and expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers from the United States.
• 
When the Russians retaliated, the Trump administration closed the Russian consulate in Seattle.  President Trump had previously shuttered the Russian consulate in San Francisco and smaller annexes in Washington and New York.
• 
More than 100 Russian individuals and companies have been sanctioned for a variety of reasons.
• 
Despite the hysteria of the left, it is impossible to see the Trump administration as anything but firm in its dealing with Russia.
• 
We are in the early stages of a cultural civil war in which the left sees itself losing.
• 
With each passing month the radical-extremist wing of the Democratic Party dominates the progressive wing more and more.
• 
... Obama-era national security officials seem determined to use the harshest possible language to attack President Trump.
• 
I think their strong words and hysteria are driven by their own guilt.
• 
Whatever the Russians did, they did while Brennan was director of the CIA, Clapper was director of national intelligence, and James Comey was head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• 
These former officials attack Trump ferociously to hide their own failure and their own guilt.
• 
Just keep that in mind the next time you see one of them on TV.
      Peter Strzok’s arrogance is the product of a corrupt FBI  (NYP 07/14/2018)
• 
Watching FBI agent Peter Strzok battle with Congress, my initial reaction was pure anger.
• 
His repeated, arrogant insistence that he had done nothing wrong despite tons of evidence to the contrary convinced me he deserved immediate firing — if not the firing squad.
• 
Gradually, though, anger gave way to amazement as Strzok grew increasingly combative and condescending.
• 
Given his predicament, the sneering and smirking were stupid, and yet he persisted.
• 
Who is this jerk, I wondered, and how in the hell did he get to be a big shot at the FBI?
• 
And why are taxpayers still paying for the privilege of his malignant presence on the FBI payroll?
• 
Strzok, whose voluminous texts with his office lover show him to be a king of partisan bias, rose to leadership positions under former FBI director Comey — and it shows. 
• 
Blinded by his own ambition, Comey brushed aside superiors, rules and maybe laws while giving Hillary Clinton a free pass and turning the screws on Donald Trump.
• 
Comey defends himself by saying he sought to protect the FBI's independence, as if it — and he — are a fourth branch of government that is beyond accountability from the other three.
• 
In the end, he disgraced the agency and himself, though gained consolation in the millions he made by selling his book to Trump haters.
• 
But the FBI didn't stink only from the head — Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, also was fired, and could be prosecuted for allegedly being dishonest with investigators about a media leak.
• 
Strzok appears to be a chip off the Comey/McCabe block.  Like them, he insists he is committed to the FBI's high standards, but his reprehensible conduct makes a mockery of his claims.
• 
His stated contempt for Trump and his promise to stop him from becoming president render Strzok unfit to be a dogcatcher.
• 
But, aping his mentors, he nonetheless demands his denials of wrongdoing be accepted as if his integrity is self-evident.
• 
All three believe they are entitled to trust and respect, without having to earn or return either.
• 
Which brings us to Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray.  How can they stomach the likes of Strzok and refuse to clean the stables?
• 
Speaking of which, breathes there a soul who believes the timing of Mueller's latest batch of ghost indictments of Russians has nothing to do with Trump's planned meeting with Vladimir Putin?
• 
The timing shows Rosenstein, who announced the charges, and Mueller are neck deep in politics by trying to force Trump to confront Putin about the meddling charges.
• 
Their decision persuades me both harbor suspicion of Trump's legitimacy, and thus feel entitled to abuse their powers to wade into issues that are none of their business.
• 
In that way, they are no better than Comey, McCabe and Strzok — applying a double standard of law enforcement based on their personal views. 
• 
Rosenstein's stonewalling conduct toward Congress over Russia-probe documents is especially suspicious.
• 
Sessions is not a real attorney general and never will be.
• 
Then there is Comey's successor, Christopher Wray.  He looks as if he wandered into the wrong movie theater and can't find the exit.
• 
He defined himself as unwilling to tackle the mess he inherited by downplaying the devastating Inspector General report on the handling of the Clinton investigation.
• 
"It's focused on a specific set of events back in 2016, and a small number of FBI employees connected with those events.  Nothing in the report impugns the integrity of our workforce as a whole, or the FBI as an institution."
• 
Baloney.  While it's true only a fraction of the total employees were singled out, they were the director of the FBI, his top deputy, the deputy's top lawyer and Strzok, the head of counterintelligence.
• 
And so the corruption of the Justice Department proceeds, unmolested by actual justice.
• 
The voter revolution of 2016 has more work to do.
      Republicans walked right into Peter Strzok's trap — Here's what they missed...  (Fox 07/13/2018)
• 
U.S.  House members proved Thursday that they are more interested in political posturing and getting on TV with fiery soundbites than in fact-finding, as they questioned FBI official Peter Strzok about whether his anti-Trump bias influenced the investigation of the Trump presidential campaign for possible collusion with Russia.
• 
... yelling, interrupting each other, and hurling insults – members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees spent almost 10 hours alternately attacking and defending Strzok, a suspended FBI deputy assistant director.
• 
The cable news networks televised the wild hearing, as Republicans led the attack on Strzok and Democrats defended him.
• 
The texts made it crystal clear that Strzok and Page despised Donald Trump and wanted Hillary Clinton to defeat him in the 2016 presidential election.
• 
In one text exchange, Page wrote to Strzok about Trump: "He's not ever going to become president, right?  Right?!" Strzok replied: "No.  No he won't.  We'll stop it."
• 
Strzok also said in a text that there was an unspecified "insurance policy" that would keep Trump out of the White House.
• 
However, he insisted vehemently and repeatedly that his personal political views had absolutely no impact on his conduct at the FBI in the investigations involving either the Trump campaign or Clinton. 
• 
These claims are unbelievable and contradicted by the facts regarding Strzok's conduct.
• 
As an FBI agent for 24 years and former chief of all FBI criminal investigations, I was disgusted by the way Strzok tried to cloak himself in the FBI and characterize attacks against him as attacks against the FBI as an institution.
• 
Strzok did his best to fuse himself to the good and dedicated men and women of the finest law enforcement agency in the world, but the truth is that his shabby conduct has done more to damage the FBI than any one person in its storied history.
• 
For all the drama, fire and fury, the House hearing shed no new light on Strzok's conduct at the FBI.
• 
The sad truth is that in the Republicans' zeal to administer a public flogging of Strzok – and by extension the FBI – the GOP House members walked right into a trap.
• 
The hearing never had a chance of uncovering the truth.
• 
This is so because Strzok enjoyed the advantage of being able to shower the committees with self-serving protestations while hiding behind the restrictions on his testimony imposed by the FBI attorney hovering behind him.
• 
Strzok understood this and exploited his opportunity to the hilt while snuggling up to the anti-Trump Democrats embracing him.
• 
The savvy Strzok cleverly outmaneuvered the Republicans on the committees.
• 
The Republican members succeeded only in turning Strzok into a Democratic hero and giving him a national audience for his emphatic denials of Republican allegations that his anti-Trump and pro-Clinton political allegiance influenced his investigations involving the two candidates.
• 
Not only did the Republican committee members fail to recognize Strzok's public relations trap.
• 
They allowed Strzok's former lover Lisa Page to delay her committee appearance – originally scheduled for Wednesday – until after she had ample opportunity to observe his televised testimony.
• 
All Page has to do now is tailor her answers to match Strzok's.
• 
Strzok is no dummy.  He was not going incriminate himself at the hearing to set himself up to be charged with obstruction of justice for improperly influencing the investigations of the Trump campaign or the Clinton emails. 
• 
It also appears that Gowdy failed to anticipate the coordinated strategy of the Democratic members to obstruct the hearing and run interference for their new hero, who they painted as a patriot and noble martyr who sacrificed his FBI career for the good of the nation.
• 
The simple and uncontroverted facts concerning Strzok's actions and expressed intent can be found in the recent report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz that was thorough and detailed.
• 
It would not be a stretch to convince a jury of 12 that Strzok's expressed intent to improperly change the course of the investigation was accompanied by actions.
• 
While Strzok's testimony was uninformative, his arrogant and smug demeanor and feigned outrage during his testimony spoke loudly to anyone who observed it objectively.
• 
Does he really think we are so gullible that we would buy his absurd claim that his "we'll stop it" text meant all of us – the American people – would act to stop Trump from becoming president?
• 
Rather than getting a platform to speak to the nation in a daylong TV performance, Strzok should be summarily dismissed from the FBI, thoroughly investigated and prosecuted if the evidence shows he has broken the law.
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: The values underlying Independence Day  (Fox 07/05/2018)
• 
The Declaration of Independence — which was signed on July 3, 1776, for public release on July 4 — was Thomas Jefferson's masterpiece.
• 
Jefferson himself wrote much about the declaration in the 50 years that followed.
• 
The idea that farmers and merchants and lawyers could secede from a kingdom and fight and win a war against the king's army was the end result of the multigenerational movement that was articulated in the declaration.
• 
The two central values of the declaration are the origins of human liberty and the legitimacy of popular government.
• 
When Jefferson wrote that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, he was referring to the natural law.
• 
The natural law teaches that right and wrong can be discerned and truth discovered by the exercise of human reason, independent of any commands from the government.
• 
The natural law also teaches that our rights come from our humanity — not from the government — and our humanity is a gift from our Creator.
• 
Even those who question or reject the existence of the Creator — was Jefferson himself among them?  — can embrace natural rights, because they can accept that our exercise of human reason leads us all to make similar claims.
• 
These claims — free speech, free association, free exercise or non-exercise of religion, self-defense, privacy, and fairness, to name a few — are rights that we all exercise without giving a second thought to the fact that they are natural and come from within us.
• 
The view of the individual as the repository of natural rights was not accepted by any governments in 1776.
• 
In fact, all rejected it and used violence to suppress it.
• 
To the minds of those in government in the mid-18th century, the king was divine and could do no wrong, and parliament existed not as the people's representatives but to help the king raise money and to give him a read on the pulse of landowners and nobility.
• 
Unlike the French, who destroyed their monarchy, the American colonists seceded from theirs — and they did so embracing natural rights.
• 
The idea that each human being possesses inherent natural rights by virtue of one's humanity is not just an academic argument.  It has real-life consequences, which Jefferson recognized. 
• 
Jefferson recognized that you can consent to the curtailment of your rights but you cannot consent to the curtailment of mine.
• 
To Jefferson, government can take away your rights without your consent only if you have violated someone else's rights.
• 
Surrendering rights is also implicated in the second radical idea that underscores the Declaration of Independence.
• 
It is the concept that no government is valid unless it enjoys the consent of the governed.
• 
This idea of consent of the governed was a serious issue in the days and years following July 4, 1776, because about one-third of the adults living in the United States in the last quarter of the 18th century remained loyal to the king of England after the Revolution, and they did not consent to the new popular form of government that took the British government's place.
• 
The new government was thrust upon them without their consent.
• 
... Jefferson argued that the greatest achievement of the declaration was its arousing men to burst free from the chains imposed upon them by superstition and myth by bringing about a recognition of their individual rights and an embrace of self-government.
• 
In Jefferson's day, the voters knew all that the government did, and it knew nothing about them.  Today government operates largely in secrecy, and it knows our every move and captures our every communication.
• 
In Jefferson's day, the government needed the people's permission to tax and regulate them.  Today the people need the government's permission to do nearly everything.
      On July Fourth, make your own Declaration of Independence — From the federal government  (Fox 07/04/2018)
• 
This Fourth of July, many Americans are spun up, protesting against President Trump with a long list of grievances – most recently his plans to appoint a conservative justice to the Supreme Court, as well as his immigration policies, his foreign policy, his trade policy, his tweeting ... his everything.
• 
Calls for the president's impeachment grow louder from the self-styled Resistance – increasingly strident folks on the left, some proudly calling themselves socialists – who act as if they are fighting a tyrannical enemy nation occupying the White House.
• 
Trump administration officials are harassed at restaurants, movie theaters and their homes.
• 
And don't forget that just a year ago, a gunman attacked Republican members of Congress at a baseball practice and severely wounded Rep.  Steve Scalise, R-La., almost taking his life.
• 
Underlying much of this angst and anger is a mistaken belief that the federal government is all that matters.  But in reality, this isn't true.
• 
Power is not all concentrated in the hands of our elected president, Congress and the federal courts.
• 
Importantly, we have state and local governments that share power as well, all led by people the voters elect.
• 
The Founding Fathers designed our system this way in the Constitution for a very important reason: liberty is elusive in a large land with a diverse population if government power is centralized and monopolized in Washington.
• 
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
• 
Some political matters require a national standard.
• 
This still leaves an enormous amount of room for Americans to seek their preferred form of government at the state level.
• 
People have rights, states have powers.  Among the powers allotted to states are the ability to tax, spend, regulate and set laws for punishing crimes.
• 
If the voters of California and New York want high taxes and big government, they may elect to do so.
• 
But if people in Texas and Florida prefer no income tax and smaller government, then that should be fine as well.
• 
More importantly, people in California and New York ought to let their fellow Americans in other states live as they wish.
• 
The left-leaning, big-government states shouldn't seek to wield the power of the national government – including its vast regulatory bureaucracy and the courts – to force other parts of the nation to live like California and New York.
• 
It is the mistaken notion of virtually limitless federal government power that has caused today's so-called Resistance to become unhinged.
• 
Similarly, the exercise of this crushing federal power provoked the fed-up reaction that boosted voter turnout for Donald Trump in the 2016 election in states that hadn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate in decades.
• 
We have a right to free speech, to practice of our religion, and to bear arms.
• 
We don't have the right to expect that taxpayer funds will be used to provide us a computer and Internet access, a place to worship, or a rifle.
• 
Similarly, we don't have a right to free food, free housing, a free college education, free health care, free cars, and more freebies supplied by the government thanks to the labor and hard-earned cash of others.
• 
Getting all these things for free may at first sound like heaven on Earth – a Bernie Sanders utopia.
• 
But if this socialist dream ever became reality, it would turn out to be a nightmare.
• 
It would send everyone's taxes soaring through the roof and create a tremendous disincentive to work – meaning taxes would have to be raised even higher on those people who still held jobs.
• 
There would be shortages of just about everything.
• 
The genius of the American system is to not leave all governmental power with the federal government.  Instead, we allow states to function as laboratories of democracy.
• 
On this Independence Day, let us resolve to turn our attention to our families, our communities, and our states, declaring independence from a distant and often unresponsive federal government.
• 
By allowing the many states room to formulate their own solutions using the democratic process, we can more readily unify into one America.
• 
We celebrate this all on Independence Day.
      Ex-Drug Czars Bill Bennett, John Walters: Mr.  Trump, please don’t legalize marijuana...  (Fox 07/03/2018)
• 
President Trump has spoken out forcefully about defeating the illegal drug problem — as powerfully as any recent president, including Ronald Reagan.
• 
Now he is urged to support marijuana legalization in the midst of the most deadly drug abuse epidemic in American history.
• 
President Trump should refuse — it's a bad deal with unsustainable consequences.
• 
Obviously, decriminalizing the sale and possession of marijuana will make the drug more available and increase use.
• 
First and foremost, marijuana is already associated with more abuse and dependency (now called substance abuse disorder) than all other illegal drugs combined.
• 
Last year more Coloradans died from drug overdoses than at any time in the state's history.  The cruel "Colorado experiment" has failed.
• 
"The adverse effects of marijuana have been well documented" and include "impaired short-term memory, decreased concentration, attention span, and problem solving" which "interfere[s] with learning."
• 
"Regular cannabis use in adolescence approximately doubles the risks of early school-leaving and of cognitive impairment and psychoses in adulthood."
• 
"Persistent adolescent-onset cannabis users" showed "an average 8-point IQ decline from childhood to adulthood."
• 
Marijuana use can permanently lower intelligence and worsen, perhaps cause, serious mental illness.
• 
"There is little doubt about the existence of an association between substance use and psychotic illness...studies suggest that the association between cannabis use and later psychosis might be causal, a conclusion supported by studies showing that cannabis use is associated with an earlier age at onset of psychotic disorders, particularly schizophrenia."
• 
The science warns that marijuana use makes you less intelligent and can bring on serious mental illness.
• 
There is no known, safe level of marijuana use.  And the highly concentrated forms of cannabis brought to the market in recent years, probably increase all the known harms of marijuana use.
• 
Finally, marijuana is the gateway to greater drug use and for more and more Americans that means early death.
• 
Not all marijuana users turn to opioids, cocaine, meth, and other drugs of abuse, but many of them do and each year, tens of thousands of those who move on to other drugs die of overdoses.
• 
The President should forcefully reject marijuana legalization.
• 
He should direct his staff to get the facts out and push back against the ignorance that risks turning our drug policy into one of the worst self-inflicted wounds in American history.
      The Left needs to face reality: Trump is winning  (NYP 06/30/2018)
• 
To understand the madness gripping American leftists, try to see the world through their eyes.
• 
Like the Palestinians who mark Israel's birth as their nakba, or tragedy, you regard Donald Trump's 2016 victory as a catastrophe.
• 
It's the last thing you think of most nights, and the first thing most mornings.
• 
You can't shake it or escape it.  Whatever you watch, listen to or read, there are reminders — Donald Trump really is president.
• 
And where the hell is Robert Mueller?  He was supposed to save us from this nightmare — that's what Chuck Schumer banked on.  Well?
• 
You spend your tax cut even as you rail against the man who made it happen.
• 
And you are pleased that cousin Jimmy finally got a job, though you repeat the daily devotional that Barack Obama deserves credit for the roaring economy.
• 
And now this — Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring, and Trump gets another Supreme Court pick.
• 
The court might tilt right for the rest of your life.  He's winning.
• 
In a nutshell, our visit to the tortured mind of a Trump hater explains everything from Saturday's mass marches to why a Virginia restaurant owner declared No Soup for Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
• 
Their loathing for Trump is bone-deep and all-consuming.  This is war and they take no prisoners.
• 
For most marchers, border policies offer a chance to vent.  They didn't make a peep when Obama did the same thing.
• 
If children are their main concern, they could help the 23,000 New York City kids living in shelters.
• 
Or they could have attended the funeral of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, the innocent Bronx teen hacked to death by a Dominican gang.
• 
Instead, they give in to Trump Derangement Syndrome, which causes them to immediately and absolutely adopt the opposite position of the president's — facts and common sense be damned.
• 
One survey showed most Americans were not nearly as sympathetic to the illegal border crossers as the media.
• 
"I think it's terrible about the kids getting split up from their parents.  But the parents shouldn't have been here."
• 
... two Supreme Court rulings that favored Trump.  The first upheld his revised travel ban for a handful of Muslim-majority nations, saying it was within his ­executive authority.
• 
It rebuked lower-court judges who bought the partisan canard that it was a "Muslim ban."
• 
Their invalid rulings stood in stark contrast to plain readings of the law and show them to be hacks blowing with the political wind.
• 
The second ruling, which blocks municipal unions from forcing workers to pay dues, is a tax cut for workers who opt out...
• 
... the travel-ban case upheld broad presidential authority on national security, and the union ruling was among several supporting First Amendment rights of individuals against government infringement.
• 
Rulings like these have long-term cultural and political impacts and explain why Supreme Court appointments can have an outsize influence on a president's legacy.
• 
A second pick in the Gorsuch mold would secure a majority on the court for curbing government's appetite for more domestic power, perhaps for decades.
• 
And that could do something extraordinary for Trump's legacy.
• 
All else being stable, putting the Supreme Court on an enduring constitutional footing would make his presidency one of the most consequential of any age.
• 
See related Now You Know (Gary Varvel, 02/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Border Patrol Agent: Trump's wall is the best way to end to the humanitarian crisis...  (Fox 06/29/2018)
• 
If Democrats and the media elite truly cared about the safety of illegal immigrants, they'd be down on the border right now working to build the wall President Trump wants America to have.
• 
As a veteran Border Patrol agent, I know firsthand that a secure border with the big beautiful wall the president is building is the only humane and permanent solution to the crisis at the border. 
• 
Despite Democratic obstruction, President Trump is building the wall now, and he will play hardball with Congress to ensure that the necessary funding to complete the wall is secured.  Without a completed wall, thousands of illegal immigrants will continue to put their lives at risk.
• 
As long as people think they can cross the border illegally, they will continue to try.
• 
The journey is dangerous enough due to the natural conditions alone. 
• 
But those who try to cross our southern border illegally are subject to much worse than just the elements – they are at the mercy of brutal criminal gangs.  ... They care little for the lives of their human cargo.
• 
The coyotes' control of human smuggling across the border results in routine violence, theft, and death, as well as the widespread rape of Central and South American women and girls.
• 
In addition to discouraging illegal border crossings and protecting desperate migrants from violence, rape and death, securing the border will save American taxpayers vast amounts of money.
• 
It will also free up the resources necessary to expedite legal immigration and review the ever-growing backlog of asylum claims.
• 
According to a 2017 study, the presence of illegal immigrants and their 4.2 million kids costs Americans roughly $135 billion in taxes at the federal, state, and local levels.
• 
President Trump is only requesting an additional $25 billion to complete his border wall – a one-time cost that is minor compared to the cost of illegal immigration.
• 
Building the wall will also solve the family separation issue.  If families can't enter illegally, then they won't be separated while the adults await trial and sentencing.
• 
A wall would also funnel legitimate asylum seekers to proper ports of entry.  True asylum seekers have no need to cross the border illegally.
• 
Securing the border once and for all won't just protect desperate migrants from harm and save Americans money – it will also protect Americans from harm.
• 
Finally, there is also the terror threat.  Border Patrol agents routinely apprehend Middle Eastern suspects trying to enter America illegally. 
• 
The closer President Trump's wall comes to completion, the closer we get to end the humanitarian crisis caused by our porous southern border.
• 
The Democrats' dream of open borders and their unrelenting opposition to securing our border hurts the people they claim to care about the most.
      Supreme Court’s travel ban decision sends an incredible  (and clear) message to lower federal court judges (Fox 06/27/2018)
• 
... – don't get too big for your britches.
• 
Ruling in Trump v.  Hawaii, the high court upheld the travel ban in its entirety, reversing lower courts that had seemed to join the Trump Resistance.
• 
President Trump's travel ban, aimed at countries that failed to provide the information necessary to properly vet travelers to the U.S., was twice revised to satisfy judges who second-guessed the president's statutory authority and concluded that the ban was intended to discriminate against Muslims.
• 
The third and final version of the ban, upheld Tuesday, limits travel from seven countries: North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
• 
... found that the relevant statute "vests the President with ample power" to enact the ban.
• 
Moreover, the list of nations included in the ban "does not support an inference of religious hostility, given that the policy covers just 8 percent of the world's Muslim population and is limited to countries that were previously designated by Congress or prior administrations as posing national security risks."
• 
... the question of whether the district court below exceeded its authority by issuing a court order with universal scope, covering all affected foreigners regardless of whether they had any connection to the plaintiffs – the state of Hawaii, the Muslim Association of Hawaii, and three people whose foreign relatives were affected by the ban.
• 
... Thomas wrote a separate concurring opinion to address the issue of universal injunctions – also called "nationwide" or "national" injunctions – which by definition prohibit the enforcement of a federal law against everyone, rather than just the plaintiffs before the court.
• 
Thomas noted that such court orders "have exploded in popularity" recently and "are legally and historically dubious."
• 
As Thomas pointed out, these "injunctions are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system – preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch."
• 
Universal injunctions are also undemocratic, allowing a single unelected U.S.  District Court judge to set policy for the entire nation.
• 
"For most of our history, courts understood judicial power as fundamentally the power to render judgments in individual cases.  They did not believe that courts could make federal policy," Justice Thomas said in his concurring opinion.
• 
In the age of judicial activism, making policy has become very tempting for certain judges.
• 
The result is to politicize the judiciary and erode the vital principle of an impartial judiciary.
• 
... Justice Thomas reminded us: "Misuses of judicial power, [Alexander] Hamilton reassured the people of New York, could not threaten 'the general liberty of the people' because courts, at most, adjudicate the rights of 'individual[s].'"
• 
... power is as intoxicating for lower court judges as for anyone else, and being part of the Resistance is very fashionable in San Francisco, Hawaii and the like.
• 
... "If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality." A solution might also come from Congress, which could enact a law setting limits on the practice.
• 
While the Supreme Court's travel ban decision increases the cries of those who believe President Trump is a threat to democracy, the real threat to democracy posed by universal injunctions awaits a solution.
      Brit Hume: Maxine Waters needs to keep a civil tongue and so do we all  (Fox 06/26/2018)
• 
When Democratic Rep.  Maxine Waters next rises to speak on the House floor, she will be recognized as "The gentle lady from California."
• 
Never mind that she may not be many people's idea of gentle or a lady.
• 
Quaint as they seem in this rough-and-tumble age, there is a reason for such customs.
• 
They spring from a recognition that political disagreement can quickly become personal and debate can devolve into barbarous language and even behavior.
• 
President Trump himself has certainly contributed heavily to the current poisonous atmosphere, speaking of his opponents in the crudest language and finding no slight too minor to merit a bruising response.
• 
But the refusal of his critics to make peace with the reality that he is president has been equally at fault.
• 
We are now at a point where even members of the president's staff and Cabinet are being run out of restaurants and harassed at their homes.
• 
The gentle lady from California is encouraging flash mobs to gather to torment members of the administration whenever they are seen in public. 
• 
There is a cycle in all of this.  President Trump says or tweets something with characteristic imprecision or exaggeration.
• 
His opponents react by interpreting it in the most extreme possible way and reacting accordingly.
• 
We need to draw back from this place.
• 
One way would be to recognize the wisdom in what's probably the greatest self-help book ever written: "The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous."
• 
In America today, the book's elaboration on Step 10 practically cries out to be followed: "Nothing pays off like restraint of pen and tongue."
      Red Hen teaches Sarah Huckabee Sanders that Virginia is for PC bullies [not for lovers]  (Fox 06/24/2018)
• 
Virginia is for lovers of political correctness, as we learned this weekend when White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was thrown out of The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, on Friday night.
• 
The restaurant's owner sanctimoniously declared the establishment has to uphold "certain standards."
• 
Evidently she means the standard of resisting President Trump, by refusing to serve ... to an employee of the man they loathe because they're "tolerant," or something like that.
• 
This political correctness is quickly approaching dangerous and irrational levels the likes of which we've never witnessed before.
• 
In the age of social media anyone can seize an opportunity to publicly take a stand against President Trump, and know that it could easily become national news and give them their 15 minutes of fame in the process.
• 
The staff at The Red Hen knew if they asked Sanders to leave they'd get national news coverage.
• 
Shortly afterward employees were lighting up Twitter with tales of how their boss gave Sarah the boot, on moral grounds of course.
• 
This quest for media attention is becoming all too common, and as it does, we continue to see people cross the line in potentially dangerous ways.
• 
Just last week Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was harassed while eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant near the White House by the Democratic Socialists of America.
• 
They were upset over the administration's immigration policy - a policy that was also the law on the books during the Obama years, but his Cabinet secretaries didn't get chased out of restaurants following screams and chants and f-bombs.
• 
Perhaps we have celebrities like Robert De Niro, Samantha Bee, Michelle Wolf, and Peter Fonda to thank for leading the leftist mob down this road to what is approaching near anarchy.
• 
The PC liberals in this country increasingly seem to believe that they can bully their way to public policy goals.
• 
Celebrities instigate the behavior, the far left mimics the behavior, and the media enables it all.
• 
The result is the public now thinks this is the new normal.
• 
It is not normal.  It is dangerous.
• 
Today, many are just looking to put politically correct points on the board, and prefer to seek out publicity for their business through divisive political statements.
• 
Accustomed to always being the adult in the room, Sanders left The Red Hen without a scene, and later tweeted "Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left.  Her actions say far more about her than about me.  I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so."
• 
You won't see Sanders kicking anyone out of the briefing room to uphold certain standards, though many would call her justified if she did.
• 
And you won't find her on Twitter calling anyone four letter words, or calling for the public beating of another human.
• 
Those who claim to represent "certain standards"- including tolerance and inclusiveness - should stand up and take notice.
• 
This is what it looks like.
• 
See related Love Trumps Hate (Sean Delonas, 11/10/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      The cynical use of kids to break our hearts and our borders  (INN 06/19/2018)
• 
... we're really talking about ILLEGAL immigration (50,000 each month) and unaccompanied alien children showing up by the thousands in search of asylum.
• 
... the word's gone out that the way to get into America is by using your kids as fodder for sympathy.
• 
May someone suggest that this is more than cynical, but child abuse.
• 
For this is precisely a trend being waged shrewdly by people who'd rather skip entry and citizenship formalities, when storming the border is so much quicker.
• 
Not only that, but Democrats and Republicans will seek measures to let you stay, through amnesty or other means, the rule of law be damned.
• 
That's pretty much where we are at the moment as competing bills are being Introduced in Congress, all or most in favor of those who infiltrated with kids as props.
• 
People everywhere, in seems, have learned to play on our heartstrings.  No doubt plenty of these asylum seekers are legitimate.  But others are not, their claims quite dubious.
• 
... there's been a 314 percent rise in fraudulent claims as to strangers averring to be parents.
• 
That story, the human trafficking, does not make the news because the media, as we expose here, has a particular story to tell, and whatever does not fit gets tossed.
• 
Does everyone in the world have a right to come to America – and stay?
• 
Yes, say politicians from both sides of the aisle.  No, says Trump.
• 
"The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility.  Not on my watch.  Look what's happening in Europe."
• 
He's urging Democrats to stop obstructing, but rather "come to the table" to work out legislation that "protects our borders."
• 
Yes, Europe, a continent without borders that's been deluged by migrants who've turned the place unrecognizable — thanks to Merkel.
• 
The rape epidemic is through the roof.
• 
Does America want this?  Mid-term elections are coming, so we'll know soon enough.
      De Niro's crude attack on Trump proves liberals are beside themselves that he keeps winning  (Fox 06/12/2018)
• 
Courtesy of actor Robert De Niro, we finally have an admission that the Trump-hater agenda has moved from stupid "resisting" to mindless rage.
• 
Gone is any pretense that President Trump's opponents are genuinely concerned about policy or about the condition of the country.
• 
... the moment De Niro got to the microphone he attacked President Trump, using a vulgar invective favored by juvenile bullies.
• 
Said on the eve of the Singapore summit, who knew that President Trump working for world peace would so infuriate De Niro?
• 
De Niro's outburst illustrates why the blind and irrational hatred of the president that has infected some on the left is called "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
• 
The crowd cheered De Niro's obscene comment, with what appeared to be half of the audience giving the insult a standing ovation.
• 
When De Niro declared the effort to "dump" Trump was over, and now the mission was simply to f* him, it was an admission that the only thing that matters now is to harm the president and his agenda.
• 
It was also a direct insult to everyone who voted for President Trump – the very people those invested in Broadway want to buy tickets.
• 
"Dear Broadway, There are lots of families who voted for Trump who save to take their kids or wives to see stage productions either traveling to NYC or when the productions come to their hometown – they are your bread & butter.  I don't think you understand that you're losing them."
• 
... initial opportunistic braying of the left centered on claims that President Trump is an idiot, would destroy the economy, and would start World War III.
• 
Then we found out not that none of those things are true.
• 
Now with everything we know, when someone goes off unhinged like De Niro, the rage is inexplicable and evokes suspicion.
• 
An actor tells us it's time to f** Trump because the economy is blossoming?  Because unemployment is at historic lows?  Because wages are increasing?
• 
Because ISIS is smashed?  Because the leader of North Korea signed an agreement Tuesday after meeting with President Trump pledging to work toward the "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula?"
• 
One can imagine the conversation in family rooms, other than in Malibu and Manhattan, as the Broadway crowd stood to applaud the tirade.
• 
Could some people actually want bad things to happen to Americans simply because they hate President Trump?
• 
... Maher told his audience he was hoping for another recession, because "one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy.  So please, bring on the recession.  Sorry if that hurts people but it's either root for a recession or you lose your democracy.  ... I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point."
• 
Maher is "sorry if that hurts people." Coming from a man who some reports indicate makes at least $10 million a year, we know a recession certainly wouldn't hurt him.
• 
FunTrendsUSA snapped back that President Trump "deserves to be cursed, disrespected & impeached.  Look at what he's doing to this country!"
• 
"Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it's offensive to many of us to hear that kind of language on live tv.  And I'm not sure what he's doing so terrible since unemployment is lowest in 50 years & black and Hispanic unemployment lowest in history."
• 
Logic, reason, and facts will best mindless rage every time.  They also guarantee another Trump victory in 2020.
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Last Movie (Mike Lester, 01/07/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Jordan Peterson And The Left-Wing Smear Machine  (HotAir 05/25/2018)
• 
If you follow the news stream, it seems that virtually every right-thinking left-leaning (pun intended) journalist, blogger, and social media maven agrees: Peterson is an alt-right wolf in professorial sheep's clothing, a self-serving charlatan who dresses up old-school misogyny, racism, and elitism in faux-intellectual, fascist mystical garb.
• 
I don't buy it.  I've read and listened to enough Peterson to make up my own mind and that's not how I see him at all. 
• 
The hyperbolic uniformity of the leftist attack on Peterson is emblematic of the growing tendency to reduce left-of-center thought to the status of a rigidly simplistic ideology.
• 
The left isn't listening to Jordan Peterson, they're just trying to destroy him as efficiently and quickly as possible.
• 
That dynamic says a lot about the left, none of it very good.
• 
... I've seen the left's scorched-earth playbook in action before and it usually succeeds.
• 
Throw enough garbage at the wall and eventually, a few bits stick.
• 
Those become all the excuse a compliant media needs to silence the target.
      Former Obama officials form anti-Trump national security think tank  (Fox 03/11/2018)
• 
"National Security Action is dedicated to advancing American global leadership and opposing the reckless policies of the Trump administration that endanger our national security and undermine U.S.  strength in the world."
• 
National Security Action plans to pursue typical liberal foreign policy themes such as climate change, challenging President Trump's leadership, immigration and allegations of corruption between the president and foreign powers.
• 
This organization uses the acronym NSA, which is ironic.
• 
Three of its founding members – Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice and Samantha Power – likely were involved in abusing intelligence from the federal NSA (National Security Agency) to unmask the names of Trump campaign staff from intelligence reports and to leak NSA intercepts to the media to hurt Donald Trump politically. 
• 
Given the likely involvement of Rhodes, Rice and Power to weaponize intelligence against the Trump presidential campaign, will their anti-Trump NSA issue an apology for these abuses?
• 
It is interesting that the new anti-Trump group says nothing in its mandate about protecting the privacy of Americans from illegal surveillance, preventing the politicization of U.S.  intelligence agencies or promoting aggressive intelligence oversight.
• 
Maybe this is because the founders plan to abuse U.S.  intelligence agencies to spy on Republican lawmakers and candidates if they join a future Democratic administration.
• 
It takes a lot of chutzpah for this group of former Obama officials, who were part of the worst U.S.  foreign policy in history, to condemn the current president's successful international leadership and foreign policy.
• 
After all, ISIS was born on President Obama's watch because of his mismanagement of the U.S.  withdrawal from Iraq and his "leading from behind" Middle East policy.
• 
The Syrian civil war spun out of control because of the incompetence of President Obama and his national security team.
• 
This was a team that provided false information to the American people about the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S.  consulate in Benghazi and the nuclear deal with Iran.
• 
And of course there's the North Korean nuclear and missile programs that surged during the Obama years due to the administration's "Strategic Patience" policy, an approach designed to kick this problem down the road to the next president.
• 
Because of President Obama's incompetence, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un may have an H-bomb that he soon will be able to load onto an intercontinental ballistic missile to attack the United States.
• 
It must appall this group of former Obama national security officials that President Trump is succeeding as he undoes everything they worked on.
• 
ISIS will soon control no territory in Iraq or Syria because of the Trump administration's intensified attacks on it and arming of Kurdish militias.
• 
In sharp contrast to President Obama, President Trump drew a chemical weapons red line in Syria and enforced it.
• 
North Korea is pushing for talks with the U.S.  in response to strong United Nations sanctions the U.S.  worked to obtain in 2017. 
• 
President Trump repaired the damage done to U.S.-Israel relations by President Obama and has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – something several previous presidents promised but failed to do.
• 
Iranian harassment of U.S.  ships in the Persian Gulf stopped in 2017, likely due to the more assertive Iran policy of President Trump.
• 
President Trump is right when he says he inherited a mess on national security from the Obama administration.
• 
This is because President Obama and his national security team undermined U.S.  credibility and left President Trump a much more dangerous world.
      Harvard gives Hillary Clinton award for 'transforming society' — even when you lose...  (Fox 05/29/2018)
• 
The prestigious Ivy League university is giving the woman who ran for president and lost, twice, an award for transforming society.
• 
If "transformative impact" and Hillary Clinton in the same sentence has you shaking your head, you're not alone.
• 
She not only lost the presidency twice, she has wasted the last year and a half going on tour around the world to blame America for not electing her in 2016.
• 
It's no wonder President Obama made her Secretary of State when he was elected in 2008 – after beating her in the primary that everyone expected her to walk away with.
• 
Clearly he knew the best way to keep her quiet was to keep her close.
• 
Let's be real, this is Harvard, arguably one of the most liberal universities in the country.
• 
Hillary isn't being rewarded for transforming anything.  She's being rewarded because they agree with her that it was her turn in 2016 and the country got it wrong - Donald Trump should not be president.
• 
Even though he's the one who's really having the transformative impact on society.
• 
While she may not have transformed society the way Harvard is crediting her with, she has impacted and transformed the post-election cycle by turning it into a serial campaign instead of gracefully fading into the background like most dignified losers.
• 
Instead of cutting her losses and moving on, she's traveling the world making sure everyone knows it's not her fault she lost.
• 
She has an excuse for everything and everything has an excuse.  Blame and belligerence are the name of her game.
• 
A year and a half after losing the election, Democrats are still trying, without a shred of evidence, to accuse President Trump of colluding with the Russians during the campaign.
• 
Not only is there no sign of collusion with the Trump campaign and the Russians, but many signs point to an evident conspiracy among law enforcement and intelligence communities to ensure Hillary won the White House.
• 
It's nice that she can laugh and make jokes given that it looks as though unprecedented (and likely illegal) efforts were made by officials in the Obama administration to try to get her elected – and she still lost.
• 
Harvard's idea of what constitutes a transformative impact is likely very different than what most of the country considers that term to mean.
• 
... yes she's been transformative and impactful.  Just not in a way that helps move women forward, but instead sets us back decades.
      Tinker, Tailor, Clapper, Carter, Downer, Halper, Spy  (JWR 05/28/2018)
• 
... most persons paying attention now realize, the investigation into foreign interference with the 2016 election was created as a cover for domestic interference with the 2016 election.
• 
It was run at the highest (or deepest) Deep State levels by the likes of James Clapper and John Brennan, whose frantic and hysterical Tweets are like no utterances of any CIA director in history.
• 
If you were truly interested in an "independent" Special Counsel, why would you appoint Robert Mueller?
• 
He's a lifetime insider and the most connected man in Washington - a longtime FBI Director, and Assistant Attorney-General and acting Deputy Attorney-General at the Department of Justice.
• 
His most obvious defect as an "independent" counsel is, in fact, his principal value to the likes of Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein: He knows, personally, almost every one in the tight little coterie of discredited upper-echelon officials, and he has a deep institutional loyalty to bodies whose contemporary character he helped create.
• 
In other words, he's the perfect guy to protect those institutions.
• 
There were two investigations into presidential candidates during the 2016 election.  But ... these two investigations were not the same.
• 
The Clinton "matter" was a criminal investigation — because there was credible evidence that Hillary had committed criminal acts.
• 
The FBI had no such clear-cut goods on Trump.  So they had to find something else.
• 
The scandal is that the FBI, lacking the incriminating evidence needed to justify opening a criminal investigation of the Trump campaign, decided to open a counterintelligence investigation.
• 
With the blessing of the Obama White House, they took the powers that enable our government to spy on foreign adversaries and used them to spy on Americans — Americans who just happened to be their political adversaries.
• 
And the advantage of a "counterintelligence investigation", unlike a criminal investigation, is that everything in it is "classified".
• 
It's a brazen, audacious scheme, and unlikely to have been loosed without the approval, however discreetly stated, of the then President.
• 
Occam's Razor suggests that the man running the operation was the CIA's John Brennan through the "inter-agency taskforce" that met at Langley.
• 
The best way to turn nothing into something is to plant it somewhere far away and wait for it to work its way back to you.
• 
It all went brilliantly — except for one tiny detail: Hillary managed to do the impossible and lose. 
• 
... for Brennan and Comey and McCabe and Strzok and the others on this side of the Atlantic in the third week of January, it wasn't quite that simple.
• 
Because, instead of protecting Hillary, they were now protecting themselves - so it was necessary to dig in and double-down on the "Russia investigation".
• 
Which sounds super-credible except for one small point: there was never a Russia investigation.
• 
"Opening up a counterintelligence investigation against Russia is not the same thing as opening up a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign."
• 
Which is what they did - Brennan and Clapper and Comey and McCabe.
• 
They took tools designed to combat America's foreign enemies and used them against their own citizens and their political opposition.
• 
It was an intentional subversion of the electoral process conducted at the highest level by agencies with almost unlimited power.
• 
And, if they get away with it, they will do it again, and again and again.
• 
That's what Brennan's telling us on Twitter...  "Yeah?  So what?  Whatcha gonna do about it?"
• 
Good question.
      Why do people become killers?  There are only three reasons — Here they are  (Fox 05/26/2018)
• 
I ... know precisely why this latest killer did what he did.
• 
And I also know what will motivate the next killer to act in a similar way.
• 
You might think there are a million reasons why someone would commit a murder, but there are only three possibilities.
• 
At least one of these three motives is the driving force behind every homicide, theft, burglary and robbery.
• 
In fact, these three motives lie at the heart of every conceivable crime or misdeed.
• 
Human misbehavior is motivated by: financial greed, sexual – or relational – lust, and the pursuit of power.
• 
The notorious gang, MS-13, inadvertently confirmed these three motives when leaders chose the motto for their criminal organization: Kill, Steal, Rape, Control.
• 
All murders (kill) are motivated by financial greed (steal), sexual lust (rape) or the pursuit of power (control).  Sometimes only one of these motives is the driving force behind a crime.  Sometimes two or more are involved.
• 
Since only three motives lie behind school shootings like the ones we've seen recently, I sadly expect to see more shootings in the future.
• 
Unless we, as a nation, are willing to embrace and promote a worldview that helps us understand the proper role of money and financial stewardship, promotes sexual purity and restraint, and helps us place the needs of others ahead of our own desires, we can expect more of the same.
• 
Those restorative values may sound familiar to you; they used to be part of our collective heritage and our common worldview.
• 
They are also our last and greatest hope if we ever expect to minimize and contain the only three reasons anyone commits a crime.
      Tomi Lahren on New NFL Anthem Policy: Americans Used Their Remotes and Made a Difference  (Fox 05/24/2018)
• 
It took them a solid two years to do it but, alas, the NFL owners approved a new national anthem policy that requires all players on the field to stand.
• 
Yeah, they can still pout in the locker room till their heart's content.
• 
But at least we proud Americans don't have to watch them disrespect our country on the field anymore!
• 
Now I know that the kneelers and their defenders say, "it's free speech!" Well, not so fast.
• 
The field is a place of work for football players, a place of work where they make millions of dollars, yet somehow feel oppressed.
• 
The NFL, as an employer, has every right to require players in uniform to respect the flag and national anthem.
• 
Football is a job.  Yeah, they can still kneel, protest, pout and peaceably assemble on their own time — but NOT at work.
• 
Do you get to protest at your place of work?  Probably not.
• 
Private companies get to dictate how their employees behave at work.  That's just the way it is.
• 
It's not about politics.  It's not about the president, the political parties, black versus white or left versus right.
• 
It's about coming together as Americans with all our scars, our blessings, our families and our love of country.
• 
That sentiment was hijacked when certain players decided to make it political.
• 
That flag and that anthem might be just a piece of cloth and a song to some but, to others, it's the symbol of freedom and sacrifice.
• 
I love the First Amendment and I encourage these players to use their platforms to influence change, raise awareness or whatever it is they are trying to do.
• 
I'm just happy these divisive and disrespectful tantrums are no longer endorsed and applauded by the NFL.
• 
See related Taking a Knee (Glenn McCoy, 09/25/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Will Starbucks become America's largest chain of homeless shelters?  (Fox 05/23/2018)
• 
When two young African-American men were arrested in April when they allegedly refused to leave a Philadelphia Starbucks after being told they couldn't use a restroom because they hadn't purchased anything.
• 
The assumption – never backed up with any evidence – was that the two men were targeted because they are black, and that two white men behaving in exactly the same manner would have been allowed to go to the restroom without incident and stay in the cafe without buying anything.
• 
Finding itself in a hole, Starbucks' management, which has a long history of supporting left-wing causes, decided to bow to political correctness, defy common sense and dig itself a deeper hole.
• 
When the Philadelphia kerfuffle finally died down, Starbucks issued a new policy on "non-paying customers" (how can you be a customer without buying anything?) that is intellectually incoherent.
• 
Starbucks said that under its new policy, it will allow anyone to spend time in its stores and use restrooms regardless of whether they make a purchase.
• 
... that policy "attracted some support" but "also drew complaints that cafes wouldn't have enough seats for paying customers and would turn into homeless shelters and drug havens."
• 
Starbucks management justified its bizarre decision to turn its stores into public facilities where anyone can spend time without buying anything by referring to itself a "third place" – borrowing a term from contemporary left-wing sociology.
• 
But trendy terminology can't hide the fact that Starbucks is a business.  It's not public library, park or beach.
• 
If it doesn't make money by selling beverages and food, it will cease to be a place for anyone.
• 
And as a business, Starbucks may soon find its customers don't really enjoy sharing their space with transients – nor will they enjoy not being to find a table because some hipster has taken it and is using Starbucks' free Wi-Fi to turn the table into his own office.
• 
... new policy, announced in a letter to its employees, states that "any person who enters our spaces, including patios, cafes and restrooms, regardless of whether they make a purchase, is considered a customer."
• 
But that's as crazy as saying that any person who enters my house, whether or not they are related to me, is considered to be a member of my family.
• 
It's as nutty as saying that any people who enter my country, whether or not they are here legally, are considered to be Americans.
• 
In most cases, when customers are asked to leave a store they comply, even if they believe the request is unwarranted.
• 
At one level incidents like the one at the Philadelphia Starbucks are minor affairs that are ginned up into major crises by the left-wing outrage machine.
• 
On the other hand, Starbucks' decision throw open its doors to non-customers to use as public gathering places shows just how far things can go when a company decides that placating social justice warriors is more important than satisfying customers.
• 
While its actions may have bought off the mob for now, Starbucks may find soon that its customers don't want to be served coffee in a politically correct corporate homeless shelter.
      Is Teen Vogue turning Karl Marx into its next teen idol?  (Fox 05/15/2018)
• 
... praises the communist scholar's critique of the shortcomings of capitalism, but says nothing about the much greater shortcomings of communism.
• 
... not how he inspired Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, and Cambodian dictator Pol Pot to murder at least 65 million people combined.
• 
"While you may not necessarily identify as a Marxist, socialist, or communist, you can still use Karl Marx's ideas to use history and class struggles to better understand how the current sociopolitical climate in America came to be."
• 
How did the current intellectual climate in America come to be, making it possible for a grotesque piece of communist propaganda like this to wind up in – of all places – Teen Vogue, a magazine targeted to an audience of teenage girls?
• 
What happened is that the fall of the Soviet Union did not signal the end of the Cold War.
• 
On the contrary, the struggle between freedom and communism has merely shifted its battlefield.
• 
Instead of being fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the mountains of Latin America, the fight against communism is being waged here at home, in our colleges and universities, and in the media – now including Teen Vogue.
• 
In this case, the communist assault on freedom isn't being driven by state powers like Russia or China.  They gave up on Karl Marx a long time ago.
• 
Instead, communist propaganda is being promoted by radical students, professors and their media allies.
• 
They are using Marx and Lenin to put the American experiment on trial.
• 
And they want to recruit our children as their fellow judges, juries and executioners.
• 
On the other side are the rest of us, who have to fight back so that this new Cold War is not over before we know it.
• 
For 50 years ... the goal has been the same: to "abolish the present state of things" (in Marx's words) and to impose "the most radical rupture in traditional relations."
• 
A recent survey of college course syllabi found that Marx is the most taught economist on American colleges today.
• 
What's appealing about Marx to college radicals is what drew Lenin, Mao and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to Marx in the first place: his apocalyptic vision of revolution summarized in his book "The German Ideology."
• 
In that book, Marx wrote about the "day of judgment" for the capitalist bourgeoisie, "when the reflection of burning cities is reflected in the heavens ... and inflamed masses scream ... and self-interest is hanged on the lamppost."
• 
Marx's Russian disciple Lenin then added a provocative twist: the idea that a dedicated and ruthless elite can pull off that revolution if society doesn't move fast enough.
• 
What we are seeing on college campuses and even high schools today is the creation of a proto-totalitarian state.
• 
Its adherents hope this will be the model for a new America where everything – even our most intimate relations – will be judged from a leftist perspective.
• 
America won the Cold War and defeated the contagion of communism overseas.
• 
But now the contagion has spread and taken root here.
• 
The ghosts of the 65 million victims of communism are calling out to us to do something, before it is too late.
      Collusion is usually a dirty word.  So where's the outrage over Kerry's secret meetings on the Iran deal?  (Fox 05/11/2018)
• 
Democrats routinely express outrage over claims of collusion with a foreign power to undermine our democracy.
• 
So where is the outrage over revelations that former secretary of state John Kerry held not one but two secret meetings with Iran's foreign minister to strategize over how to undermine President Trump's plans to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal?
• 
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the meetings after the Boston Globe broke the news, declaring, "We don't see the U.S.  just as Mr.  Trump; the United States is not just the current ruling administration."
• 
Think about what this means.  Iran is a terrorist state responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq, whose leaders hold rallies where thousands chant "Death to America!"
• 
Kerry was working with a sworn enemy of the United States to try to undermine the foreign policy of the elected president of the United States.
• 
I thought we didn't like Americans who colluded with our enemies.
• 
"Any citizen of the United States ... who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government ... with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government ... in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."
• 
Although what Kerry did was probably not illegal, it was deeply hypocritical.
• 
Recall that in 2015, when Sen.  Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and 46 other Republicans wrote to Iran's leaders informing them of the Senate's constitutional role in approving international agreements, Kerry was incensed.
• 
"My reaction to the letter was utter disbelief.  To write leaders in the middle of a negotiation ... is quite stunning ... [and] ignores more than two centuries of precedent in the conduct of American foreign policy," Kerry said, adding that he would never have interfered in that way "no matter what the issue and no matter who was president."
• 
What a difference three years make.
• 
Cotton is a sitting United States senator.  The Senate has a constitutional role in foreign policy.  Kerry is a private citizen.
• 
He has a constitutional role in nothing.
• 
Kerry would not have had to resort to rogue diplomacy if he had negotiated a better deal.
• 
The agreement he struck could not even muster the support of a simple majority in the Senate, much less the two-thirds majority needed to ratify a treaty.
• 
... the Obama administration "made a bad deal with Iran without support from Congress.  ... American foreign policy makes lasting progress when it is led by the President, approved by Congress, and presented honestly to the American people."
• 
Kerry has no one to blame but himself for Trump's decision to withdraw.
• 
And he certainly has no business colluding with America's enemies against America's president.
      Victoria Toensing: Senate should defend constitutional powers of Trump — not Mueller  (Fox 05/10/2018)
• 
... Mueller's use of a subpoena to require testimony by the president would violate the separation of powers in the Constitution and is an abuse of the grand jury process.
• 
In addition, Mueller's proposed questions for President Trump in the special counsel's wide-ranging investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election would violate Article II of the Constitution and executive privilege.
• 
Here's a simple fact that Mueller chooses to ignore: A sitting president cannot be indicted.
• 
This fact cuts the legs out from under Mueller's efforts to require testimony by President Trump.
• 
Because the president is "selected in a highly complex nationwide effort," ... it would be "incongruous" to "bring him down ... by a jury of twelve, selected by chance ‘off the street.'"
• 
Action by the House and Senate, via impeachment, is the appropriate process for "such a crucial task, made unavoidably political by the nature of the ‘defendant,'"
• 
... "criminal proceedings against a President in office should not go beyond a point where they could result in so serious a physical interference with the President's performance of his official duties that it would amount to an incapacitation."
• 
If Mueller cannot indict President Trump, what possible use can he make of any presidential testimony?  The only option is that he will provide it to Congress for consideration of articles of impeachment.
• 
But referring President Trump's testimony to Congress would abuse the grand jury process, which is only to be used for a criminal proceeding.
• 
"A grand jury has but two functions – to indict or, in the alternative, to return a no bill."
• 
Providing the legislature with testimony obtained from an executive branch grand jury subpoena also violates the Constitution's separation of powers.
• 
Mueller reports to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, an executive branch official.
• 
Impeachment is purely a legislative function.  The executive cannot utilize its awesome power to compel grand jury testimony for the purpose of providing it to another governmental branch.
• 
Not one of the questions passes requirements mandated by the Constitution and case law defining executive privilege.
• 
Any question about firing FBI Director James Comey or obtaining National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's resignation violates the president's Article II authority to have vested in him "all executive power."
• 
The president had unfettered authority to fire both officials for any reason, for multiple reasons, or for no reason.
• 
Incidentally, if the firing of Comey can be construed as obstruction of justice, then Rosenstein – who discussed such a firing with the president and wrote a scathing memo recommending that Comey be fired – is a co-conspirator.
• 
Yet, he is supervising the Mueller investigation.
• 
Numerous questions deal with the deliberative process...  The answers to these questions all involve the decision-making process and, as such, are clearly covered by executive privilege.
• 
The president is not readily available to be interviewed under established case law.
• 
There must be a "demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial," which courts have defined as evidence that is material to the matter at issue and not available elsewhere with due diligence.
• 
Ignoring the obvious – that there is no criminal trial pending as in the Nixon tapes case – not one Mueller question can meet the standard that would require executive privilege to be waived.
• 
Unless, of course, you count the numerous questions asking what the president "thought" in response to various situations.
• 
It is correct that only the president can state what he "thought" of the listed occasions.
• 
A president's thoughts are not – and cannot be – the basis for any governmental inquiry.
• 
Mueller has over a dozen experienced lawyers on his team.  They are all veterans of the federal criminal justice system.
• 
... these lawyers know very well that no court has ever ruled that a president may be subpoenaed to testify in a criminal proceeding involving his own conduct.
• 
The lawyers on Mueller's team also know that the grand jury cannot be used to obtain evidence except for the criminal process.
• 
And yet, Special Counsel Mueller has threatened the president with a grand jury subpoena.
• 
The Senate needs to pass a bill to protect the constitutional authority of the presidency, not the bad faith conduct of the special counsel.
      The clash between Trump and Mueller is looming.  Will the rule of law survive?  (Fox 05/10/2018)
• 
The judge's comments as to Mueller's motivation are dicta.  Dicta are the unsolicited, unnecessary and often personal opinions of the court on matters not strictly before the court and not integral to the court's ruling.
• 
Stated differently, there is an abundance of speculation in the media but zero evidence in the record before Judge Ellis — zero — on which he could base his opinion; and his opinion of the prosecutor's motivation is irrelevant.
• 
Judge Ellis' actual ruling — clouded by the fog of his dicta — gave Mueller two weeks to demonstrate his lawful jurisdiction.  He can easily do that with a letter from Rosenstein.  The letter can even be retroactive.
• 
Thus, all this focus on Judge Ellis' personal opinion of Mueller's motivation is much ado about national politics and has little to do with the rule of law.  Who cares what a judge thinks about the motivations of the prosecutors?
• 
The practice of indicting a person for a matter utterly unrelated to the core of the government's investigation in order to turn the indicted person into a government witness, though often repellant, is commonplace and has received approval by numerous Supreme Court opinions.
• 
I have characterized this prosecutorial behavior as extortion or bribery, but I am in a small minority in the legal and judicial communities.
• 
The courts have made clear that prosecutors can nullify prison exposure by reducing charges to induce the testimony they want from a witness.
• 
Yet if defense counsel gave the same witness so much as a lollipop to shade his testimony, both would be indicted for bribery.
• 
... prosecutors have ethical and moral obligations to prosecute crimes, and those duties transcend politics.
• 
Suppose President Trump told prosecutors not to prosecute his former friend Harvey Weinstein or his former lawyer Michael Cohen?  I expect they would rightly ignore him.
• 
I know this argument offends the belief of many of my colleagues that the Constitution gives the president sole and total command over all behavior in the executive branch of the federal government.
• 
But the natural law is superior to the Constitution and superior to the government.
• 
The natural law teaches that through the exercise of reason, we know in our hearts what is right and what is wrong.
• 
Some things are right no matter what the government says, and some things are wrong no matter what the government says.
      John Kerry's arrogance — Negotiating with our enemies to undermine Trump and feed his own ego  (Fox 05/06/2018)
• 
When does a gross indiscretion, aimed at undermining President Trump through private negotiations with a sworn enemy of America, become something bigger?
• 
Former Secretary of State John Kerry, deep into his months-long "shadow diplomacy" with Iran, is testing the point.
• 
... at a time when everyone from President Trump to America's national security team are working overtime to warn Iran against counting on that faux nuclear deal, Kerry's actions – not for the first time – are quite unforgivable.
• 
Irony on irony, Kerry's "stealthy" anti-Trump diplomacy comes on the heels of the Democratic Party's aggressive 2017 attempts to call a single conversation between incoming Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the Russian Ambassador a Logan Act violation
• 
... what John Kerry is now doing – trying to create a parallel understanding with a hostile foreign nation – is far more serious than anything Mike Flynn did in the days before becoming National Security Advisor to Trump. 
• 
This is a brazen attempt to privately negotiate – and assist a foreign government in confounding – U.S.  foreign policy and national security.
• 
Whatever the reader thinks of this president, deliberately undermining a sitting president in this way is inexcusable.
• 
Think about it for a moment.  What we are now witnessing is a second former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee openly aiming to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election. 
• 
The audacity of this bitter, anti-President Trump crowd is just breathtaking.
• 
"Kerry sat down twice with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in recent months to strategize in a bid to save the deal, as part of what the Globe described as ‘an aggressive yet stealthy' mission to put pressure on the Trump administration ..."
• 
Here's what the Logan Act says: "Any citizen of the United States who ...without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."
• 
Assuming Mr.  Kerry is not authorized to embolden the Iranians and Europeans with false hope, pushing the string our president is trying to pull, then he is in express violation of the act.
• 
President Trump's Justice Department, consumed in responding to a mess created by Mr.  Obama's other Secretary of State, will likely let the Logan Act violation go.
• 
Still, this does not make Mr.  Kerry blameless.  Any more than he is blameless for having set this terrible Iran deal in motion, with his predecessor and with President Obama, in the first place. 
• 
What his insolence, arrogance and indefensible continuation of private "shadow diplomacy" points to is this: The Democrats will not accept the outcome of the American electoral process, and for the first time in American history are actively – perhaps illegally – seeking to undermine it.
      Newt Gingrich: Trump should 'just say no' to Mueller's absurd questions  (Fox 05/05/2018)
• 
... many of the questions Mueller wants to ask President Trump are absurd.
• 
They are clearly a trap to establish a case for obstruction of justice or perjury.
• 
Virtually no one could answer these questions with any certainty of detail.
• 
Consider this one: "What did you think about Mr.  Comey's intelligence briefing on Jan.  6, 2017, about Russian election interference?"
• 
President Trump has spent more than 400 days in office, and Mueller would like him to accurately recall his thoughts about a particular meeting on a particular day.
• 
Remember, this is not a casual conversation.
• 
This is a criminal investigation seeking to use the full force of law to lock people up...
• 
You can be sure, Mueller will have interviewed everyone he could find who heard President Trump react to the meeting with Comey 16 months ago.
• 
Mueller will have transcripts of everything President Trump has said and tweeted about that meeting.
• 
He will have the endless interviews with Comey.
• 
Mueller will then listen to the president and use any error of memory or effort to embellish to manufacture an obstruction or perjury charge.
• 
Ask yourself: Could you reliably remember every detail of a meeting you had at a particular time 16 months ago – and the totality of your reactions to it?
• 
Why would we think that a president who is currently handling North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, Syria, tax cuts, health care reform, state visits and other presidential duties is going to have the ability (or the time) to remember with absolute clarity and accuracy what happened 16 months ago?
• 
Mueller expands the absurdity with his follow-on question: "What was your reaction to Mr.  Comey's briefing that day about other intelligence matters?"
• 
Consider how many intelligence briefings President Trump has received since then.
• 
Consider how many different conversations the president has had with a wide range of people about the so-called Steele dossier (reportedly the topic of that meeting).
• 
Again, Mueller will have interviewed people, recorded their versions, and will be prepared to measure the president's memory against any slippage, error or misstatement.
• 
... "the rules of the game are that Democrats get away with murder while Republicans get murdered."
• 
"It was Lavrentiy Beria (chief of the Soviet secret police) who told Stalin, ‘show me the man, and I'll find you crime.' You can go through the federal criminal code and find crimes that virtually any businessman, any politician has committed."
• 
"I do not trust the government.  I do not trust judges.  I do not trust prosecutors when they are zealously seeking to go after a particular target, in this case Donald Trump.  Nobody would have been going after Michael Cohen if he weren't Donald Trump's lawyer.  That's the reality."
• 
"Trump would be foolish to answer questions from Mueller, who has made a habit of turning witness interviews into false-statements prosecutions.  More important, absent concrete evidence of his complicity in a serious crime, a president should not be put in the position of being pressured to answer a prosecutor's questions.  When Trump complains that the Obama Justice Department would never have permitted President Obama to be treated this way, he is right..."
• 
"Unless Mueller can demonstrate that a serious crime has been committed, that Trump was complicit in it, and that Trump is in possession of evidence that is essential to the prosecution, (Deputy Attorney General Rod) Rosenstein should bar him from seeking an interview, let alone issuing a subpoena demanding grand-jury testimony.  This is not merely about protecting Trump; it is about protecting the office of the presidency."
• 
... the questions Mueller reportedly wants to ask the president indicate that there is no evidence of a crime and that Mueller is just wanting to "probe the chief executive's motives and thought processes regarding exercises of presidential power that were lawful...."
• 
"If Bob Mueller wants that kind of control over the executive branch, he should run for president.  Otherwise, he is an inferior executive official who has been given a limited license – ultimately, by the chief executive – to investigate crime.  If he doesn't have an obvious crime, he has no business inventing one, much less probing his superior's judgment.  He should stand down."
• 
"The criminal law inquires into intent when actions patently violate criminal statutes; its purpose is not to manufacture crime by speculating about the intent behind apparently lawful actions."
• 
"You don't really care about Mr.  Manafort....  You really care about what information Mr.  Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr.  Trump and an impeachment, or whatever."
• 
"Anybody who says that I'm exaggerating when I say that this is an out-of-control investigation and they're acting like storm troopers – give me a break, baby!  They prove it every day."
• 
"I contend the only crimes committed so far in this investigation are the ones they committed, the government committed."
• 
... President Trump should end the speculation with this statement:
• 
"My lawyers tell me this is a farce, and when you see the proposed questions, you can see they are.  So, I am not going to spend any time on it, and I am not going to answer their silly questions.  I'll leave it all up to the lawyers to give you the legalese, and I am sure there will be plenty.  But, that's for them.  I have a great country to lead.  So, just talk to them."
• 
"Just say no" is the only plausible answer to the Mueller fishing expedition.
• 
Mueller is only as outrageous and out of control as Rosenstein tolerates.
• 
So Rosenstein also has to learn from Nancy Reagan and "just say no" to Mueller's power grab as well.
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Steve Hilton: Mueller probe is a political counter-revolution to overthrow Trump — It must be defeated  (Fox 05/05/2018)
• 
... the establishment seeks to overturn the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
• 
... the chosen path to remove President Trump from office has become the Russia probe led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and its tabloid offshoot, the Stormy Daniels imbroglio.
• 
The elitists in Washington (including – frighteningly – current and former leadership in our law enforcement and security bureaucracy) are monumentally aggrieved that the people had the temerity to elect a populist outsider to the White House.
• 
And they're not prepared to wait for the 2020 election to try to replace populist Donald Trump.
• 
Where did the "Russia thing" itself begin?  The Hillary Clinton campaign.
• 
The Clinton campaign paid for the dodgy dossier that tried to smear the Trump campaign for supposedly colluding with Russia to win the election.
• 
When that didn't work – Clinton lost the election anyway – her supporters jumped on the "Russia thing" as the reason for her defeat.
• 
You can imagine the supporters all saying: How could she possibly lose to him?  There had to be foul play!
• 
Because, of course, it couldn't possibly be the case that Clinton lost the election on the merits – that working Americans were sick of the policy failures of the establishment and wanted a change from the disastrous elitism of the last few decades.
• 
No – of course that couldn't be true.  It had to be the "Russia thing." Anything else was too awful to contemplate.
• 
The establishment, as intended, jumped on that too, embracing the belief that "the Russians did it!"
• 
What's the point of going over all this ancient history?  To remind ourselves that the origin of the "Russia thing" – at least the part that relates to President Trump - was 100 percent political.
• 
The Mueller probe is political warfare through legal means – not surprising when you consider that the Democrats are the party of lawyers, funded by lawyers.
• 
They don't care how their political counter-revolution gets President Trump out – whether it's proving the original, fabricated claim about collusion; or by some legal process misstep by the president and his team; or by something to do with Stormy Daniels.
• 
But this all-out effort by the establishment to remove a president who was legitimately elected according to the Constitution is doing terrible damage to the United States.
• 
Not just because it's such a massive distraction from the bold policymaking that's needed to help address the very real problems in our economy, in our society – inadequate skills and family breakdown to name just two.
• 
But because it undermines democracy and the rule of law.
• 
How do you think people will feel if they vote for an outsider – and the insiders just turn around and say: "Sorry, you got it wrong.  You can't do that."
• 
"I think they want to destroy the president, they want to destroy his family.  They want to destroy his businesses.  They want to destroy his friends so that no billionaire in let's say 50 years wakes up and tells his wife, ‘You know this country is broken and only I can fix it.' His wife will say, ‘Are you crazy?  Did you see what happened to Trump and everybody around him?' That's what this is about."
• 
And that's why this political counter-revolution must be confronted and defeated – in the name of democracy and the rule of law.
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Mueller's Russia probe should wrap up and Rosenstein should accept congressional oversight  (Fox 05/05/2018)
• 
Mueller has mounted an all-out effort, funded by your tax dollars, to find something – anything – that he can use to accuse President Trump of illegal conduct.
• 
The goal is clear: getting the president either convicted on criminal charges (if such a thing is even possible for a president) or impeached and removed from office.
• 
This may be as close to a coup as we've ever come in the United States.
• 
Unhappy with the 2016 election results – attributable to Americans who Hillary Clinton called a "basket of deplorables" – President Trump's opponents are now arrayed against him and want him out of the Oval Office.
• 
The precedent being set by these post-election machinations is constitutionally damaging, and genuinely deplorable.
• 
Investigations of future presidents by their political opponents, as a means to force them from office, may become the norm.
• 
Tying up any president – Democrat or Republican – in investigation after investigation after unwieldy, God-forsaken investigation would make it almost impossible for someone to effectively carry out the demanding job.
• 
"We don't want anyone in this country with unfettered power, it's unlikely you're going to persuade me the special prosecutor has power to do anything he or she wants," since "the American people feel pretty strongly that no one has unfettered power."
• 
Let's remember one thing: The American people elected Donald Trump because we wanted him to tackle the nation's serious problems – not be forced to devote endless time to an investigation that's more debacle than disclosure, waste than haste, and increasingly arrogant.
• 
Congress wants to understand – as do many Americans – whether Mueller's wide-ranging investigation has gone beyond its scope, and when the investigation nightmare will end.
• 
But Rosenstein refused to produce the scope memo without redactions, arguing that it pertains to an ongoing criminal investigation.
• 
Congress' constitutional oversight authority is supported by six express constitutional clauses and 18 separate laws – as well as Congress's historic power to subpoena, grant immunity, take testimony, hold executive officers in contempt, and impeach.
• 
So Rosenstein is on shaky ground in telling Congress that it has no right to see what it needs to exercise oversight.
• 
"Valid investigative requests from Congress have been slow-walked, stonewalled, and impeded at each step of the way under his (Rosenstein's) watch."
• 
"I can tell you there are people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time and I think they should understand by now: The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted."
• 
Extorted? By members of Congress?  Men and women elected by the American people to seek truth and assure accountability?
• 
What a curious, inapt and constitutionally disparaging reference by Rosenstein – a man trained in careful use of words like "extorted."
• 
No personal threats are contained in congressional insistence that executive branch officials comply with constitutional oversight.
• 
That is what the law requires.  Refusing to comply doesn't uphold the law — it ignores the law.
• 
Whether Rosenstein likes it or not, that is the law.  He is not exempt from legitimate congressional oversight, which can at times impinge on individual cases.
• 
Constitutional oversight is paramount.  In a head-to-head battle over what is produced, Congress always wins.  Absent executive privilege, the deputy attorney general cannot bar Congress from the documents it seeks.
• 
Complying with lawful congressional oversight is central to upholding rule of law in a democracy.
• 
Obstructing Congress should not be a policy for any department, especially not the Justice Department.
• 
"A Rigged System - They don't want to turn over Documents to Congress.  What are they afraid of?  Why so much redacting?  Why such unequal ‘justice?' At some point I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!"
• 
Here's the bottom line: Rosenstein has a responsibility – indeed, a duty – to give Congress the full "scope memo" explaining what Mueller is investigating and other information Congress needs to carry out its oversight responsibilities.  America has a right to know.
• 
And Mueller and his team have a responsibility to wrap up their investigation, so President Trump and his administration can get on with the important work he was elected to do.
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump is putting the US back on top  (NYP 05/05/2018)
• 
It's premature to declare the death of the foolish idea that America is in permanent decline and must accept a lower rung on the global ladder.
• 
No rational American can oppose North Korea's tentative promise to give up its nuclear weapons.
• 
Almost as important is the fact that Trump's threat to withdraw from the Iran deal is leading Europe, especially France, to concede that the deal is flawed and must be toughened.
• 
Then there's the ground-breaking agreement of Arab countries to work with America — and Israel — to curb Iran's aggressions.
• 
There also are signs that China, Japan and South Korea are willing to revise their trade deals with the United States.
• 
These changes are still in the early innings and could collapse in a pile of false hopes.
• 
But the fact that they are on the table and moving forward marks a dramatic turnaround from the recent certainty that the post-World War II order America had fashioned and policed was kaput.
• 
For many of us, American Exceptionalism never went out of fashion. 
• 
But its light dimmed during the Obama administration, when the president reshuffled our alliances and voluntarily put constraints on America's freedom to act, with the Iran deal and the Paris climate accords prime examples.
• 
Obama's rhetoric and policies reflected a desire to accept decline and manage it rather than reverse it.
• 
From the shrinking of the military to his apology tours to a preference for ceding power to multinational organizations, he accommodated rivals and even sworn enemies under the guise of progress.
• 
Similar thinking dominated economic policies as well, with many economists rationalizing slow growth as the "new normal" and predicting that stagnation was here to stay.
• 
If we were smart, the theory went, we would limit our resistance to existential threats and otherwise work in harmony to boost the up-and-comers.
• 
That amounted to a counsel of surrender, and Trump thankfully ran the other way.  But it's not as if Trump is guilty of shooting first and speaking second.
• 
Although the president clearly likes to talk tough and rattle sabres, he has shown restraint when it comes to action.
• 
Instead, whether by design or simple personal preference, Trump is following the Roman admonition that, "If you want peace, prepare for war."
• 
He is in the process of rebuilding the military and building coalitions against North Korea and radical Islam.
• 
His sanctions against Russia are tougher than those of the two previous presidents, despite the fact that Vladimir Putin carved up Georgia under George W.  Bush and stole Crimea from Ukraine under Obama without paying much of a price.
• 
North Korea, of course, remains the ultimate test case of Trump's approach and the key to success elsewhere.
• 
His planned summit with Kim Jong-un is a first for an American president, and his pledge to walk out if the meeting is fruitless reflects a determination not to be taken for a fool.
• 
At the same time, by pressuring China to pressure North Korea, and seeming to link the outcome to China trade negotiations, Trump is playing a unique card that he created with his threats of tariffs.
      The multiculturalism umbrella: Made in Islam wool  (INN 05/03/2018)
• 
Ever since the massive arrival of Muslims to the Western hemisphere, our Western culture and world have been forever altered, thanks to the ceaseless attempts of the left to create a failing Utopian Multiculturalism paradise while forcefully jamming it down the throats of unsuspecting citizens.
• 
... multiculturalism spells the demise of our Western culture.  Is that what we want?
• 
The controversy is ongoing: whether in Europe or in the US, the leftist intelligentsia and elitists continue to demand that they have seen the truth, that all people can live peaceably together so long as we are tolerant and have the right laws in place.
• 
The West has been tolerant, but "tolerance in the face of evil is not tolerance, it is a crime."
• 
It wasn't long ago, we were defending ourselves at the Gates of Vienna from a Muslim invasion.
• 
Now, we welcome Muslims with open arms and generous welfare policies.
• 
Any push back to these open immigration practices is labeled Islamophobia, racism, bigotry, etc.
• 
Muslims and their frequently well-paid apologists use the multiculturalist umbrella only in non-Islamic lands to shield themselves from the torrent of legitimate criticisms that those who know Islam better shower on this cult of violence peddled as the religion of peace.
• 
Please search it for yourself.  See if the euphemism of multiculturalism is ever even mentioned by any Islamic leader, ever printed in the Islamic press, or ever appears in any form anywhere in Muslim countries.
• 
This multiculturalism gambit in is Islam manufactured wool to pull over the eyes of the non-Muslims while Muslims carry on with their unrelenting campaign of eradicating anything or anyone non-Islamic anywhere and everywhere in the world.
• 
The Muslim organizations in America, generously financed by the oil-rich Muslim governments and sheikhs, are directed to sell Islam Lite for long enough until this ideology runs deep roots and real Islam is introduced.
• 
Much of Europe is already past the stage of Islam Lite and knee deep into the quagmire of real Islam.  And that's exactly where things are headed in America.
• 
... humanity must remain strong and resolute, they must stop deluding themselves.  Islam will never ever coexist with infidels.
• 
While we frivolously waste our precious time talking about it without any drastic action taken, Islam and Sharia continue to furtively creep into every aspect of American culture.
• 
... Americans have been conditioned by the liberal elites to be tolerant and compassionate, to embrace multiculturalism and respect each other's beliefs, ideals and values.
• 
That's wonderful in a utopian world, but the fact is, Islam doesn't embrace any aspect of Western civilization — much less American culture.
• 
Americans are rapidly and methodically being dismantled as a nation, and our freedom and liberty is more fragile than at any time since WWII.
• 
And while we fight the enemy abroad with combat troops, intelligence and drone strikes, we're doing nothing to combat the same exact enemy that resides on our own soil in broad daylight.
• 
All of us, must pressure our government, at all levels, abandon the practice of ‘political correctness' and protect the American people and act to safeguard liberty against the truly deadly assault that is Islamic ideology.
• 
It is long past time for our elected officials to wake up.
• 
See related Anything Else to Declare? (Glenn McCoy, 11/01/2017) cartoon from Terror picture album
• 
See related Regret (Glenn McCoy, 06/06/2017) cartoon from Terror picture album
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: Mr.  Trump, don’t help Robert Mueller destroy your presidency  (Fox 05/03/2018)
• 
The questions are apparently a road map of inquiry that Mueller and his prosecutors and FBI agents plan to put to the president if the president agrees to sit down for an interview with them.
• 
I have been arguing for months that the president should not agree to an interview with Mueller.
• 
My reasons are fairly boilerplate: It is nearly impossible to talk prosecutors who are determined to seek an indictment into changing their minds.
• 
As well, the person being interviewed cannot possibly know as much about the case as the team doing the interview, and he will be prone to error.
• 
In the interview environment, one small lie can result in one big headache of an indictment, even if the lie is about an extraneous matter.
• 
When federal prosecutors question a potential defendant, who appears voluntarily and is not under oath, the questioners can lie to the person being interviewed, but he cannot lie to them without risk of indictment.
• 
This is exquisitely unfair, but it has been federal law for generations.
• 
The Supreme Court has ruled that federal prosecutors and FBI agents can use trickery, deceptions and outright falsehoods — even disguises, verbal traps and fraud — to help them extract information from a witness or person they are investigating.
• 
Given the president's well-known propensity to talk at length on many disjointed matters and to think both aloud and unfiltered ... there is a very serious danger that he would contradict himself and even contradict facts for which the special counsel has hard evidence.
• 
Donald Trump is the subject of a criminal investigation.
• 
When prosecutors interview a person they are investigating, it is to help the investigation, not the subject of it.
• 
There are two species of questions here.  One set of questions is intended to get the president off on a disjointed monologue to see whether he — as he did on "Fox & Friends" — will admit to something without actually being accused or even asked about it.
• 
The others are questions to which Mueller already knows the answers and for which he has irrefutable hard evidence — and the quest is to see whether the president will be truthful.
• 
As well, both types of questions are mere starting points — intended to lull Trump into a comfortable but false sense of security — which would then be followed with curveballs he would have great difficulty trying to hit.
• 
One of Mueller's questions is profound, and I have not seen anything like it in all the literature and legal arguments preceding...
• 
"What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?"
• 
Prosecutors need a factual or good-faith basis to trigger their questions.  This question goes to the heart of the so-called collusion issue.
• 
I say "so-called" because "collusion" is a media and a political word; it does not describe anything in the law.
• 
What Mueller is looking for is a conspiracy, which is the easiest crime for prosecutors to prove because the crime need not have been successful.
• 
The essence of conspiracy is an agreement — here, an agreement to accept campaign assistance from a foreign person, entity or government, which is illegal, even if the assistance never arrived.
• 
The essence of the crime is the agreement, not the receipt of something of value.
• 
The conspirators need not have met together or even be known to each other, providing at least one of them took at least one material step — such as a phone call or a meeting with Russians offering help — in furtherance of the agreement.
• 
If Trump were to answer "no" and Gates told the grand jury that Trump did know of this, Mueller could claim Trump lied and ask the same grand jury to indict Trump for that.
• 
If Trump were to answer "yes," that would be the end of his presidency.  If he were to give a rambling non-answer, Mueller would make the most of it.
• 
Are prosecutors fair?  Many are, but their common view is that they need not always be fair because they are after bad guys who don't play by the rules.
• 
To the prosecutorial mind, it is for judges and juries to be fair.
• 
What should Trump do?  He should go about the business of being president.
• 
He should do what is most difficult for him: stay silent.
• 
Don't trust a man who owns a grand jury.  Don't help him undo your presidency.
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Comey’s media tour shows why we’re better off without him  (NYP 04/28/2018)
• 
"In fact, that was my intention.  To serve another six years."
• 
Thank heavens — and Trump — Comey didn't get the chance to corrupt the FBI for a minute longer, let alone six more years.
• 
He is treated like a star because he delivers catnip to the hate-Trump media, as when he condemns the president as "like a crime boss who's morally unfit."
• 
The more he talks, the more he inadvertently proves Trump's case that something was very rotten in Washington and that Comey himself was unfit to lead the FBI.
• 
"There is a deep state in this sense.  There is a collection of people, CIA, NSA, FBI [and] in the United States military services who care passionately about getting it right, who care passionately about the values we try to talk about."
• 
He called them the "ballast of the country" and said "No president in a single term could screw it up... It would take generations, and that should comfort us."
• 
That depends on who "us" is and whose "values" are being pushed.
• 
In a vacuum, the notion of seasoned professionals making the government run is unremarkable.
• 
But against the backdrop of continuing revelations of serious misconduct in those agencies during the Obama administration, there is no comfort for the millions of Americans who believe insiders abused their powers for partisan purposes.
• 
They see the "deep state" as a sinister force aiming to hijack an election and, when that didn't work, undermine a fairly elected president.
• 
They also see a system with one set of laws for those favored by the government and a different set for everyone else.
• 
Comey, as an ambitious insider, was both a beneficiary and a perpetrator of this double standard of justice.
• 
His claim that he saw no bias is laughable — they were all biased in the same way, agreeing that Trump should not be president!
• 
The political motivation behind the dossier is a key fact when judging its credibility, as are the openly-partisan leanings of investigators.
• 
All that matters is that we should trust him to do the right thing, which happens to be whatever he says it is.
• 
Nor does he see anything wrong in writing a scathing book based on his private meetings with the president, even though he leaves an unprecedented stain on the FBI.
• 
Comey's self-aggrandizement is apparent with his claim that he tried to "protect the independence" of the agency, as if it were a separate branch of government, accountable to no one.
• 
It also doesn't seem to bother him that public trust is destroyed when law enforcement is politicized to help the candidate of the incumbent party and hurt the candidate of the opposition party.
• 
What happened at the FBI under Comey in 2016 was not "ballast." It was a clear and present danger to America.
• 
This is the "deep state" in reality, not the idealized one he depicts.
      Trump foes seek to take away his legal rights — endangering everyone's rights  (Fox 04/25/2018)
• 
Many traditional civil libertarians have allowed their intense hatred of President Trump to erase their longstanding commitment to neutral civil liberties and equal justice for all – a dangerous move that threatens the rights of us all.
• 
The anti-Trump forces are now so desperate to get the president convicted of a crime or impeached that they are prepared to compromise the most basic due process rights of the president and people associated with him...
• 
The Trump opponents forget an important lesson of history: compromises that weaken the legal protections of our enemies are often used as precedents to weaken the legal protections of our friends – or of ourselves.
• 
Some of President Trump's most vocal opponents might themselves be harmed in the future by the erosion of legal protections they are advocating for the president and his associates today.
• 
Too often, today's fair weather civil libertarians are unwilling to give President Trump – who they regard as the devil – the same legal rights that all Americans are entitled to.
• 
... no one – including Mueller – has the right to immunity from criticism or examination of his or her past record.
• 
While Mueller was in positions of responsibility, four innocent people were framed by the FBI in order to protect mass-murdering gangsters who were working as FBI informers while they were killing innocent people.
• 
What responsibility, if any, did Robert Mueller – who was in key positions of authority and capable of preventing these horrible miscarriages of justice – have in this sordid incident? 
• 
A former member of the Massachusetts Parole Board ... swears that he saw a letter from Mueller urging the denial of release for at least one of these wrongfully convicted defendants.  When he went back to retrieve the letter, it was not in the file, he says.
• 
This vanishing letter – if it existed – should surprise no one, since Judge Mark Wolf (himself a former prosecutor), ... found there had been "recurring irregularities" in FBI record-keeping conduct...
• 
... It is therefore not beyond the realm of possibility that Mueller wrote a letter to the Parole Board that kept one or more innocent men in prison...
• 
Recently a former federal judge, who used to be a civil libertarian, rushed to Mueller's defense, declaring "without equivocation" that Mueller "had no involvement" in the massive miscarriage of justice.
• 
Her evidence is the lack of evidence in the files.
• 
But absence of evidence is not conclusive evidence of absence, especially in this case.
• 
... these "Get Trump At Any Cost" partisans have rejected my call for an investigation, out of fear that it may turn up information that might tarnish the image of the Muller and weaken his investigation of President
• 
All civil libertarians should want the truth about this sordid episode – and Mueller's possible role in it – regardless of its impact, if any, on the Trump investigation.
• 
Mueller also should welcome an objective investigation, which might eliminate any doubt about his role in this travesty.
• 
But too many former civil libertarians are prepared to sacrifice civil liberties and the quest for truth on the altar of "Get Trump."
• 
This is all too typical of the about-face many civil libertarians have taken since Donald Trump became president.
• 
It is ironic to see many right-wingers being the ones to criticize overreach by law enforcement, while many left-wingers now defend such overreaching.
• 
Hypocrisy and selective outrage abound, as neutral principles take a back seat.
• 
I am a liberal who did not vote for Trump, but who insists that the president's civil liberties must be respected to protect the civil liberties of us all.
• 
Just as the first casualty of war is truth, so, too, the first casualty of hyper-partisan politics is civil liberties.
      'Crazy Bernie' Sanders is at it again — Will you be getting a guaranteed job  (and more) soon? (Fox 04/26/2018)
• 
There he goes again.  Despite the lowest unemployment rate in 17 years, including declining rates for minorities, Sen.  Bernie Sanders, ... is again flirting with the idea that the federal government should guarantee every American a job, paying a minimum of $15 an hour and health care benefits.
• 
Are we not already spending plenty on these "priorities"?
• 
Just on education, record spending hasn't helped improve the knowledge of students.  They still lag behind students in other countries when it comes to science and math, and, apparently, even English...
• 
What is it about socialism that remains so attractive to many liberals?
• 
In most communist countries, it is a form of mutually-shared poverty.  At a minimum it starves incentive.
• 
A thriving economy is the best guarantee of a job.  The American economy is now thriving...
• 
The goal of Sanders and others in the guaranteed-income crowd, ... is to "eliminate working poverty and involuntary unemployment altogether."
• 
Wait, hasn't that already been tried?  The Great Society programs launched more than 50 years ago by President Lyndon Johnson had similar goals.  They have so far cost a collective $22 trillion.
• 
While those programs include Medicare and Medicaid, which are long overdue for reform, the poverty rate in America is roughly the same as it was in the mid-1960s.
• 
"The United States produces more per capita than any other industrialized country, and in recent years governments at various levels have spent about $350 billion per year, or about 3.5 percent of gross domestic product, on programs serving low-income families.  Despite this, measured poverty is more prevalent in the United States than in most of the rest of the industrialized world."
• 
If government spending is the solution, wouldn't the problem of poverty and the dwindling number of unemployed be solved by now?
• 
Sanders' proposal ... taps into a growing feeling, particularly among many young Americans, for whom feelings, not results, are ultimately what liberalism relies on.
• 
Many liberals feel corporations are evil, that some people are paid "too much," "income inequality" is something that should be addressed by government and, because some people make more money than others, America is an unfair nation.
• 
This worldview appears to be increasingly taught in public schools and at the higher level by tenured college professors.
• 
This worldview did not build America, and if it ever takes over, it will never sustain us.
• 
Consider where it has been tried.
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Supreme Court and the Trump travel ban case: What's really at stake is our country's future  (Fox 04/24/2018)
• 
... what if the judges mistrust the executive, and announce that his orders be ignored?
• 
In that case the entire system of separation of powers might be undone, in matters purely political.
• 
The judiciary will have usurped the executive power and made little presidents of themselves.  A frightening thought, and yet that is where we seem to be headed.
• 
The threat began with the practice, begun over a year ago, of federal District Court judges announcing that Trump's travel bans were unconstitutional.
• 
It wasn't that presidents lack the authority to manage immigration policies.  That wasn't in question.  Rather, it was the authority of this president that was impugned.
• 
Trump was poison, and his directives were the fruit of a poisoned tree.
• 
He had shown himself to be biased against radical Islam, and as a consequence was deprived of any constitutional authority over immigration from Muslim countries.
• 
As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals put it, Trump's tweets showed that he was "tainted with animus toward Islam."
• 
There have been a series of such decisions, from District judges cherry-picked as Trump haters.
• 
And they did more than impugn Trump's authority in their judicial District.  They went beyond this to issue a countrywide injunction, a single judge ruling over the United States as a whole.
• 
"For over a year, the president campaigned on the pledge, never retracted, that he would ban Muslims from entering the United States."
• 
What they sought was political power, the power to nullify the decisions of a president they despise.
• 
And why stop there?  If everything Trump does is tainted with racial or religious bias, as the Democrats tell us, then it's hard to see any limit to the scope of the judicial branch's power in the age of Donald Trump.
• 
If so, what seemed like an idiotic lawsuit by the Democratic Party against the Republicans, for collusion with the Russians in the 2016 election, might in fact be a very astute move.
• 
Why not an injunction setting aside an election?  For Heaven's sake, think of the money we'd save if we didn't need to have elections, but could rely on our betters on the bench to decide things for us.
• 
When judges usurp political power, it's not simply a contest between two branches of the federal government.
• 
It's also a contest between democratic and non-democratic government, between rule by elected officials and rule by a priestly class of judges.
• 
... if we permit courts to intrude on political decisions, we invite presidents to second-guess judicial decisions.
• 
We've seen this before, after all.  Trump has been compared to Andrew Jackson, who said that Chief Justice "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
      Pompeo vote is Democrats' latest unhinged stunt — He should be confirmed as secretary of state  (Fox 04/22/2018)
• 
The effort by Senate Democrats to block CIA Director Mike Pompeo from being confirmed as secretary of state is just the latest political stunt that unhinged liberals are trying to pull.
• 
Our Founding Fathers did not design our constitutional republic with this level of obstruction in mind from the minority party in the legislative branch.
• 
... the Democratic Party today is not functioning in a manner that makes American interests and security its top priority.
• 
... Democrats, driven by their enraged and radical base across the country, are determined to delegitimize and destroy President Trump and his America First agenda by any means necessary – even if it means endangering America's national security.
• 
These irresponsible actions by Democratic senators continue to show the unmistakable fact that they hate President Trump more than they love their country.
• 
This type of unhinged political opposition needs to be handled differently by the majority party in the United States Senate.
• 
As I've written on several occasions, Senate Republicans should suspend filibuster rules – in a responsible manner – on matters that affect our national security.
• 
Such matters include building a wall to secure our southern border, and confirming the president's nominee for secretary of state during a time when we're trying to rid North Korea of its horrifying nuclear capabilities.
• 
Let's face facts: if and when these Democrats ever gain control of the Senate, the filibuster will be a thing of the past on issues large and small.
• 
The political games being propagated by Democrats in Congress are doing harm to our country and our system of government.
• 
While it's true that President Trump is an outsider who refuses to bow at the altar of the failed status quo in Washington, this is no reason to obstruct each and every thing he's trying to do – even his qualified choice as secretary of state.
• 
This is serious business during very serious times and the American people are paying attention.
      James Comey’s ABC interview sidesteps his shocking decision to break every rule and leak...  (Fox 04/16/2018)
• 
"(W)hether you can leak unclassified information, I don't want to get involved in that," he said firmly.
• 
That won't come as a surprise to America's working-level spies and law enforcement officers.
• 
They can see right through Comey's charade of "leadership" and "loyalty" because they know the immeasurable damage he has caused.
• 
... Comey admitted to leaking notes of his conversations with President Trump to the New York Times.  He used a friend – or "cutout" – to leak the memos so that he could hide his identity.
• 
It's impossible to overstate what a gut punch this was for officers in the FBI and CIA.
• 
For years, we had been told, lectured, and threatened not to leak to the press.
• 
We were given clear paths to share our concerns of abuse, all of which were known and available to Comey.
• 
He could have handed his notes to the Senate or House, but he didn't.
• 
He could have testified about his concerns, but at that point he didn't.
• 
Instead, Comey chose to leak.  And he admitted to his treachery only after being compelled to testify.
• 
... the most senior leader in the fights against corruption, terrorism, and espionage – had violated his lifetime oath.
• 
He had betrayed not just the American people but his fellow officers as well.
• 
And no matter his excuses, he also broke every FBI rule regarding contact with the press and release of government information.
• 
But the most worrying of consequences was his demonstration to partisan spies and G-men that they too could successfully leak.  How?
• 
1.  Resign or be terminated from your position.  Inspectors General have little jurisdiction over a former employee.
• 
2.  Ensure that any leaked information can be argued as an unclassified "personal reflection" written by "a private citizen" to "memorialize" past events.
• 
3.  Never share leaked information in written form.  Oral disclosures are not subject to the FBI or CIA's prepublication requirements.
• 
4.  Ensure there's no payment for the leak itself.  Monetization can come later when writing a book or delivering paid speeches about the leak personal reflections.
• 
If a senior leader can get away with violating his or her oath, anyone can.
• 
And unquestionably, someone else will, spurred on by their personal agenda.
• 
The result?  A weakened America, hobbled by the selfish pursuits of officers that choose to disregard their allegiance as it suits their interests.
• 
... he had the audacity to title his book, "A Higher Loyalty." ... His loyalty is no longer to his country or its security, no matter his charade of claims.
• 
Comey has one loyalty and one only: to himself.
      James Comey proves he only cares about himself  (NYP 04/14/2018)
• 
Hoover, for all his huge flaws, took most of the dirt he collected to the grave.  Comey is emptying his closet just to make a buck.
• 
Even worse, we now know that Comey led an FBI that was corrupted to the core by politics and self-dealing.
• 
Comey's memoir is a going-out-of-business sale where all the remaining merchandise is tawdry.  Most striking is that he offers no proof for his cascade of claims...
• 
Instead, he relies on subjective assertions and opinions rather than facts or evidence. 
• 
Why surprised?  Comey's career has been one long ode to himself that Trump interrupted.
• 
The book's virtues emerge despite the author's intent.  Inadvertently, Comey proves two very important things.
• 
First, that Trump was right to fire him.
• 
Had the president not acted, the FBI still would be headed by a snake who took notes to be used only in the event he was fired.
• 
First he leaked them to the media, and now turns them into an embellished book.  No honor there.
• 
Second, Comey validates the allegations that he and the FBI abused their powers to play politics during the 2016 campaign.
• 
"It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls."
• 
In other words, he might have taken a different action if the polls showed Trump in front.  That's a damning admission...
• 
It is now beyond dispute that Comey created a snake pit of self-aggrandizing officials at the top of the FBI whose legacy is one of misconduct and perhaps criminality.
• 
His book appears simultaneously with a scathing report from the Justice Department's inspector general on Comey's former deputy, Andrew McCabe, who was fired for leaking to the media and then lying about it repeatedly to investigators.
• 
If there is any justice left in the Justice Department, McCabe will face prosecution.
• 
Indeed, why hasn't he been charged already?  Where in the world is Attorney General Jeff Sessions?
• 
The report, which includes Comey and McCabe contradicting each other and McCabe's lawyer mocking Comey's "white knight" stature on the subject of leaks, further scandalizes Comey's leadership.
• 
And the McCabe report reveals just part of the rampant wrongdoing among Comey's team while it was investigating both Trump and Clinton.
• 
Recall that top officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page talked of an "insurance policy" in the event Trump won the election and hinted in texts that the probe of Clinton was rigged.
• 
Against that backdrop, Comey's reemergence is a reminder that the resistance to Trump was not limited to noisy street marches.
• 
Like so many of the Trump-hating tribe, he reflects the sense of moral superiority, as when he compares the president to New York mob bosses.
• 
His demonization echoes Clinton's "deplorables" comment that reflected her disdain for the 63 million American citizens who voted for Trump.
• 
We hear the same sneering in the catcalls from former CIA director John Brennan, a bleacher bum whose unprecedented attacks on Trump show how espionage was politicized under Barack Obama.
• 
... there is mounting concern that special counsel Robert Mueller also has succumbed to Trump Derangement Syndrome.
• 
Apparently unable to find any Trump collusion with Russia, his initial assignment, Mueller and his handler, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, authorized a highly unusual raid on Trump's lawyer.
• 
Hush money for sex is headline-grabbing, but unless there is a Russia thread, we must consider whether Mueller is determined to get the president, no matter how far afield he must go.
• 
Normally, civil-liberties groups concerned about prosecutorial overreach would sound alarms.  But with Trump as target, it's ­silence or applause.
• 
That's the end product of the twisted logic of those who believe with religious-like fervor that Trump is unfit, and therefore any and all means to bring about his ­removal are fair.
• 
For sure, Trump challenges the ­nation's norms.  His personality, history and habits are unlike any ever seen in the Oval Office.
• 
But unlike those who demand his head, Trump has one advantage: He was elected.
• 
And in trying to remove him with a double standard of justice, his enemies are playing a dirty and dangerous game.
      Comey book filled with unproven attacks on Trump, lofty praise for himself  (Fox 04/13/2018)
• 
It's important for every fair-minded person to remember that just because Comey makes a charge, he is not speaking gospel truth – despite his inflated sense of virtue and self-importance.
• 
Just about anyone who's ever been fired fancies "getting even" with the boss.  Comey's new book does that in spades...
• 
In the process, it lowers the reputation of both the FBI and Comey, undermines the presidency and hurts the nation.
• 
The book is seething with disdain and insults for a man the American people elected to lead our nation.
• 
Comey openly vilifies President Trump, throwing forth every insinuation and slur you can think of, even descending into petty criticism of the president's tan, length of his ties and height.
• 
On top of this, Comey repeats unproven salacious allegations about President Trump's sex life – a surefire way to increase book sales.
• 
All the while, Comey feverishly feeds the "resistance" beast. 
• 
By contrast, Comey paints himself as the noble and heroic public servant – a veritable Superman, fighting the superhero's "never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way."
• 
One thing you can say for Comey – he has a healthy sense of self-esteem.
• 
Let's be honest: Comey wrote this book to retaliate against President Trump for firing him, make a huge amount of money, and establish himself as an American icon.
• 
Yes, senior officials write books after presidents leave office.  But doing so while a president is serving does a deliberate disservice to the president and nation.  Comey clearly does not to care.
• 
Any president – whether Republican or Democrat – expects top government officials to provide him with judgment, integrity, competence and discretion.
• 
Advice is provided in confidence and dialogue is assumed to be private, unless otherwise stated.  Government cannot function without that essential understanding.
• 
If the president doubts any of those attributes – as President Trump had good reason to do with Comey – he has every right to fire an official under Article II of the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
Comey's book has one last purpose.  It is a thinly disguised attempt to pre-empt further investigation into his own questionable actions...
• 
To this day, more questions remain unanswered than have been answered about the Clinton probe, many of them nagging and constitutional in nature.
• 
Beyond prematurely exonerating Clinton from serious charges, Comey made an embarrassing beeline for Trump, assuming the worst, bending established rules, and offering half-truths to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court for a warrant to surveil a Trump campaign aide.
• 
The audacity of this all must impress even the ghost of long-time FBI Director J.  Edgar Hoover, whose offenses were many but never extended to seeking to prematurely unseat a potential president.
• 
At best, Comey's leadership of the FBI was self-absorbed and lax.  Oversight of FBI agents and lawyers was utterly missing.  On his watch as the top dog, senior FBI officials went rogue.  That was, as chain of command goes, his fault.
• 
Now Comey styles himself a national hero, a status that he never had – but seems to have assumed for himself.
      Make Mueller the last special counsel  (JWR 04/13/2018)
• 
"Nothing is so politically effective as the ability to charge that one's opponent and his associates are not merely wrongheaded, naive, ineffective, but, in all probability, — crooks.' And nothing so effectively gives an appearance of validity to such charges as a Justice Department investigation and, even better, prosecution."
• 
"In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.  It is in this realm that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies."
• 
In all this, I see only sadness, ego and a fall from grace.
• 
Comey's book is just another passing stab at vain glory – common currency in today's Washington, unlike past years when the nation's capital prided itself on getting things done, respecting electoral outcomes and decency.
• 
Today, books sell if they fan the flames of disunion and division, coddle popular prejudices and take aim at the president.  Comey's does all that, very well.
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Comey wouldn't know a real mob boss if he investigated one for an illegal server  (Fox 04/12/2018)
• 
No wonder disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was so bad at running the bureau: He can't tell a mob boss from a duly elected leader of the free world.
• 
"How strange is it for you to sit here and compare the president to a mob boss?"
• 
"Are there things that you know but haven't said that could damage President Trump?"
• 
"Was President Trump obstructing justice?  Should Donald Trump be impeached?"
• 
Hard questions between a couple of guys who hate President Trump.  But ‘mob boss?'
• 
Of all people, shouldn't the former head of the FBI - the person responsible for taking down actual deadly criminal gangs - know better to make an outrageous comparison like that?
• 
Since Comey can't distinguish between homicidal criminals and a politician he disagrees with, it is worth reminding him what an actual mob boss looks like.
• 
Al Capone plagued society with illicit gambling, prostitution, tax evasion and an untold number of murders.
• 
Lucky Luciano was responsible for widespread extortion, prostitution rings, bootlegging and murder.
• 
John Gotti was convicted of 13 murders, and also profited from racketeering, tax evasion and gambling.
• 
What does Donald Trump have to do with any of them?
• 
If Comey is really looking for mobsters at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., he missed one — the Clinton crime family.
• 
Bill Clinton was accused of severe sexual misconduct, harassment and even rape by Juanita Broaddrick.  We know he lied under oath and we know he paid Paula Jones.  We know he was impeached.
• 
Hillary Clinton surely committed crimes, and would have been charged if we had equal justice under the law.  She mishandled national secrets on that illicit private server, obstructed justice and destroyed evidence.
• 
Comey, who was at best oblivious to the Clinton Crime Family as it ran wild in Washington, has operated a bit like a gangland don himself, if we're allowed to use the same license he does.
• 
Since James Comey is so loose with his mafia analogies, let me make him an offer he shouldn't be able to refuse: Come on my show to promote your book.
• 
I'll ask tough, but fair questions to which the American people deserve answers.
• 
See related Hillary's Private Server (Mike Lester, 07/06/2016) cartoon from Government picture album
      Facebook hearings: Low-tech lawmakers are clueless about the platform that makes billions...  (Fox 04/11/2018)
• 
Ongoing resentment over Donald Trump's presidency continues to create hysteria among Democrats.
• 
Like the boogeyman, Facebook is the latest source of "Russian collusion" ire.
• 
The hearing centered on the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal, involving a pro-Trump consulting firm that reportedly mined the data information of 87 million Facebook users.
• 
The hearing also examined Facebook's role and responsibility as a pre-eminent world news source capable of enhancing or degrading democracy.
• 
All of that is fair game.  Questions should be asked and Mark Zuckerberg deserved to face the music...
• 
But guess what?  That should have happened when Barack Obama was elected as our 44th president in 2008.
• 
In 2008, the Obama campaign's use of Facebook took on a completely different narrative in the media than Donald Trump's.  Barack Obama was depicted as the "cool" politician savvy to the Internet.
• 
"The Presidential election of 2008 will go down in history for an obvious symbolic reason that will inspire future generations.  Yet while pundits were focused on Barack Obama's race, another largely overlooked factor in his success was his powerful techno-demographic appeal."
• 
I doubt the article's use of "inspired," foresaw a mob of pitchfork-wielding media members obsessed with Russian conspiracy theories in 2018.
• 
It's also unlikely the depiction of one president's "techno-demographic appeal" would later lead to a congressional hearing held, in part, to diminish another president's electoral victory.
• 
... wrote about how the Obama campaign's "‘targeted sharing' protocols mined an Obama backer's Facebook network in search of friends the campaign wanted to register, mobilize, or persuade."
• 
Yet somehow, President Obama managed to quietly escape bad press and scandal.
• 
Let's be clear: I'm not defending distributing individuals' personal data for political gain.
• 
But we have to acknowledge that those practices occurred long before Trump ran for office, and will likely continue long after, if Facebook's reach isn't mitigated.
• 
Every time you log into a third party app on Facebook – whether for the latest inane celebrity quiz or to buy sheep in Farmville – the reality is that you're being played as a sheep, mindlessly sending out your personal email and information about yourself.
• 
But that wasn't the picture Zuckerberg painted in his congressional testimony.  He championed his $63 billion company in liberal-loving terms of openness and connectivity.
• 
But in truth, Facebook's end goal is far less altruistic.  It makes money off of you.
• 
Facebook is a conveyor belt of data to advertisers, targeted by the details in a user's profile.  This is the core of Facebook's business model.
• 
Zuckerberg took a step in accountability on Capitol Hill.
• 
If the country could do the same by acknowledging who rightfully won the 2016 presidential election, perhaps America, like Facebook, can also move towards a better future.
      Alan Dershowitz: Why the FBI raid on Trump's lawyer hurts all of us  (Fox 04/11/2018)
• 
The Fifth Amendment is an exclusionary rule.  By its terms, it prevents material obtained in violation of the privilege of self-incrimination from being used to incriminate a defendant – that is, to convict him or her of a crime.
• 
But the Fourth and Sixth Amendments provide far broader protections: they prohibit government officials from in any way intruding on the privacy of lawyer-client confidential rights of citizens.
• 
... if the government improperly seizes private or privileged material, the violation has already occurred, even if the government never uses the material from the person from whom it was seized.
• 
The very fact that this material is seen or read by a government official constitutes a core violation.
• 
It would be the same if the government surreptitiously recorded a confession of a penitent to a priest, or a description of symptoms by a patient to a doctor, or a discussion between a husband and wife of their sex life.
• 
The government simply has no right to this material, whether it ever uses it against the penitent, the patient, or the spouse in a criminal case.
• 
The recourses for intrusions on the Fourth and Sixth Amendments are multifold: the victim of an intrusion can sue for damages; he or she can exclude the material from use by the government in criminal or civil cases; or the victim can demand the material back.
• 
But none of these remedies undo the harm to privacy and confidentiality done to the citizen by the government's intrusion into his private and confidential affairs.
• 
An equally important harm is to important relationships that are protected by the law: between lawyer and client, priest and penitent, doctor and patient, husband and wife, etc.
• 
If the ordinary citizen sees that even the president's confidential communications with his lawyer can be seized and perused, he or she will be far less willing to engage in such communications.
• 
As a society we value such communications; that is why our laws protect them and that is why it should be extremely difficult for the government to intrude upon them, except as a last recourse in extremely important cases.
• 
... the alleged crimes at issue – highly technical violations of banking and election laws – would not seem to warrant the extreme measure of a highly publicized search and seizure of records that may well include some that are subject to the lawyer-client privilege.
• 
Someday soon, government is going to have to justify its decision to conduct this raid.
• 
I challenge any reader who is not concerned about the raid to honestly answer the following question: If the raid had been conducted on Hillary Clinton's lawyer's office and home, would you be as unconcerned?  The truth now!
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Whatever the Left Touches it Ruins  (JWR 04/10/2018)
• 
The only way to save Western civilization is to convince more people that leftism — not liberalism — is a nihilistic force.
• 
The most obvious — and, therefore, the one more and Americans can resonate with — is the near destruction of most American universities as places of learning.
• 
If you send your children to a university, you are endangering both their mind and their character.  There is a real chance they will be more intolerant and more foolish after college than they were when they entered college.
• 
When you attend an American university, you are taught to have contempt for America and its founders, to prefer socialism to capitalism, to divide human beings by race and ethnicity.
• 
You are taught to shut down those who differ with you, to not debate them.
• 
And you are taught to place feelings over reason — which is a guaranteed route to eventual evil.
• 
The left has ruined most of the arts.  ... In 2016, one of the most prestigious art museums in the world, the Guggenheim in New York, featured a pure-gold working toilet bowl, which visitors were invited to use.  The name of the exhibit was "America" — so one could literally relieve oneself on America.
• 
The left is increasingly poisoning sports.  In most football stadiums this past season, one could not attend an NFL game without being subjected to left-wing contempt for America and its flag.
• 
The left has poisoned mainstream religion.  Mainstream Protestantism, non-Orthodox Judaism and much of the Catholic Church — including and especially Pope Francis — are essentially left-wing advocacy groups with religious symbols.
• 
The left is destroying the unique American commitment to free speech.  ... They do not understand that the whole point of free speech is allowing the expression of opposing ideas, including what we consider "hate speech."
• 
The left has poisoned race relations.  America is the least racist multiracial society in the world.  On a daily basis, Americans of every race and ethnicity get along superbly.
• 
But the black left and the white left constantly poison young minds with hate-filled diatribes against whites, "white privilege," "systemic racism," black dorms, black graduations, lies about the events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the like.
• 
The left has made innumerable women unhappy, even depressed, with its decades of lying about how female sexual nature and male sexual nature are identical — leading to a "hookup" culture...
• 
And, in some ways scariest of all, the left is poisoning our children with its commitment to ending male and female as distinct categories.
• 
For these and other reasons, if you treasure American and Western civilization, fighting the left — something all liberals and conservatives need to do — is the greatest good you can engage in at this time.
      Here's why the left hates John Bolton — and why they are wrong  (Fox 04/10/2018)
• 
John Bolton, ... has repeatedly been hit with false accusation and demonized and attacked by the left – but shows no signs of changing his views to curry favor with those advocating a weak national security policy.
• 
Any fair assessment will show him to be a valuable addition to the Trump administration.
• 
Bolton has shown repeatedly that can he act swiftly, decisively and wisely.
• 
... "have ties to individuals and groups promoting a worldview that regards Islam not so much as a religion, but as a political ideology that is infiltrating the United State and other countries with the goal of imposing Shariah law."
• 
This leftist hysteria is hyperbolic nonsense.  John Bolton is not a warmonger.  He believes, correctly, that a strong America is the best way to guarantee peace.
• 
Bolton enjoys political combat, and is undoubtedly one of its most skilled warriors.
• 
But the left doesn't hate him for his skills, his knowledge, or even his views.
• 
They hate him because he is fearless in exposing their outrageous preference for the enemies of America.
• 
Bolton understands that threats to America must be dealt with forcefully – not necessarily with military might, but with the full spectrum of statecraft.
• 
This is true in North Korea, which successive U.S.  administrations have attempted unsuccessfully to bribe into submission, as well as in our dealings with the radical Islamic regime in Iran long coddled by Democrats from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry.
• 
And it's not just the left that hates Bolton.  His appointment has also sent shivers down the milky spines of Deep State "shadow warriors," who have sought to undermine every Republican president since Ronald Reagan by spreading rumors, leaking classified intelligence and even lying to the president himself.
• 
Bolton is like the boy who shouts out as the emperor parades naked down the street that "the emperor has no clothes!"
• 
It's his penchant for truth-telling that the left and the shadow warriors fear the most.
• 
President Trump finally has found a kindred spirit to help him sort through the lies the Deep State is continuing to feed him.
• 
Both the president and America will be well-served by National Security Adviser John Bolton.
      In hot pursuit of George Orwell  (JWR 04/03/2018)
• 
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue and street building renamed, every date altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.  History has been stopped.  Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."
• 
We're almost there, and the Mob has replaced the Party as the intimidator of men who were once free.
• 
Once we cleansed the square of Robert E.  Lee, whose memory is held by perfectly honorable men and women to be a hero of their past, all toil and trouble for the abused and mistreated among us would be avenged at last and forgotten forever.
• 
Weak men of cramped mind went along with the barbarians who wear ignorance as their only badge of distinction.
• 
Now the Mob moves on, as the attentive and alert knew it would.
• 
The town of Arcata's distinctions are that it was the first American city to ban the sale of genetically modified food, the first to elect Green Party fanatics to a majority of its city council and the first — well, one of the first, but who bothers to count?  — to allow potheads to grow marijuana when it was cool but not yet legal.
• 
And now with one more distinction.  Arcata is the first city to take down a monument to a president of the United States lest it stain the marble and bronze conscience of Arcata.
• 
The object of Arcata's piety and ire is William McKinley, the 25th president, who served honorably and well at the turn of the 20th century, but who stands accused of something called "settler colonialism."
• 
Exactly what makes a "Native people" distinctive in Arcata is not quite clear, since we're all native to somewhere.  It might be the people who are native to one of the 100 federally recognized Indian tribes, many of whom call California home.
• 
The Native 100 apparently does not include the Apache, the Comanche or the Cheyenne, who were not very nice and who were known more for their skill at torture and scalping than for the more compassionate characteristics that we all know and faithfully aspire to.
• 
"Put a rope around [McKinley's marble neck], and pull it down."
• 
But William McKinley?  He was not even a Confederate, but a worthy veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic.
• 
Other cities and states have joined the Mob seeking out offending monuments, and often not to Confederates.
      President Trump is protecting America by sending troops to our border  (Fox 04/03/2018)
• 
"We're going to do some things militarily....  Until we can have a wall and proper security, we're going to be guarding our border with the military."
• 
The president is right to say he has a duty to defend our nation's borders.
• 
Acknowledging "a big step," President Trump correctly argued that turning to the military to protect our border is preferable to chasing illegal entrants around the country.
• 
"We cannot have people flowing into our country illegally, disappearing, and by the way never showing up for court."
• 
Of 2.5 million illegal immigrants let go on their promise of return, almost 919,000 disappeared into thin air.
• 
Whether suspected of no crime at all besides illegal entry into the U.S.  – or of trafficking drugs, arms and people – they vanished. 
• 
Likely some migrated to sanctuary cities, others into criminal gangs, others blended into America's Heartland and ubiquitous shadows, aware they had violated the law, resolved not to be caught.
• 
Boosting our military presence on the southwest border is sound policy, entirely legal, and viscerally satisfying, but it is a short-term, feel-good, muscular stopgap.
• 
For the moment, ramping up National Guard on the border – as Presidents Reagan, George H.W.  Bush, George W.  Bush, Clinton and Obama did – says to illegal immigrants "don't try it."
• 
The action tells Mexico "we are watching."
• 
And President Trump's message to Congress is "get back to work on the wall, fixing immigration, addressing DACA."
• 
Moving the military to the border is not a solution to the problem of illegal immigration.
• 
Eventually, a border wall must be built – methodically reinforced by ground, sea, air and space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – or we have no real border.
• 
This is a matter of protecting our national security.
• 
Is the Trump approach legal?  Of course.  If the president of the United States can't defend our country, who else is supposed to do the job?
• 
A temporary fix is wise and advisable, especially with caravans of illegal immigrants testing America's will.
• 
And one thing more.  If President Trump shifts money from the Defense Department he could fund the border wall he campaigned on.  It is, after all, part of the defense of our country.
• 
The ball is now in the court of Congress.  If lawmakers object to using troops on our southern border there is only one alternative.
• 
Fund a border wall and virtual barriers between the U.S.  and Mexico.
• 
Just as we don't leave the doors to our homes wide open to anyone who wants to enter, we have to protect our borders from an unending flow of illegal immigrants and drugs.
      Cal Thomas: We're heading for a breaking point in Washington  (Fox 04/03/2018)
• 
... it is about power, about raising money to achieve it, and then holding onto it once you've gotten it.
• 
A corollary is that if an issue is actually resolved, it disappears as a fundraising and electoral tool.
• 
That is why certain issues resurface during (and between) election cycles.
• 
Issues like the poor (but likely only when Republicans are in power, not when Democrats hold the majority), education (stated goals are never achieved, and no matter how much is spent it is never enough, which is why the left opposes school choice), the environment ("climate change" appears to remain an unchallengeable doctrine for the left, though there is some evidence ignored by liberal media that strongly suggests otherwise), taxes and spending (history shows the benefits of small government and low taxes, but in an age of envy, greed and entitlement one finds it increasingly difficult to teach self-reliance when the federal government is seen by too many as a giant ATM).
• 
Term limits for those who stay too long at the government "fair" would contribute mightily to draining the swamp, but that is unlikely to happen because Congress would have to vote for them.
• 
That's not likely to happen.  Politicians are not about to vote themselves out of office, so we the people must give them a push.
• 
Another contributing factor to Washington's dysfunction is the expectation that government can — or should — solve every problem.
• 
That it consistently demonstrates it cannot does little to dissuade some from believing it can.  This is cult-like thinking in which evidence never squashes faith.
• 
If Washington dysfunction is to end, ... the expectations of the American people must change.
• 
Where can people look for inspiration?  Certainly not the news media, which consistently promotes government as the only solution to any problem, no matter how often government fails.
• 
What about the entertainment industry?  Hardly.  Most films and TV are about promoting social and political agendas held by "progressives."
• 
Academia?  When I was in college, the purpose of a good education was to enable students to establish careers that would allow them to take care of themselves and their families.
• 
At too many universities today it seems one is "taught" left-wing propaganda and subjects that have nothing to do with preparing someone to have a career that relates to anything most people wish to buy or in which they might have an interest.
• 
The solution to government dysfunction can be found in the Constitution, history and common sense.
• 
All are being ignored and so government, its cost and its multiple failures expand, leading to an eventual and inevitable breaking point.
      Jimmy Kimmel’s attack on Melania Trump is despicable and wouldn’t be tolerated for any other....  (Fox 04/03/2018)
• 
"Not a chance she did one thing to help set that up.  There's no — she didn't dye eggs, she didn't fill baskets."
• 
Did Michelle Obama dye eggs or fill baskets?  Where was Kimmel to question her efforts during the eight years of the Obama administration?
• 
Next, Kimmel mocked Melania Trump's accent.  This type of anti-immigrant attack is only OK for leftists to make on people like Melania.
• 
Diversity is important to the left, as long as it doesn't include any diversity of opinion or departure from what is expected from you.
• 
I'm an immigrant, I came to the U.S.  as a child from the Soviet Union and I frequently get these kinds of attacks from the left when I write something with which they disagree.
• 
"Go back to where you came from" is standard.
• 
As I said, this kind of othering is only OK when aimed at immigrants for whom the left has no need.
• 
When his son was sick he took to his show crying and speaking out in support of saving ObamaCare.
• 
After the Las Vegas shooting, Kimmel openly blamed Republicans – first the politicians, then anyone on the right.
• 
After blaming U.S House speaker Paul Ryan by name, he followed up the next night targeting all people who disagreed with his gun positions by saying Republicans know "in their hearts" that they bear some responsibility for the slaughter.
• 
This is not a comedy show and Kimmel shouldn't have cover for his anti-immigrant comments because he's an alleged "comedian."
• 
His attack on Melania is despicable and wouldn't be tolerated for any other First Lady or immigrant.
• 
It shouldn't be tolerated for Melania Trump either.
      If the Second Amendment falls, our entire Bill of Rights falls  (Fox 03/28/2018)
• 
The startling new proposal by 97-year-old former Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment to our Constitution's Bill of Rights is unwise, dangerous and totally unrealistic.
• 
For 227 years, the amendment has guaranteed that "the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." We should not abandon it.
• 
Once we begin whittling away at one of our rights in the Bill of Rights, what's to stop the erosion of the others?  Freedom of speech?  Freedom of religion?
• 
The retired justice said he believes that "simple but dramatic action would move Saturday's marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform."
• 
Yes, that's true – but only if the objective of these young people is to end every citizen's right to self-defense and defense of others, and to fundamentally empower the federal government to abuse the American people.
• 
America's Founders, who fought to win our freedom from Britain and to secure ratification for our Constitution and Bill of Rights, would be dumbstruck at Stevens' blithe default to trust in an all-powerful government, rather than in the good sense and responsibility of "We, The People."
• 
How nice life would be – for the government – if we did away with the nag and drag of rights contained in the Bill of Rights, a sacred distillate of natural law and 800 years of Western defense for these individual liberties.
• 
Stevens' bizarre proposal is outright advocacy of prostrating citizens before a federal government armed to the teeth.
• 
Recall the timeless words of British politician Lord Acton in 1887: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
• 
No wonder the man of peace, Mahatma Gandhi, defended every individual's right to bear arms.
• 
Recalling how Indians were disarmed by the Arms Act of 1879, Gandhi wrote: "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
• 
The idea that we should correct an absence of responsibility by the few through empowering government to strip rights from the many is more medieval than modern – a license to lawlessness, not a defense of legal and moral rights.
• 
The hidden argument in Stevens' pitch is this: An individual's sacred right to self-defense, to the defense of innocents and against government, boldly embodied in the Second Amendment, is transferable to government.
• 
Alas, life of a free citizen is hard.  It is not about repealing rights, but about learning to use our God-given, constitutionally protected freedoms responsibly.
• 
The fault is not in the Bill of Rights, but in ourselves.
      Trump's tariffs on China will benefit America and are long overdue  (Fox 03/22/2018)
• 
... fulfilling his campaign promise to challenge a rising and increasingly rogue China.  The move is justified and long overdue.
• 
... in the long run, the president's action will be a plus for the U.S.  economy and preserve American jobs.
• 
By acting decisively, the president has once again proven that he will take on the toughest of foreign policy challenges, knowing there could be major political repercussions.
• 
And while many pundits are calling the president's action a mistake, the start of a potential trade war or even foolish, I have a better definition: it's called leadership.
• 
President Trump framed Thursday's actions as a response to blatantly unfair and improper Chinese rules that force U.S.  firms seeking to access the Chinese market to form joint ventures with Chinese companies.
• 
he rules enable the Chinese firms to routinely steal the intellectual property of the U.S.  companies.
• 
This gives the Chinese the ability to use American-developed advanced technology to strengthen their own industries to better compete with American firms in China and around the world.
• 
President Trump is saying, in effect, that he will not allow China to steal our trade secrets and then use those secrets to compete against us.
• 
Intellectual property: As noted above, many U.S.  firms can only gain access to the Chinese market if they agree to what amounts to surrendering their intellectual property when they partner with a local firm.
• 
Trade deficit: The U.S.-China trade deficit in 2017 rose to an astounding $375 billion.
• 
For an idea of the scale of such an imbalance in trade, it equals the total gross domestic product of Austria and nearly equals the GDP in the state of Maryland.
• 
Industry subsidies: We all know that a key part of the Trump administration's plan to "Make America Great Again" is to encourage Americans to purchase U.S.-made products.
• 
China wants its citizens to buy Chinese products, but to achieve this goal the government is handing out massive subsidizes to its domestic industries so they can dominate the home market and the global economy of the future.
• 
Weapons designs: Beijing has embarked on a campaign to steal many of the most classified and lethal weapons systems the U.S.  military has ever produced. 
• 
Worst of all, many reports suggest China has successfully gained access to various design aspects of the $1 trillion F-35 program, the most important and technologically advanced U.S.  military program in history.
• 
With Beijing attempting to sell advanced military hardware around the world as well as build armed forces that could defeat the U.S.  in battle, the motivations for such theft is clear.
• 
"China has stolen some of our most advanced military hardware designs.  They need to pay a price for that."
• 
Federal employee data: In a breach of national security that was clearly unprecedented, the personal information of some 21 million Americans was stolen from the federal government's Office of Personnel Management by what the FBI believes were Chinese-government hackers.
• 
The scale and scope of this cybertheft – more like cyberattack – should not be understated.  These hackers stole countless pieces of personal information.
• 
This included detailed security clearance data and fingerprint information.  This stolen material likely included the all-important SF-86 form, which is used for conducting federal employee background checks.
• 
Military dominance: Over the last decade, Beijing has attempted to dominate large stretches of territory across Asia.
• 
... Beijing's massive military build-up – including the deployment of new aircraft carriers, a massive missile force as well as modernized army – is all part of this plan.
• 
The above only scratches the surface of China's aggressive actions.
• 
In fact, I would argue that President Trump's action on tariffs should be seen as a response to something that has been building for decades: a natural reply by our nation to defend our own economic, military and geopolitical interests.
• 
When looked at as part of this bigger picture, we can see the new tariffs on Chinese products are the beginnings of a comprehensive U.S.  strategy that's in our national interest and that will protect American jobs and our economy from China's unfair practices. 
• 
My only regret is that past presidents did not have President Trump's courage and did not punch back against China sooner. 
      Today's atheists are bullies — and they are doing their best to intimidate the rest of us into silence  (Fox 03/20/2018)
• 
There's no polite way to say it.  Atheists today are the most arrogant, ignorant and dangerous people on earth.
• 
We've all seen how these pompous prigs get offended by the slightest bit of religious imagery in public and mortified if even a whisper of "Merry Christmas" escapes the lips of some well-meaning but naive department store clerk during the "holiday season."
• 
... became furious when President Trump had the gall to mention Christianity and Jesus Christ without also mentioning atheists — at the National Prayer Breakfast!  (How dare he!)
• 
Yes, these atheists are loud, nasty, unapologetic and in-your-face.
• 
But while their arrogance is annoying, it's nothing compared to their ignorance.
• 
Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them.
• 
They basically dismiss this vast majority as being either moronic or profoundly naive.
• 
What they don't seem to know – or won't admit – is that the greatest contributions to civilization have been made, not by atheists, but by believers.
• 
Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Isaac Newton all believed in God.  Nobel-prize winner Wilhelm Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays; Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry; William Keen, the pioneer of brain surgery; rocket scientist Wernher von Braun; and Ernest Walton, the first person to artificially split the atom — all believed in God.
• 
And speaking of pioneers of science, who do you think coined the term "scientist" in the first place?  William Whewell, an Anglican priest and theologian!
• 
He also came up with words "physicist," "cathode", "anode" and many other commonly used scientific terms.  Essentially, the very language used by scientists today comes from the brain of a believer.
• 
Even the Big Bang Theory itself – which atheists mistakenly think bolsters their arguments against God – was proposed by Fr.  George Lemaitre, a Belgian astronomer and Roman Catholic priest!
• 
And the father of genetics — which provides the basis for the whole theory of evolution — was Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk!
• 
Yes, the new atheists have an ignorance of history bordering on madness.
• 
But are they really dangerous, too?
• 
You bet they are.  The truth is, the atheist position is incapable of supporting any coherent system of morality other than ruthless social Darwinism.
• 
That's why it has caused more deaths, murders and bloodshed than any other belief system in the history of the world.
• 
Atheists, of course, are always claiming hysterically that Christianity has been responsible for most of the world's wars, but that's just another example of atheistic ignorance.
• 
The main reasons for war have always been economic gain, territorial gain, civil and revolutionary conflicts.
• 
... only 6.98 percent or all wars from 8000 BC to present were religious in nature.
• 
If you subtract Islamic wars from the equation, only 3.2 percent of wars were due to specifically Christian causes.
• 
That means that over 96 percent of all the wars on this planet were due to worldly reasons.
• 
Indeed, in the last 100 years alone, upwards of 360 million people were killed by governments — and close to half of those people were killed by atheist governments!
• 
... there is a profound and frightening connection between atheism and death.
• 
Atheist leaders like Stalin, Mao Zedong, Hideki To ?jo ?, Pol Pot and many others bear the blame for the overwhelming majority of deaths caused by war and mass murder in history.
• 
And while many atheists make the preposterous claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, his private diaries ... reveal clearly that the Fuhrer was a rabid atheist:
• 
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity," Hitler stated, "was the coming of Christianity.  Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child.  Both are inventions of the Jew... Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity."
• 
The facts are incontrovertible.  Between the years 1900 and 2017, approximately 150 million people were killed by atheistic political regimes.  150 million!_
• 
And it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?  Atheists don't believe in God, so they don't believe in any transcendent, objective moral law.
• 
Nor do they believe that human beings are made in the image of God, and so they don't believe humans possess infinite value and dignity.
• 
When you put these two beliefs together, you have a deadly recipe that makes killing "problematic" human beings quite easy and defensible.
• 
One has only to look at the growing numbers of abortions, suicides, homicides, and cases of state-sponsored euthanasia, and infanticide, to see the atheist-death connection.
• 
As a thoroughly secular and functionally atheistic culture, we are fast becoming accustomed to "killing" our problems rather than dealing with them in a compassionate, loving, and sacrificial way.
• 
So yes, the modern breed of atheist is arrogant, ignorant and dangerous.
• 
Too many Christian authors have tried to be kind and amiable in an effort to demonstrate that believers don't have to sink into the mud in order to defend the faith.
• 
That tact is very charitable, but unfortunately, it just doesn't work with bullies.
• 
And that's exactly what modern-day atheists are — bullies; bullies who are doing their best to intimidate the rest of us into silence.
• 
... there is only one way to deal with bullies, even in this politically correct world — and that is to stand up to them and fight them; to fight them in a bold, aggressive, and fearless way, and to fight them now._
      Cal Thomas: California's pro-abortion FACT Act is an attack on free speech  (Fox 03/20/2018)
• 
... the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether pro-life pregnancy help centers in California should be required to post notices informing women of the availability of abortions elsewhere.
• 
Some might ask in the interest of fairness and equality (two buzzwords the left likes to use in other situations) whether abortion clinics are required to post notices with information about alternatives to the procedure.
• 
"There is no provision in the California so-called Fact Act that would require abortion facilities to inform women about the resources available from pregnancy resource centers."
• 
It is the abortion industry, which makes money off these vulnerable women, that fears information, otherwise they would be posting signs in their facilities about alternatives and the kind of help available during pregnancy and after birth.
• 
The pregnancy help centers, unlike the abortionists, do not charge for their services, raising the question of who cares more about women?
      Michael Goodwin: A second special counsel should be investigating the FBI leaks  (Fox 03/19/2018)
• 
... the disparity between the no-holds-barred way Trump is being probed and the slapdash, unserious effort to uncover anti-Trump wrongdoing in the government.
• 
McCabe is among the top law-enforcement officials and others in Barack Obama's administration who appear to have used their official powers to try to prevent or undermine Trump's presidency, yet there is no single investigation focused on this dark chapter in American life.
• 
This politicized double standard must end.
• 
Like many, I have doubts about the wisdom of a second special counsel.  As Mueller and others before him have proven, once they begin, special counsels are reluctant to stop.
• 
There is no applause for coming up empty-handed, so the incentive is to continue until they get a scalp or three.
• 
Another problem is that special counsels operate without clear accountability...
• 
Yet those concerns now pale next to the accumulation of evidence of serious and widespread wrongdoing during the last two years.
• 
Although the Inspector General of the Justice Department was the first to flag McCabe's "lack of candor" when asked about a media leak, McCabe would not be required even to answer the IG's questions after he retired.
• 
The same is true for former FBI Director James Comey despite serious suspicions about his conduct.
• 
Similarly, top Obama officials, such as James Clapper, Susan Rice, John Brennan and Loretta Lynch, who likely played various dirty tricks against Trump, are no longer subject to internal probes.
• 
A criminal investigation, then, is the only way to find out who did what, and to connect the dots between various agencies, such as the FBI and State Department, that reportedly worked secretly to help elect Hillary Clinton.
• 
Yet a routine criminal investigation, conducted by the Justice Department and the FBI, isn't the solution, either.
• 
Asking those departments to investigate themselves when they are still stonewalling Congress and private lawsuits over internal documents guarantees a whitewash.
• 
All of which makes a special counsel essential.  He or she could be appointed by the attorney general or a deputy if Sessions' recusal prohibits his involvement.
• 
The starting point should be the leak probes Sessions launched.  Those have to do with classified material fed to the anti-Trump media during and after the election...
• 
The leak probes are important in their own right, but even more so because they might involve people who also allegedly engaged in other wrongdoing aiming to tip the election.
• 
... McCabe, in addition to leaking, reportedly waited nearly a month before examining thousands of e-mails, some classified, that Clinton top aide Huma Abedin sent to her husband...
• 
Those suspicions must be investigated, especially because McCabe's wife got more than $600,000 for a state legislative race from Clinton ally...
• 
... Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who have much to answer for under oath, including their talk of an "insurance policy" in case Trump won the election.
• 
That conversation took place in "Andy's office," almost certainly a reference to McCabe, their boss.
• 
Their involvement took another turn last week when texts revealed Strzok was close friends with the federal judge who initially presided over Michael Flynn's case. 
• 
... the FISA application to spy on Carter Page appears to have been a tissue of lies and omissions that some lawyers believe rises to criminal conduct.
• 
Again, McCabe and Strzok, along with Comey, were key players.
• 
In short, there is a mountain of suspect behavior a new special counsel should dig into.  All that's missing is someone with a shovel.
      Trump is right on tariffs — That’s why he was elected  (Fox 03/08/2018)
• 
... America has the right to impose tariffs or restrict access to our markets the same way a competitor does to us.
• 
When it comes this issue, the policy should be simple: do unto others as they do unto you.  Who can argue with that?
• 
The administration's actions will not start a global trade war, cause a nasty recession or undo the international order as we know it.
• 
All of that is just fake news, designed to take down a president the mainstream media simply can't stand.
• 
The Trump administration, in fact, has a clear and important goal in mind: to protect U.S.  jobs and industries that we must have in this country for vital national security reasons.
• 
"Once our steel industry is gone it's not coming back.  Once our aluminum industry is gone, it's gone for good.  And the ramifications could be historic."
• 
"Think of it this way: Imagine if we had to fight a war for a sustained period and we were dependent on other nations for steel or aluminum imports for the most basic of war-fighting materials?  Forget the idea that some of those nations, for example China, might be on the other side of the fight, but what happens if those nations need that steel for themselves or simply we can't get the steel shipped to our shores because of wartime conditions?"
• 
"This is a common-sense step, and no one should get freaked out about it."
• 
The European Union, for example, imposed a duty of as much as 73.7 percent on Chinese steel just a few years ago, all in an effort to protect jobs and European economies.
• 
President Trump is simply doing what he said he would do during the presidential campaign – protecting American workers and safeguarding our national security, all at the same time.
• 
His action underscores the fact that no one has stood up for the forgotten men and women of this nation as industry after industry, job after job, has disappeared because of unfair and non-reciprocal trade practices.
• 
I know dozens of hardworking people back home who have lost their careers because their jobs were offshored overseas or their industries were destroyed by predatory trade practices.
• 
Now President Trump is standing up and fighting for these Americans.
• 
We can debate the policy – in fact we should, in an honest manner – but we should all be proud that our president is actually trying to do something to preserve American jobs.
      Americans should applaud Trump for starting to end our nation's wholesale surrender on trade  (Fox 03/07/2018)
• 
President Trump is right to call for tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.  Tariffs are often used as a last resort, but the domestic steel industry has reached that point.
• 
The president's announcement last week of a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum is precisely what he promised.
• 
Enacting these tariffs will restore some needed sanity to the global trade in the metals markets, which is in imbalance because of the actions of China's government.
• 
Beijing has followed a state-led policy with a goal of dominating the global steel industry.  This has been so successful that China now makes half the world's steel.
• 
Big government subsidies enable Chinese steel mills to dump steel on world markets at prices below the cost of production, creating unfair competition for steel mills in the U.S.  and other nations.
• 
Yet in the face of these facts, many of the president's fellow Republicans are lashing out at his attempt to address these problems.
• 
Despite that, President Trump beat an almost entirely free-trading field in the 2016 GOP primaries.
• 
Though he continues to enjoy support of the conservative base, some Republicans will apparently not stomach even this slightest break from trade policy dogma.
• 
That same crowd completely misjudged America's years-long economic embrace of the Chinese government, which is currently using this influx of wealth to fortify an enormous mercantilist police state.
• 
The critics also claim there is no national security basis for protecting American steel.  But they conveniently ignore the fact that you can't build a steel mill quickly in an emergency, and that our steelmaking redundancies are already becoming thin.
• 
An economics textbook wouldn't see anything wrong with America offshoring its entire steel industry, but most Americans would be unnerved to be defended by tanks made with Chinese steel...
• 
Instead of attacking the president, the critics should instead show us their own plans to stop the economic bleeding in America's industrial belt.
• 
China is well on its way toward dominating the markets for future-oriented technologies like semiconductors and artificial intelligence, and it has used trade as a tool to achieve that objective.
• 
China forces technology transfers upon foreign firms operating in its borders.  It rampantly abuses intellectual property protections.
• 
Tariffs are a dirty word inside the Beltway.  But I suspect that people who live elsewhere ... want to defend American jobs.
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: In defense of the right to keep and bear arms  (Fox 03/01/2018)
• 
After burying their dead, the survivors have mobilized into a mighty political force that loosely seeks more laws to regulate the right to keep and bear arms.
• 
The young people, traumatized and terrified with memories of unspeakable horror that will not fade, hope that a person bent on murder will obey gun laws.
• 
... it is nearly impossible to engage rationally with tears and pain, which is why we all need to take a step back from this tragedy before legally addressing its causes.
• 
If you believe in an all-knowing, all-loving God as I do, then you accept the concept of natural rights.
• 
These are the claims and privileges that are attached to humanity as God's gifts.
• 
If you do not accept the existence of a Supreme Being, you can still accept the concept of natural rights, as it is obvious that humans are the superior rational beings on earth.
• 
Our exercise of reason draws us all to the exercise of freedoms, and we can do this independent of the government.
• 
Stated differently, both the theist and the atheist can accept the concept of natural human rights.
• 
Such rights cannot be separated from us, as they are integral to our humanity.
• 
Foremost among our unalienable rights is the right to life — the right to be and to remain alive.
• 
And that right implies the right to defend life — the right to self-defense.
• 
If I am about to assault you in the nose, you can duck, run away or punch me first.
• 
If I am about to strike your children, you can strike me first.
• 
If I am about to do either of those things with a gun, you can shoot me first, and no reasonable jury will convict you.  In fact, no reasonable prosecutor will charge you.
• 
The reason for all this is natural.  It is natural to defend yourself — your life — and your children. 
• 
The Framers recognized this right when they ratified the Second Amendment.  They wrote it to ensure that all governments would respect the right to keep and bear arms as a natural extension of the right to self-defense.
• 
They didn't write the Second Amendment to protect the right to shoot deer; they wrote it to protect the right to self-defense — whether against bad guys, crazy people or a tyrannical government bent on destroying personal liberty.
• 
... the court also articulated that the right to use guns means the right to use guns that are at the same level of sophistication as the guns your potential adversary might have, whether that adversary be a bad guy, a crazy person or a soldier of a tyrannical government.
• 
The nightclub in Orlando, the government offices in San Bernardino, the schools in Columbine, Newtown and Parkland were all killing zones because the government prohibited guns there and the killers knew this.
• 
We all need to face a painful fact of life: The police make mistakes like the rest of us and simply cannot be everywhere when we need them.
• 
When government fails to recognize this and it disarms us in selected zones, we become helpless before our enemies.
      Can California officials continue to proudly defy federal laws on immigration?  (Fox 03/01/2018)
• 
... more than 800 "criminal aliens and public safety threats remain at large in the community, and I have to believe that some of them were able to elude us thanks to the mayor's irresponsible decision."
• 
Does the federal government have the power to set national policies?
• 
Or, does every state and city have the right to pick and choose which federal laws it wants to obey and ignore those it doesn't like – like a person selecting only certain items in a cafeteria?
• 
If obeying federal laws becomes optional rather than mandatory, enforcing these laws will become impossible and they won't be worth the paper they are written on.
• 
President John F.  Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard to enforce integration in that state and made Gov.  Wallace stand down.  Kennedy was hailed as a hero.
• 
President Trump has not yet federalized the California National Guard to enforce federal immigration laws in that state, but you can bet that if he did liberals would sharply attack him as a heartless tyrant.
• 
One thing is clear: Mayor Schaaf's reckless actions, supported by a sympathetic left-wing media and left-wing celebrities, have brought us to a very dangerous point.
• 
"Not only will Oakland and its police force not cooperate with ICE, but the city will actively seek to thwart efforts to detain and deport (illegal) immigrants."
• 
... it's hard to see how Schaaf didn't break a federal law that states: "Any person who ... conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection" any illegal immigrant can be imprisoned for up to five years for each violation.
• 
The mayor claims that because she did not receive information about the raid through "official channels" her actions were legal.  But it must be assumed that she was only provided information about the law enforcement action through unofficial channels in the expectation that she would act on it in her official capacity.
• 
While immigration is the flashpoint of the clash between California and the U.S.  government, it is hardly the only bone of contention.
• 
It has fought the Trump administration's travel ban of visitors from several high-risk countries, and it has engaged in high-stakes fights over the regulation of firearms, the internet and climate policy – all in the face of strong federal opposition.
• 
... there are certain core elements of governance – among them borders and national defense – that are the exclusive domain of the federal government.
• 
... California Democrats have decided that they can simply ignore federal laws whenever they do not approve of them.
• 
... declared that she was willing to go to jail to keep the federal government from exercising control over borders and deporting illegal immigrants in Oakland.
• 
The Trump administration should give her – and other California officials who believe that they can "stand in the schoolhouse door" and flout federal law – the chance to back up their words with actions.
      The NRA just got a new member.  Here’s why this mom of two joined the group  (Fox 02/27/2018)
• 
I did so because the absence of common sense that I've witnessed recently is alarming to me as a parent.
• 
We've seen deeply misguided hatred and rage directed toward people who want to protect themselves with a gun rather than targeted at the heart of the problem.
• 
It's time for reason and sound judgement to prevail.
• 
This battle we're facing isn't about guns, it's about evil.
• 
Evil in the hearts of those who choose to act with a gun.
• 
We are living in the midst of a depraved culture where right is wrong and wrong is right.
• 
One where we've seen the breakdown of family values, and an overall morality that's flexible.
• 
It's much easier to put a band-aid on the problem, take away everyone's guns, and hope the problem goes away.
• 
Until it doesn't.  Evil is no respecter of laws, and evil doesn't need a gun.
• 
We've seen a number of failures exposed on the part of the FBI and the Broward County Sheriff's office...
• 
It was first revealed that the FBI received tips and didn't follow proper protocols.  It came to light that police were called to the school shooter's home 45 times and did nothing, and since 2011 there were at least 30 reports of domestic violence and troublesome behavior against the shooter.
• 
We've also learned that a Broward County deputy assigned to the school, and possibly two other deputies, didn't go into the school while the shooting was going on.
• 
In light of those revelations the last thing we need to do is disarm law-abiding citizens, send our kids to school, and hope for the best.
• 
Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
• 
We certainly need to do something, and I think most people can agree on that.  However that something is not establishing gun-free zones.  Criminals don't care about gun-free zones.
• 
If you read some of the hysteria lately, it's the NRA who has blood on their hands.
• 
However, the NRA did not go into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and kill 17 people.
• 
That was a deranged, sick, evil person who had a history of red flags that nobody bothered to address leading up to that day.
• 
It's hard to confront the real problem - the evil behind what drives people to pick up a gun, make bombs out of fertilizer, drive trucks into pedestrians, or fly planes into buildings.
• 
Disarming people who follow the law isn't going to stop another act of violence, it's not going to make a person with evil in their heart obey the law, and it's not going to make me as a parent feel any safer sending my kids to school.
      America has two gun cultures: Don't blame law-abiding gun owners for murders  (Fox 02/21/2018)
• 
I don't like to speak out at these times, because as Ecclesiastes correctly tells us there is "a time to every purpose under the heaven," including "a time to mourn."
• 
... the truth that is many in the media refuse to cover the truth about guns and the gun cultures in America.  They don't want to admit there are two wildly different gun cultures in our country.
• 
One is the freedom-loving, gun-rights culture that upholds the responsible use of guns for hunting, sport and self-defense.
• 
The other is the criminal culture that thrives in the places where government restricts gun rights.
• 
Not acknowledging that the two cultures exist separately, and instead pretending legal gun owners are responsible for crimes committed by the illegal gun culture in America, isn't just a lie.  It is getting good people killed.
• 
In the most recent mass murder last week at a Florida high school, where 14 students and three adults were killed, the FBI failed in its responsibility – not guns or gun owners.
• 
That was hardly an anomaly.  In many other cases a murderer should have been denied legal access to guns, but the bureaucracy failed us.
• 
In other cases, from Columbine High School in Colorado to the Pulse nightclub in Florida, law enforcement opted not to charge in to stop the carnage.
• 
They had their own safety in mind, but nevertheless this tells a person who carries concealed that they can't depend on law enforcement during such a scenario.
• 
And no matter how good a job law enforcement agencies do, police cannot be everywhere at all times when criminals may decide to begin murdering innocents.
• 
Because of this, disarming responsible and law-abiding gun owners to take away their ability to defend themselves and others is dangerous, and can result in greater loss of lives.
• 
America's gun owners aren't the problem.  They are allies in the fight to stop criminals who use guns.
• 
Blaming freedom for the actions of criminals is just nonsensical.  It also misdirects resources and, if that ideology gets its way, simply reduces the freedom of the law-abiding citizenry – not the criminals who by definition will break the law.
• 
When we stop blaming legal gun owners and guns for murders we'll be left, by the process of elimination, with those who are really to blame: criminals, some of whom are mentally ill.
• 
We'll also have to acknowledge that good citizens are being harmed because they aren't allowed to carry arms for their own defense in some areas of this otherwise free country.
• 
Of course we'll never stop all murderers, whether they are committed by terrorists, bank robbers or the mentally ill.
• 
But it would help if we could channel our attention and resources toward criminals and the mentally ill who are a danger to themselves or others – not the good citizens who live across this great nation.
      Missing fathers and America's broken boys - the vast majority of mass shooters come from...  (Fox 02/19/2018)
• 
To point out that boys need their fathers is to shine a spotlight on divorce and single mothers; and that is, admittedly, uncomfortable.  But there's no way to address fatherlessness comfortably.
• 
The fact is, divorce and family breakdown ... is catastrophic for children.  There's more than one reason why, but an obvious one is that in the majority of cases, divorce separates children from their fathers.
• 
Girls who grow up deprived of their father are more likely to become depressed, more likely to self-harm, and more likely to be promiscuous.  But they still have their mothers, with whom they clearly identify.
• 
Boys do not have a comparable identification and thus suffer more from father absence.  They also tend to act out in a manner that's harmful to others, which girls typically do not.
• 
More often than not, children lose contact with their fathers — for two reasons.  One, mothers remain the default custodial parent in the average American divorce and thus retain most of the control.
• 
Second, it is usually women who consider themselves the aggrieved party, as evidenced by the fact that wives initiate 70 percent of divorces.
• 
The unfortunate result is that some divorced mothers use any opportunity to undermine their children's relationship with their father or, if not that, dismiss the significance of a father's role.
• 
It's not that single mothers can't be great mothers.  They can.  But they cannot be fathers.  Children need their mother and their father to have the best shot in life.
• 
... I take very little credit for who my son has become.  He needed me the most when he was little, but once he became aware of his male identity, it was his father — not me — he looked to for guidance and direction.  His father was, and remains, his model for manhood.
• 
When boys don't have this model, they suffer.  And when they suffer, society suffers.  A majority of school shooters come from fatherless homes; and a study of older male shooters ... produces similar results.  Indeed, the consequences of fatherlessness are simply staggering.
• 
And the saddest part is most absent fathers aren't absent by choice.  The "deadbeat dad" exists, but not in spades.
• 
In many instances, women are divorcing perfectly good husbands in their search for what they believe will be a better match — which is a natural outgrowth of no-fault divorce.
• 
Certainly, women who are married to abusive or dangerous men must file for divorce.  But such husbands and fathers cannot account for the 70 percent female-led divorce rate.
• 
The root of fatherlessness is deep and wide, but it ultimately rests in two things: our culture's dismissal of men as valuable human beings who have something unique to offer — on the one hand, we tell them to ‘man up,' and on the other we tell them manhood is the problem — and its dismissal of marriage as an institution that's crucial to the health and well-being of children.
• 
This long-standing belief has been supplanted by the notion that marriage is about the emotional fulfillment of adults.
• 
It is not.  Marriage is about the needs of children, pure and simple.
• 
That's how it began, and that's how it remains.  Children's needs are the same today as they were one hundred years ago.
• 
It is we, not they, who have changed.
• 
Thus, it is we who have failed.
      Frederick Douglass was a Christian and a patriot – why is this so hard for the left to accept?  (Fox 02/19/2018)
• 
... partisans often project their contemporary political views into the past — rather than allowing the past to inform the present.
• 
History, then, becomes not an explanation of how things came to be — but rather — a depository where ideologues come and go, mining for information that confirms their already long-held beliefs.
• 
Any discordant facts are conveniently discarded as "myths."
• 
Here's the truth about Frederick Douglass: he was an unapologetic Christian minister and a patriotic American statesman — two distinctions that the left just can't accept.
• 
... Douglass required his children to read an entire chapter of the Bible before dinner each night.  Passing the book around the table, each child was expected to read a verse until the chapter was complete.
• 
"I finally found my burden lightened and my heart relieved.  I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever."
• 
... decades after being subjugated to the evils of the slave system, Douglass accepted his former master's invitation to sit at his bedside as he took his last breaths.
• 
Somehow, even after enduring years in chains as another "christian" man's property, Douglass demonstrated the powerful Christian ethic of loving one's enemy.
• 
"Your celebration is a sham, your boasted liberty an unholy license...There's not a nation on the Earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour."
• 
... after the abolition of slavery — his views about the United States change.  But for those who need history to support their agenda, they tell half the story in place of the whole.
• 
"If now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage...and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty and civilization, we are indebted to the... noble army"
• 
Frederick Douglass' life exemplifies precisely what's missing in today's politics.  He lived his life beholden only to his heartfelt beliefs — not a partisan political agenda.
• 
He loved God, his family, and his country.  What about that is so hard for the left to accept?
      DACA Deal: GOP should join Trump in demanding real immigration reform in exchange for any...  (Fox 02/15/2018)
• 
President Trump was right to demand ... that new immigration legislation provide at least $25 billion to secure our southern border, end chain migration that allows legal immigrants to bring their extended families to the U.S., and end a diversity lottery system that gives preferential treatment to immigrants from nations that send few people to America.
• 
The Republican proposal before the Senate that the president endorsed would also grant legal status to some 1.8 million immigrants who were largely brought to the U.S.  illegally as children.
• 
While it is natural to sympathize with these young people, that sympathy must be balanced by the reality that any amnesty encourages more illegal immigration, thus threatening to extend the problem it purports to solve.
• 
While Pelosi's speech was not a surprise (it is sadly no longer atypical for Democrats to prioritize the interests of non-Americans over actual American citizens), the question remains: Why are so many Republicans in Congress willing to join her in advocating for DACA recipients without the significant immigration reforms backed by President Trump?
• 
As left-wing celebrity astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson recently wrote in a viral tweet: "Not that anybody asked, but one-third (95 out of 289) of all American Nobel Prizes in the Sciences have been earned by immigrants to the United States."
• 
But Tyson's tweet, much as it may provide a comforting illusion to leftists and open-borders advocates, is deceptive.
• 
Only one of those Nobel Prize recipients in the sciences immigrated from one of the top five countries DACA recipients came from, representing almost 90 percent of DACA recipients (That one was Mario Molina, the son of a senior Mexican diplomat.)
• 
Many DACA recipients cannot even speak English fluently, as indicated by the fact that the DACA application form offers space to list the name of the person who translated it for the recipient.
• 
Almost three-quarters of DACA recipients live in low-income households.  Less than 900 serve in our military.  Twenty percent are high school dropouts.
• 
And despite President Obama's rhetoric that DACA recipients are "Americans ... in every single way but one – on paper," the Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that 70 percent have only "basic" or less English fluency.
• 
No wonder that the top economic sectors employing DACA recipients are food preparation and serving, sales, administrative support, and construction – not exactly critical deficit areas for the U.S.  economy, unless your goal is to make sure Americans don't make high wages.
• 
Studies of immigrants with similar demographic profiles to the average DACA recipient suggest that their income and education levels will continue to lag U.S.  averages for multiple generations.
• 
They're also likely to be a natural Democratic constituency.
• 
But what is perhaps most frustrating about the GOP's rush to amnesty is that once they get amnesty, DACA recipients will become eligible for benefits and preferences over many American citizens, a group including both natives whose families have been helped build this country for countless generations and millions of legal immigrants who followed the rules and did things the right way.
• 
Based on their demographic profile, more than 95 percent of DACA recipients will be eligible for affirmative action covering everything from preferential college admissions and job placement to advantaged treatment for government programs targeted at "underrepresented minorities."
• 
While there have been countless stories written about the allegedly sad plight of DACA recipients "in the shadows" how come nobody is asking why we are giving a lifetime extra preference to illegal immigrants along with an amnesty?
• 
I believe that racial preference programs of all types should be canceled and are flagrant violations of the Constitution.
• 
As Chief Justice John Roberts famously wrote in a 2007 Supreme Court case: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
• 
Approximately 90 percent of voters who voted for Donald Trump will be directly disadvantaged if we don't close the DACA affirmative action loophole.
• 
And with the average DACA recipient having a skill level that lags the average American's, maybe we should think twice before we get on the amnesty train at all.
• 
Wouldn't it be great if all Republicans in Congress considered the dreams of their own constituents to be as important as those of illegal immigrants?
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Did Hillary Clinton pull off the dirtiest dirty trick in US presidential history?  (Fox 02/12/2018)
• 
For law enforcement, Congress and even journalists, exposing misdeeds is like peeling an onion.  Each layer you remove gets you closer to the truth.
• 
A top layer involves the texts between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her married lover, Peter Strzok, the lead agent on the Hillary Clinton e-mail probe.
• 
They casually mention an "insurance policy" in the event Trump won the election and a plan for Strzok to go easy on Clinton because she probably would be their next boss.
• 
Those exchanges, seen in the light of subsequent events, lead to a reasonable conclusion that the fix was in among then-Director James Comey's team to hurt Trump and help Clinton.
• 
Another layer involves the declassified House memo, which indicates the FBI and Justice Department depended heavily on the unverified Russian dossier about Trump to get a warrant to spy on Carter Page, an American citizen and briefly a Trump adviser.
• 
The House memo also reveals that Comey and others withheld from the secret surveillance court key partisan facts that would have cast doubt on the dossier.
• 
Officials never revealed to the judges that the document was paid for by Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee or that Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, said he was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected."
• 
A third layer of the onion involves the revelations in the letter GOP Sens.  Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham wrote to the Justice Department.  They urge a criminal investigation into whether Steele lied to the FBI about how much and when he fed the dossier to the anti-Trump media.
• 
Strangely, even after it fired him for breaking its rule forbidding media contact, the FBI continued to praise his credibility in court.
• 
It also reveals that two former journalists linked to Clinton ... created and gave a State Department official additional unverified allegations against Trump.
• 
The official passed those documents to Steele, who passed them to the FBI, which reportedly saw them as further evidence that Trump worked with Russians.
• 
"It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr.  Steele's work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr.  Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility."
• 
The State Department official involved in the episode ... admitted he shared all the unverified allegations from the Clinton hitmen with other State Department officials.
• 
There are many more layers of the onion to peel, but here's where we are now: It increasingly appears that the Clinton machine was the secret, original source of virtually all the allegations about Trump and Russia that led to the FBI investigation.
• 
In addition, the campaign and its associates, including Steele, were behind the explosion of anonymously sourced media reports during the fall of 2016 about that investigation.
• 
Thus, the Democratic nominee paid for and created allegations against her Republican opponent, gave them to law enforcement, then tipped friendly media to the investigation.
• 
And it is almost certain FBI agents supporting Clinton were among the anonymous sources.
• 
In fact, the Clinton connections are so fundamental that there probably would not have been an FBI investigation without her involvement.
• 
That makes hers a brazen work of political genius — and perhaps the dirtiest dirty trick ever played in presidential history.
• 
The only thing that went wrong is that she lost the election.  And based on what we know now, her claims about Trump were false.
• 
Of the charges against four men brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, none involves helping Russia interfere with the election.
• 
... it is certain that Steele and other Clinton operators provided all the allegations about Trump himself that the FBI started with and that Mueller inherited.
• 
For Clinton, creating a cloud over Trump's presidency and helping to put the nation through continuing turmoil is a victory of sorts.
• 
America is fortunate it's her only victory.
      Silicon Valley’s surveillance capitalism has resulted in Big Tech killing off human privacy  (Fox 02/10/2018)
• 
... Silicon Valley had "created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works."
• 
"No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth.  And it's not an American problem – this is not about Russian ads.  This is a global problem."
• 
He cited the role of mobile messaging service WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) in the killings of seven innocent men in India after hoax messages about strangers abducting children were shared.
• 
"And imagine taking that to the extreme, where bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want.  It's just a really, really bad state of affairs."
• 
... Facebook "literally changes your relationship with society" and "probably interferes with productivity in weird ways."
• 
... the whole point of Facebook is to keep people using it.  ... "the thought process ... was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'"
• 
"It's a social-validation feedback loop ... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology."
• 
The companies love to boast in high-minded terms about how their mission is not something as mundane as making money.  No, they are all about "changing the world"...
• 
Well, with all that wealth and power comes influence.  And increasingly, despite our Silicon Valley overlords' self-regarding and cloyingly sanctimonious smugness, it's not for the good.
• 
Because the business model of many of these tech firms relies on selling ads, their relentless focus is on gathering data on their users – that would be you – to enable advertisers to better target their messages.
• 
With a phone in everyone's pocket, these companies can now literally track your every move.
• 
And the creepiness seems to get worse by the day.  ... planning to install sensors into some of its boots and coats to track how they're used.
• 
Children are growing up talking to Alexa as if "she" is a member of the family.
• 
Silicon Valley is actively exploring computer chips that would be inserted into people's brains, so that artificial intelligence software can be "merged" with human thought.
• 
Who owns all this data and what will happen to it?  Quite apart from the sheer creepiness of tech companies wanting to invade your brain, we know from recent experience that literally everything can be hacked – whether by criminals or foreign governments like China that hacked our own government and stole millions of Americans' most personal data.
• 
Artificial intelligence, of course, is not just about invading your privacy: it's assaulting our economy too.
• 
Studies predict that huge swaths of jobs will be destroyed by Big Tech as it advances into new areas of economic activity and automates jobs from truck driving to accounting.
• 
Silicon Valley's only response to the economic devastation it's about to unleash on American workers is to push forward the idea of a "Universal Basic Income" – a government wage regardless of whether you work.
• 
Translation: "We, your tech overlords will be doing all the interesting work.  Sadly, there won't be any jobs left for you serfs – but don't worry, we'll makes sure the government gives you some money so you can sit around all day and make the most of your newfound leisure time.  Enjoy, little people!"
• 
Big Tech's baleful economic impact extends to another disastrous feature of our modern economy: a stifling of competition.
• 
When sector after sector in our economy ends up being dominated by a handful of giant corporations, workers lose their bargaining power. 
• 
Companies like Apple and Google are desperately sucking up to the brutal authoritarian communist regime in China in order to gain access to the vast market.
• 
But in the process, our own leading companies are aiding and abetting China's plan for world domination by handing over technology – like artificial intelligence – that China will use against us.
• 
And finally let's not forget the role of Silicon Valley in shaping our culture and the way we think. 
• 
... we can also see this in the manifestation of the liberal bias that pervades Silicon Valley and the tech industry.
      Cal Thomas: The memo and the truth  (Fox 02/06/2018)
• 
Partisans tend to read, watch and listen only, or mostly, to information and opinions that reinforce their beliefs.  If information surfaces that counters those beliefs, it is usually disparaged, excused or ignored.  That's human nature.
• 
... "the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court appear to have been used to influence the 2016 election and its aftermath."
• 
If true, that is real collusion.
• 
Critics of the memo, who tried to stop its release, initially contended it undermines and smears the FBI and the Department of Justice.
• 
No it doesn't.  It suggests that a few higher-ups in those agencies used their power and influence in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from becoming president and after he was elected to undermine his presidency.
• 
Now that the memo has been made public, partisans on the left, who once claimed its release would seriously damage the FBI and the DOJ, now say there is nothing there.
• 
It can't be both a danger and nothing, so which is it?  In Washington, having it both ways is a cherished tradition.
• 
The memo asserts those seeking the warrant did not tell the judge about the fingerprints of the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign on the dossier.
• 
That is worse than oversight.  If true, it is criminal and possibly prosecutable behavior.
• 
The Republican memo is not the end but rather the beginning to exposing behind-the-scenes maneuvering by liberals to keep Donald Trump out of the White House and put Hillary Clinton in it.
• 
The public has a right to know all the facts in this case, wherever they lead.
      Michael Goodwin: FBI memo proves the ‘deep state’ is real – and the press is part of it  (Fox 02/05/2018)
• 
Now that we know what the declassified House memo says about government misconduct, we also know what it means: The Washington swamp — the deep state — is bigger, more vicious and more dangerous to American liberty than even a cynic could have imagined.
• 
Because of the memo and previous revelations, we know that swamp creatures are embedded in the top of the FBI and the Department of Justice.
• 
Some used their power to try to tip a presidential campaign based on their personal politics.
• 
They conducted a sham investigation of the Democratic candidate and misled federal judges to spy on at least one associate of her Republican challenger.
• 
To block exposure of their misdeeds, these officials falsely claimed that national security would be damaged.
• 
Add that despicable lie — issued in the name of the FBI itself — to their shameful records. 
• 
Thanks to the battle over the memo, we also know with 100 percent certainty that the mainstream media is part of the swamp.
• 
The efforts by The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, to keep the memo from ever seeing sunshine were appalling.
• 
Those organizations are betraying their legacies and their duties as journalists.  They share with corrupt officials a hatred of Donald Trump and believe that ending his presidency justifies any and all means.
• 
Their motives are as partisan as that of the Democrats who fought tooth and nail to scuttle the memo.
• 
The details of the memo make a strong case that current and former officials committed crimes by misleading FISA court judges in seeking four surveillance warrants against Carter Page, a bit player in the Trump campaign ­orbit.
• 
Those details seal the sordid legacy of former FBI Director James Comey.
• 
He signed off on three warrant requests, reportedly without informing the judges that the essential piece of evidence against Page was the infamous Russian dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
• 
Its author, Christopher Steele, a former British spy, never went to Russia to interview his paid sources, some of whom were Kremlin officials.
• 
Steele was hired by the FBI, then fired when he shared his dossier with the press and lied about it.
• 
He also confided to an agent that he loathed Trump and "was passionate about him not being president."
• 
Did the agent, Bruce Ohr, whose wife worked for the same firm as Steele, Fusion GPS, tell the judges that?  Did Comey?  The memo says no.
• 
... the memo claims that Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director removed for his conduct during the separate Clinton investigation, testified that no warrant would have been sought "without the Steele dossier information."
• 
Not incidentally, current FBI Director Christopher Wray and his team read the memo before it was released, and did not dispute McCabe's claim.
• 
To the Trump haters, these facts don't matter.  He is, in their minds, unfit to be president, so nothing short of assassination is out of bounds.
• 
Yet it is a mistake to view the memo's revelations through the lens of whether you like Trump, or what you think of Carter Page.
• 
Something even larger is now at stake.  Trump is the great disrupter who has overthrown the established political order like no one in modern history, and many opponents have lost their bearings in resisting his presidency.
• 
In their rage and bigotry, they are willing to abandon fundamental principles.  We only know this because he won the election; none of this shocking misconduct would have been revealed under a Hillary Clinton presidency.
• 
The claims in the memo that FBI and Justice officials acted corruptly should concern all fair-minded Americans, regardless of political preference.
• 
Those claims force us to ask whether we are a nation of laws that apply equally to all.
• 
If not, we are no longer America.  We are a banana republic where it's acceptable for the government to use its police powers against political opponents.
• 
... Page and others linked to Trump were accused of having ties to Russia, then their names were leaked to the media in a bid to sway the election and then to topple the president.
• 
There may be other flimsy FISA applications covering other Trump associates we don't yet know about.
• 
Hysterical Trump haters greeted the memo's release by declaring that we face a constitutional crisis.
• 
They are right — and they are creating it.
      Democrat and ex-CIA: Democrats are hurting themselves in dismissing FBI memo  (Fox 02/05/2018)
• 
Strzok, a self-described conservative Democrat, was a long-time counterintelligence agent with lead assignments on three key investigations.  These included 1) the Hillary Clinton email scandal, 2) the Michael Flynn inquiry, and 3) the special counsel's investigation into possible Trump – Russia collusion.
• 
His influence at the FBI is hard to understate.
• 
Meanwhile, his colleague and secret lover Ms.  Page served as an attorney within the Bureau's Office of the General Counsel and, for a time, on Robert Mueller's investigation.  She was also a Clinton supporter.
• 
In exchanges between Strzok and Page, both expressed views that are – at the very least – wildly inappropriate given their roles.
• 
Page went on to say that Strzok should focus on "protect(ing) the country from that menace" (Trump).  Her paramour agreed, adding, "I can protect our country at many levels."
• 
Page feared that the Democratic nominee would likely strike back in vengeance after she became president.
• 
"The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear.  You think she's going to remember or care that it was more [DOJ] than [FBI]?"
• 
Recently departed FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe also faces concerns of bias.
• 
... he may have been present when Strzok and Page discussed the aforementioned "path" and related "insurance policy." Why?  According to text messages, the meeting where the conversation was held was in "Andy's office."
• 
Mr.  Ohr met with Mr.  Steele both before and after the FBI dismissed the British national for exposing his dossier to the media.  He also relayed Steele's information to other officials within the FBI.
• 
Mrs.  Ohr, for her part, conducted opposition research on Trump on behalf of her employer, Fusion GPS.  Mr.  Ohr shared this reporting with FBI colleagues too.
• 
Former FBI Director James Comey has acknowledged that, on at least one occasion, he served as an unauthorized source for a New York Times story critical of the president.
• 
This conduct was a clear violation of FBI rules and protocol.  It was also a possible violation of U.S.  law given the sensitive, proprietary nature of the information leaked.
• 
... Director Comey was also involved in another worrying episode when he, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-DNI James Clapper briefed the Steele dossier to a large number of elected officials in D.C.
• 
... this move was odd in that, by spreading the dossier's uncorroborated allegations, Comey and company virtually assured the dossier would leak and be given a degree of credibility that it didn't otherwise deserve.
• 
Their decision is all the more perplexing given that each of the men downplayed or rejected the dossier's claims within days of their briefing it.
• 
Though Mueller is widely regarded as fair-minded, some of his team members may not be.  Of Mueller's 15 known staffers, nine have faced scrutiny over their donations to Democrats (in general) and Hillary Clinton (in particular).
• 
... some Republicans express discomfort at Mueller's longtime friendship with Comey.  Given the latter's possible misdeeds, GOP officials worry that Mueller might not be able to separate his friendship from his investigation in the event Comey becomes a person of interest.
• 
For many Democrats, however, none of this warrants particular concern.  Indeed, they argue that Trump and Republicans have engaged in nothing but partisan smears against a wholly innocent FBI.
• 
Indeed, some have gone so far as to warn Trump and Republicans about the consequences of angering the Bureau.
• 
"You think you can push us off this?  You better think again, Mr.  President.  You've been around for 13 months, we've been around since 1908.  I know how this game is going to be played.  We're going to win."
• 
If senior FBI officials are rightfully under indictment next November rather than Trump, election night may not be as kind to The Resistance as one might hope.
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump is right — He and his campaign were victims of a political attack by the Justice Department...  (Fox 02/03/2018)
• 
Whatever the media and Democratic detractors say, the memo released by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee Friday that revealed how the FBI and Justice Departments abused their powers to spy on the Trump presidential campaign is breathtaking.
• 
This kind of thing should not happen in America.  Average Americans have not heard the last of this.  They were betrayed.
• 
In sum, President Trump was right.  ... "This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump' in probe.  But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on."
• 
Nunes was right to be distressed at what he discovered.  All Americans should be.
• 
Why Democrats on the Intelligence Committee do not share this distress is beyond understanding, except because of shortsighted maneuvering for political advantage.
• 
The memo by Republicans on the committee summarizes raw intelligence confirming that formerly steady and professional staff of the Justice Department and FBI were motivated to act against candidate Trump by personal antipathy toward him, media-stoked fear of him, and perhaps personal loyalties to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
• 
As a result, they traded their integrity for betrayal of democratic principles and our Constitution.
• 
... something overcame them, grabbed them and turned them into something else during the 2016 election campaign.  They devolved into political animals.
• 
The four-page memo confirms that Justice Department and FBI leadership were directly and personally intertwined with a company hired by the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to conduct opposition research on Trump.
• 
The research produced a series of false allegations tying Trump and his campaign to Russia.
• 
Though unsubstantiated, Steele's allegations were hard to counter, because it is always hard to prove a negative. 
• 
"Steele admitted to (Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce) Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he ‘was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.'"
• 
An anti-Trump cabal grew within Justice Department and FBI, animated by the cry to save America from itself by preventing Donald Trump from being elected president.
• 
The power of the federal government is enormous, can smash a private citizen and could crush most political campaigns.
• 
Amazingly, Trump and the American preference for him survived.  That is remarkable and sobering.
• 
We are living in a time when senior Justice Department and FBI officials felt justified, for political reasons, to deceive the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and all Americans.
• 
The House Intelligence Committee memo shows that federal officials appear to have violated the public trust and their oaths of office, subverting laws for political outcomes. 
• 
... here we are, watching laws perverted for political ends in our own country, watching the heart of who we are shredded by people sworn to uphold our laws.
• 
... we have not heard the last of this stunning abuse of power by the Justice Department and FBI, nor should we.
• 
President Trump was right – he and his campaign are the victims of an unwarranted, politically motivated, breathtaking, behind-the-scenes drama, and a profound violation of public trust.
• 
It should not have happened in America.  Rep.  Nunes should be congratulated, not vilified.
      Steve Hilton: Yes there is a Deep State — and Tony Blair warned me about it  (Fox 02/03/2018)
• 
Blair was candid and thoughtful, and gave us a brilliant primer on what he'd learned about making the machinery of government work.
• 
But there was one thing above all that stood out from our conversation: his blunt warning about the administrative state and the attitude any incoming government would face from the permanent bureaucracy.
• 
"You cannot underestimate how much they believe it's their job to actually run the country and to resist the changes put forward by people they dismiss as ‘here today, gone tomorrow' politicians."
• 
"They genuinely see themselves as the true guardians of the national interest, and think that their job is simply to wear you down and wait you out."
• 
That, in a nutshell, is the Deep State.
• 
... the problem of an entrenched permanent bureaucracy – with its own agenda, determined to thwart the aims of elected politicians – is if anything an even bigger problem here than the one Tony Blair warned me about in Britain.
• 
When the politicians, the bureaucrats, the lobbyists, the journalists, the think tank leaders and the donors all live in the same swanky neighborhoods, all go to the same dinner parties and all send their children to the same schools, a culture of arrogance and insularity inevitably follows.
• 
These swamp dwellers are invested in keeping their power and influence, and that depends on not rocking the boat.  Don't ask too many questions.  Don't dig too deep.  Keep the show on the road.
• 
That's why the swamp is up in arms about the idea that anyone should question the FBI or the Justice Department – it's simply not done.
• 
Well, all that changed with the election of President Trump.  An outsider stormed the barricades, eager to disrupt the snooty, self-serving world of our ruling elite, with the public cheering him on.
• 
No wonder they swamp dwellers resist him.  No wonder they want to crush him.  He represents a mortal threat to their interests and their way of life.
• 
Of course, they dress up their resistance in high-minded rhetoric about protecting the Constitution.
• 
But in reality, it is the ruling elite that is undermining democratic norms, by subverting the core of our democratic process: the idea that we the people should be in charge, through the representatives we elect.
• 
So yes, there is a Deep State in America and it has its own agenda.  Not just in the Justice Department and the FBI, but throughout the federal government.
• 
Dismantling this Deep State in the name of our democracy must be a top priority in the years ahead.
      President Trump, don't let your State of the Union lock you into a bad immigration deal  (Fox 01/29/2018)
• 
The future of President Trump's first term — and prospects for a second — hinge on the forthcoming immigration battle; so he shouldn't say anything in Tuesday night's State of the Union Address that locks him into a bad deal.
• 
And that is what's on the table now: a bad deal.
• 
Tax cuts, tax reform, and ObamaCare repeal have long been a part of the Republican Party orthodoxy, but the issue of immigration has set Trump apart since day one of his candidacy.
• 
He single-handedly elevated border security, citizenship, and national sovereignty to the top of the national debate — much to the chagrin of not just Democrats, but corporate and establishment Republicans who have long (and quietly) favored amnesty and open borders.
• 
The president's "deplorable" supporters love him for unapologetically pointing out obvious truths long-since abandoned in Washington: the rule of law matters, borders should be enforced, immigration policy should be rational, and patriotism should be the centerpiece of unity.
• 
"...  and if Democrats do reject the deal, it proves they don't actually want to solve immigration and are the obstructionists the president says they are.
• 
This deal should not be about revealing Democrats for the hypocrites they are, but about securing our borders.
• 
... and thus face a real choice: listen to the Establishment and accept a highly-flawed deal for the sake of a win or keep remembering the "Forgotten Man" and fight hard for lawful American citizens before illegal immigrants — unlike the Democrats.
• 
I believe strongly in the latter approach — not because I don't trust President Trump to make a good deal, but because I don't trust Congress to implement that deal.
• 
... future administrations and unaccountable bureaucracies will be left to implement any such deal — an untenable situation based on the history of previous immigration deals: amnesty always happens, security never does.
• 
The solution at this important moment starts and ends with timing.  As part of a future "deal," any narrow pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants should only be triggered after the wall is fully funded and being built, chain migration changes have taken effect, and the diversity visa lottery program has ended...
• 
For conservatives who support this president and his policies, demanding that the timing be done right is the best way to ensure we do not get hoodwinked — yet again.
• 
We know we can trust President Trump; but we also know we cannot trust this Congress, future presidents, and the permanent government bureaucracies to implement the policies faithfully.
• 
To believe so would be sheer idiocy.
      How about a State of the Union that's about unity, not emotional overreaction?  Just a thought  (Fox 01/30/2018)
• 
Despite a roaring economy, rising national security, tax relief and shrinking government, half the nation is now programmed for emotional overreaction. 
• 
Worse, half our leaders condone it, even participate in it, having decided that's where the votes lie, in pushing emotional disunion.
• 
The average American is getting tired of this perpetual venting, sniping, disparagement of facts, and recourse to raw emotion. 
• 
As a nation, Americans see their economy fundamentally growing, businesses suddenly hiring, tax rates falling, people rejoining the labor market after years of despair.  They see allies softening their opposition, adversaries newly deterred from aggression. 
• 
In Davos, President Trump was cheered, not jeered.  It was a brave trip.  His candor produced new honesty among friends, aligning with his straight talk on Jerusalem, balanced trade, the imperative of border security, ending United Nations waste, urging NATO to pony up for their defense, and China's assistance on North Korean sanctions. 
• 
In Syria, Islamic State has been virtually eradicated, a 180-degree reversal on the last administration.
• 
In the Persian Gulf, Iran no longer harasses U.S.  Navy ships, another dramatic turnabout.
• 
Truth, reason and integrity are powerful persuaders, at home and abroad. 
• 
But still, part of America is determined to supplant these positive facts with destructive emotions.
• 
That is our Union's greatest threat, reckless appeals to disharmony and dissolution, bold disaffection for fellow Americans, and the championing of disunion. 
• 
Hollywood will host an "alternative" State of the Union speech, no doubt filled with newly recycled Republican villainy, fresh vitriol, and sundry vituperative vicissitudes, in short, hot air.
• 
The real problem is irresponsibility where we should expect more...
• 
Last week, Schumer pitched gratuitous insults at his Republican Senate colleagues, calling them "delusional and paranoid" when they cited growing facts that support high-level bias and political malfeasance at the FBI.
• 
He should be equally concerned about the facts and impartiality of the FBI and Department of Justice, but instead defaulted to emotional pandering.
• 
Pelosi indulged her breezy belligerence, now a hallmark but not who Americans are, as she described President Trump's proposal to legalize 1.8 children brought to the United States illegally in a swap for 25 billion dollars to build a credible border as "staggering cowardice" and "hateful," even "a campaign to make America white again." Really?
• 
Then, capping the week, for a perfect hat trick, Hillary Clinton stooped to a new low, a new appeal to sex-based disunity, shouting out her thanks to "activist b****es supporting b****es."
• 
Abraham Lincoln in 1858 drew inspiration from St.  Matthew, quoting Christ: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand."
• 
The same is true for us, today.
      Suzanne Venker: I'm so happy Trump's not a 'feminist'  (Fox 01/29/2018)
• 
"No, I wouldn't say I'm a feminist.  I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far.  I'm for women, I'm for men, I'm for everyone."
• 
How utterly refreshing to have a president who not only rejects the feminist label but who implies that feminism is a divisive movement that has little regard for men.
• 
He's right, of course.  But he's the only commander-in-chief to admit it.  He may even be the only commander-in-chief to understand it. 
• 
Barack Obama, our former president proudly declared himself a feminist.
• 
George W.  Bush didn't say anything one way or the other, but like all presidents he had to contend with the pressures of the feminist elite.
• 
The feminist elite — who reside in Hollywood, in publishing, on campuses, in politics and in the media — have a lot of clout, and they stop at nothing to get what they want.
• 
That means when a Democrat is in office, feminists are on fire.  Obama, for instance, made a powerful ally.
• 
But when a Republican is in office, the pressure to conform to feminist edicts is intense.  And most presidents cave.
• 
That's what makes President Trump a breath of fresh air.  Clearly, he knows feminism has nothing to do with equality between the sexes.
• 
Clearly, he knows feminists sell the notion that American women are victims — of both men and society.
• 
It doesn't matter what the topic is ... the result is always the same: women are oppressed.  And men are the oppressors.
• 
"Women's magazines, a nearly $7 billion-a-year business, are based on telling women their lives are too tough for them to handle and they should feel very sorry for themselves.  This distorted vision of your life is absolutely crazy."
• 
So I, for one, am grateful to have a president who knows that oppression and victimhood, along with an anti-male, anti-marriage agenda, are the underpinnings of modern feminism.
• 
It means that unlike past presidents, Democratic and Republican, Trump will not cave to feminist demands.
• 
The one thing that makes this president unlike any other is his refusal to be bullied.
• 
And that's precisely what feminists are: bullies.  I think they've finally met their match.
      What alleged illegality is Mueller investigating?  Trump exercising lawful presidential authority?  (Fox 01/27/2018)
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants to interview President Trump.  ... But the questions Mueller is looking at are not about the issue the special counsel was supposed to examine: collusion with Russians to fix the 2016 presidential election.
• 
Rather ... Mueller "is seeking to question President Trump in the coming weeks about his decisions to oust national security adviser Michael Flynn and FBI Director James B.  Comey..."
• 
The two acts ... are related to "efforts by the president or others to hamper the special counsel's probe."
• 
How can that be?  Flynn had nothing to do with the special counsel's probe.
• 
And firing the head of the FBI does not thwart what all the people under him are doing.
• 
So what is the alleged illegality here that could possibly "hamper" or obstruct the investigation?
• 
... a prosecutor wants to interview the president of the United States about conduct that is not only legal, but actually involves the execution of presidential authority.
• 
Two men have already fallen into Mueller's trap.  Retired Army Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making statements inconsistent with tapped and taped conversations with Russian Ambassador to the U.S.  Sergey Kislyak.
• 
But Flynn's entire conversation was legal, or his statements would have been part of the charges against him.
• 
One might ask why the FBI, having the entire transcript of a conversation that contained nothing illegal, even questioned Flynn at all.
• 
This was the legal equivalent of the FBI showing up to ask you what you had for breakfast – there's nothing illegal about eating breakfast.
• 
If you do not want to admit you had a glazed donut and reply "yogurt," the prosecutor can charge you with making a false statement to the FBI.
• 
George Papadopoulos, an adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to providing false statements about the timing of his contacts with certain Russians.
• 
But the contacts were legal no matter when they occurred or they, too, would have been part of the charges against him.
• 
There is also the danger of two people differing in their statements about an event and the prosecutor – without any other evidence supporting one side or the other – indicting one of them.
• 
By agreeing to be interviewed by Mueller, Mr.  President, you are agreeing to be questioned about exercising your executive authority in areas having nothing to do with any illegality or even collusion.
• 
In agreeing to this you may recall that an event occurred on Monday and Comey may recall it occurred on Tuesday.
• 
A la Papdoupoulos, only the timing is off.  Guess which one of you Mueller will indict?
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Hollywood tries to speak for us but really, they just don’t get it  (Fox 01/27/2018)
• 
Members of the privileged, elitist culture use fame, fortune and power as a compass to measure their identity and determine their fulfillment and happiness.
• 
They've become one big walking contradiction in their attempt to inundate the rest of us with their version of normal, which isn't really normal at all.
• 
This has gone on for so long they can't even see how morally bankrupt they've become.
• 
From Washington to Hollywood, and even bleeding into highbrow Silicon Valley, this oppressive, lost culture has spent far too long trying to enlighten the rest of the country.  Now it's time to enlighten them.
• 
Here are some things they don't understand about most of us.
• 
We are content.  While we have goals and dreams, which many of us are deeply driven to pursue, our greatest accomplishments and what we outwardly attain are not what bring us contentment.
• 
Our contentment comes from doing what is honorable – pursuing a deeper love in our marriages; raising our kids to be responsible and contributing members of society; volunteering in our communities; investing in our friendships; and building each other up instead of tearing each other down.
• 
Contentment is not something you get by hitting the next goal or milestone or attaining that next big thing. 
• 
The lost culture equates power, pleasure, money and fame with fulfillment and contentment – but is really pursuing an endless cycle of depravity.  Its members deceive themselves into believing the next thing will satisfy them.
• 
It's no secret many celebrity couples view marriage as expendable.  A quick glance at the magazine covers in the supermarket checkout line tells you all you need to know about who is upgrading to a newer model in any given week.
• 
Hollywood gets rich off of selling us fairytales and glamour.  To most of us, there is nothing glamourous about our spouse cheating on us.
• 
This is an industry that is drowning in a sea of sex scandals.  We just got done watching them wear all black to the Golden Globes to protest the sexual misconduct that many of them ignored for years.
• 
Now we're supposed to pay to watch them portray violence against women as some great love story, because the woman in the movie happens to agree to the violence?
• 
We don't want our kids to grow up to be like members of this depraved culture...
• 
They are a culture unto themselves.  They don't represent most of us or the values we are trying to instill in our kids.
• 
We may be entertained and amused by them from time to time, and even a little curious.  But we don't want to be like them and we certainly don't want our kids to emulate them.
• 
Depravity is an ultimately unfulfilling existence.
• 
In the end, it's investing in our families, our friendships and our faith – rather than just ourselves – that gives us the contentment and peace that we seek more than any amount of fame, fortune or power ever could.
• 
See related Dont Have the Addresses... (Mike Lester, 12/21/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Last Movie (Mike Lester, 01/07/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      The importance of public safety and national security in the immigration debate  (Fox 01/25/2018)
• 
The battle occurring in Congress over providing amnesty, citizenship and government benefits to illegal aliens – as well as the debate over chain migration and the diversity visa lottery program – often boils down to well-worn talking points.
• 
Lawmakers should instead review two recent reports from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, along with information from the U.S.  Sentencing Commission.
• 
They show that aliens commit federal crimes at a much higher rate than citizens, and that many terrorists have entered the U.S.  through our immigration system that a separate Inspector General's Office report says has a defective screening process.
• 
... from 2011 to 2016 44.2 percent of the criminals convicted in federal courts were non-citizens.
• 
This is despite the fact that aliens are only 8.4 percent of the American population, divided almost evenly between legal and illegal aliens.
• 
When immigration crimes are excluded, aliens still committed 21.4 percent of federal crimes during that five-year period – more than twice their share of the population.
• 
As might be expected, aliens represent 94 percent of criminal immigration offenses.  Those offenses include trafficking in U.S.  passports and entry documents, human smuggling and fraudulently acquiring U.S.  passports, among other crimes.
• 
... report that looked at the criminal histories of 55,322 illegal aliens in federal, state and local prisons found that they had been arrested 459,614 times for 700,000 criminal offenses.
• 
... 251,000 criminal aliens in federal, state and local prisons ... had committed 3 million criminal offenses, a majority at the state and local level.
• 
None of these crimes would have happened if these aliens were not in the U.S.
• 
Of the 549 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges in federal courts between the Sept.  11, 2001 terrorist attacks and Dec.  31, 2016, 402 – or 73 percent – were foreign-born individuals who entered the U.S.  through our immigration system.
• 
More than 1,700 other aliens have been removed from the U.S.  over national security concerns and suspected involvement in terrorist activities.
• 
... most of the ICE offices responsible for implementing the terrorist screening process don't even have access to the classified networks that have information about known or suspected terrorists.
• 
Because of the defects ... ICE "may be missing opportunities to identify, take into custody, communicate status of, and make decisions on those aliens who pose the highest risk to national security and public safety."
• 
This problem is compounded, according to the report, by sanctuary cities where "local law enforcement agencies do not cooperate with ICE," which prevents the screening of many criminal aliens.
• 
All of these problems show that the priority of Congress when it comes to immigration policy – in addition to making sure it is beneficial to the economic prosperity of the nation – must be to guarantee that our immigration system does not compromise public safety and national security.
• 
Based on these reports, that guarantee does not currently exist.
• 
See related Anything Else to Declare? (Glenn McCoy, 11/01/2017) cartoon from Terror picture album
• 
See related NY Terrorism Accomplices (Sean Delonas, 11/03/2017) cartoon from Terror picture album
      Where free speech should be promoted, free speech is under attack  (Fox 01/25/2018)
• 
Universities large and small, public and private, are restricting students' and professors' speech or enabling others to silence speech with which they disagree. 
• 
... stopped a student from speaking about his religious faith because it "disturbed the comfort of persons"...
• 
... a student was arrested and jailed for handing out copies of the U.S.  Constitution because they didn't have a permit.
• 
... student protesters violently shut down a debate and physically assaulted one of the school's own professors.
• 
In other cases, schools' policies effectively encourage this behavior by imposing special limitations on speakers they deem controversial.
• 
If you disagree with a speaker about to visit campus, simply declare his views offensive and threaten to riot, and the speaker will be sidelined.
• 
The heart of a university education used to be exposure to a wide range of ideas and the opportunity to debate their merits in order to inform one's own positions and learn to articulate them persuasively.
• 
And everyone should be concerned about threats to free speech, regardless of their political beliefs.
• 
Viewpoints that are mainstream now may quickly become minority views, and vice versa, as has happened repeatedly throughout history.
• 
That is why protecting even unpopular speech in the short run benefits everyone in the long run.
• 
When public universities restrict speech, it has constitutional implications as well.
• 
The First Amendment prevents government institutions from imposing speech restraints such as arduous permitting restrictions or arbitrary curfews, particularly if the school discriminates against certain viewpoints.
• 
Yet this is precisely what many university speech policies do.
• 
Free speech is not only a fundamental right, but, as James Madison said, the "effectual guardian of every other right."
• 
Free speech enables citizens to advocate for all their other civil rights and is the single most powerful bulwark against government tyranny.
• 
This is perhaps why our Founders protected it in the very first amendment in our Bill of Rights.
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Greg Gutfeld: Why Trump's 'chaos' should make you chuckle, not choke  (Fox 01/24/2018)
• 
You have to be honest with me: you too feel anxiety under the current Trump era.
• 
Part of it is due to Trump himself: very day he appears to be walking the ledge, with the country in his hands.  Will he offend half of America?  Will he taunt a hermit kingdom to wage war?  Will he upset an entire gender, industry or ally?
• 
Add to that an especially loud opposition that proclaims every Trump action or tweet to be the harbinger of the apocalypse.
• 
It's a fight every day, and it's never been louder, or more hysterical.
• 
Every day is the first day of the end of the world.
• 
Yet every day, things seem to turn out fine.
• 
Sure, we live the Trump presidency in a day by day fashion, but each day seems to be working out for the American people.
• 
Never mind the sound and fury, Trump gets through it all, taking the heat, and we reap the benefits.
• 
He's like a drunk walking home during an earthquake.  Both effects (booze and seismic shakes) cancel each other out, and he makes it home in a straight line, without a scratch.
• 
It's due to what Trump plays with (big dangerous issues, not marginal stuff like nutrition and wetlands) and how he plays them (with little regard to the politically correct vernacular) and that brings us alarm.
• 
Because of this ... it's as if we're in one of those scary looking taverns in old westerns — where the sense of calm feels only temporary, before the next murderous brawl breaks out.
• 
But this is how it feels with Trump, for me — until I slow down and see what's really going on.
• 
And when you slow down and analyze the nature and consequence of his tweets — as one example — you realize that the sense of chaos is a sign not of trouble, but of good times.
• 
Do you think that in a terrible time — of deadly wars and economic ills — we would tolerate a leader who trolls his adversaries daily on social networks? 
• 
No.  But in good times, we'll put up with almost anything.
• 
"Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March.  Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months.  Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!"
• 
Whether you like him or not, you have to credit him for targeting so much good-natured tomfoolery at a group of people who might tear him to shreds if given the chance.
• 
It was a perfect troll, a perfect tweet.  And it served a key purpose: putting himself on the side of fun.
• 
... if you slow down and take a step back you realize that the tweet isn't reflecting unease at all — but reveals a country operating at full steam — so productive and peaceful that its boss can tweet out his cheerful thoughts just for kicks and giggles.
• 
The only worry, in my mind, is when he stops tweeting.  Because that means things are bad.
• 
Fact is, you can learn to embrace the appearance of chaos, and the churning emotional unease it causes, by taking these steps:
• 
1.  Acknowledge good things are happening in our country, mainly because our country is strong, industrious and can withstand any man or movement.
• 
2.  Admit that there is a cost to Trump — that such a personality/force like him will create disruption, and highly vocal animosity that can be jarring.
• 
3.  Trace that cost back to our country's ability to soldier it.  The only reason why so many small disturbing and surprising things are happening at once is because of the enabling of big, efficient things make it possible.
• 
4.  Stay calm, laugh at the little things, and be hopeful the big things keep happening.  Because, so far, that seems to be the trend.
• 
See related Gets Me Where I Want (Michael Ramirez, 02/25/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Evidence suggests a massive scandal is brewing at the FBI  (NYP 01/23/2018)
• 
During the financial crisis, the federal government bailed out banks it declared "too big to fail."
• 
Fearing their bankruptcy might trigger economic Armageddon, the feds propped them up with taxpayer cash.
• 
Something similar is happening now at the FBI, with the Washington wagons circling the agency to protect it from charges of corruption.
• 
This time, the appropriate tag line is "too big to believe."
• 
Yet each day brings credible reports suggesting there is a massive scandal involving the top ranks of America's premier law enforcement agency.
• 
The reports, which feature talk among agents of a "secret society" and suddenly missing text messages, point to the existence both of a cabal dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in 2016 and of a plan to let Hillary Clinton skate free in the classified email probe.
• 
If either one is true — and I believe both probably are — it would mean FBI leaders betrayed the nation by abusing their powers in a bid to pick the president.
• 
More support for this view involves the FBI's use of the Russian dossier on Trump that was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
• 
It is almost certain that the FBI used the dossier to get FISA court warrants to spy on Trump associates, meaning it used the opposition research of the party in power to convince a court to let it spy on the candidate of the other party — likely without telling the court of the dossier's political link.
• 
Even worse, there is growing reason to believe someone in President Barack Obama's administration turned over classified information about Trump to the Clinton campaign.
• 
... clear evidence of bias against Trump by officials charged with investigating him and Clinton.  Those same agents appear to have acted on that bias to tilt the election to Clinton.
• 
It was in the office of Comey's top deputy, Andrew McCabe, where agents discussed an "insurance policy" in the event that Trump won.  Reports indicated that the Russia collusion probe was that insurance policy.
• 
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office — that there's no way he gets elected — but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.  It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 .  .  .," Strzok wrote.
• 
It is frightening that Strzok, who called Trump "an idiot," was the lead investigator on both the Clinton and Trump cases.
• 
Talk about irony.  While Dems and the left-wing media already found Trump guilty of collusion before Mueller was appointed, the real scandal might be the conduct of the probers themselves.
• 
Suspicions are hardly allayed by the fact that the FBI says it can't find five months of messages...  The missing period — Dec.  14, 2016, through May 17, 2017 — was a crucial time in Washington.
• 
There were numerous leaks of classified material just before and after Trump's inauguration on Jan.  20.
• 
Nunes has prepared a four-page memo, based on classified material that purportedly lays out what the FBI and others did to corrupt the election.
• 
A movement to release the memo is gaining steam, but Congress says it might take weeks.
• 
Why wait?  Americans can handle the truth, no matter how big it is.
• 
See related Hillary's Private Server (Mike Lester, 07/06/2016) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      What the 'Dreamer' fight is really about  (JWR 01/22/2018)
• 
The loud fight over what will happen to America's "Dreamers" isn't what it seems.  For both sides, it's a fig leaf used to mask their true intentions.
• 
... the Democrats' method of fighting for DACA suggests that they are broadly in favor of letting immigration dysfunction continue apace.
• 
Why else would they refuse to give President Trump any significant concessions in the DACA negotiations — no wall, no end to chain migration, no cessation of visa lotteries?
• 
They know that if this generation of Dreamers gets a pass without broader reform, it will be followed by another and another, all expecting the same eventual exemptions.
• 
Democrats once used to talk about ending outright illegal immigration.  They worried that it put downward pressure on wages.
• 
In the current age of identity politics, a new generation of progressive Democrats has recalibrated mass illegal immigration as a godsend. 
• 
Many pre-Trump Republicans favored illegal immigration too, although for different reasons: They worried more about obtaining workers rather than future constituents and voters.
• 
The social costs of providing parity for these workers and their dependents from the poorest regions of Mexico and Latin America — arriving for the most part without legality, English, or high school diplomas — were always passed on to the taxpayer.
• 
Now, however, a newly ascendant conservative base objects to illegal immigration for many of the same reasons Democrats did historically.
• 
Immigration is not especially diverse.  About one in four immigrants in the United States arrived from one country: Mexico.
• 
In the past, immigration has proven a great boon to a host country — if it was legal, measured, meritocratic and diverse.
• 
That way, assimilation, integration and mastery of native languages and customs were enhanced by immigrants who in turn enriched their adopted country.
• 
The opposite holds true of massive, illegal and nondiverse influxes of foreign nationals.
• 
The results are too often tribalism, political manipulation and factionalism, as the current multicultural and multiethnic turmoil in the Balkans, Middle East, Africa — and now Europe — attest.
• 
Illegal immigration flourished because Democrats wanted future constituents, and Republicans sought inexpensive labor.
• 
But an irate public has had it with open borders — and both parties are scrambling to hide their past and present agendas for now by focusing on the idealized Dreamers.
      Much of the federal government should be shut down — and power given back to the people  (Fox 01/20/2018)
• 
The conventional wisdom about the government shutdown chaos in Washington is completely wrong.
• 
Whoever you listen to, their explanation for the shambles is political. 
• 
If you're on the left you blame President Trump – just as you blame him for everything from bad weather to burned toast.
• 
If you're on the right you call it the "Schumer Shutdown" – after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.  – and point out that today's Democrats are being driven by their extreme "open borders" base.
• 
... it surely makes sense to handle the DACA issue as part of a negotiated immigration deal, including the border wall and an end to the diversity visa lottery and chain migration.
• 
Using the "Dreamers," as DACA recipients are known, to hold up agreement on the entire federal budget is a ridiculous and damaging stunt.
• 
But none of this explains the real underlying cause of the federal government shutdown that began Saturday.
• 
The reason we have to put up with this seemingly endless succession of short-term crises and stop-gap fixes is not political, it's structural.
• 
The shutdown is not in fact an example of the system failing.  It's exactly what you'd expect to happen given the system we have.
• 
Why can't they agree a proper long-term budget in Congress?  Because everyone in Congress is fighting for their piece of the pie – and the bigger the pie, the bigger the fight.
• 
More significantly, it's a fight members of Congress wage for their political survival – because the piece of the federal pie that they're fighting for is not for their constituents, it's for the people who really matter to them: the donors and interests that got them to Congress in the first place.
• 
Getting appropriations that keep their sponsors happy: that's the name of the game in these budget negotiations.  It's the Swamp in action.
• 
The only long-term answer is a radical rethink of the entire federal government, transferring most of its functions to the state and local level where they would be carried out more effectively and with more accountability.
• 
... piecemeal efforts to slim down government bloat will always fail.  The bureaucracy will always win.  The only answer is, in fact ... a shutdown.
• 
Not a temporary, crisis-driven shutdown.  But a long-term, carefully considered, complete and total shutdown of every function of the federal government that could be carried out closer to the people: education, health care, housing, social services, transportation ... almost all of it apart from the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury and Justice.
• 
Of course, the Swamp-dwellers who have grown fat off our current, corrupt system would fight with everything they have to hold onto their power and influence.
• 
It will take a political revolution to wrench power out of the hands of the Washington establishment and put it in the hands of the people.
• 
But don't bet against it: just look at the evident, embarrassing failure of the current system and its shameless corruption.
      Rep.  Robert Pittenger: Trump's a diamond — with many rough edges.  There's nothing fake...  (Fox 01/17/2018)
• 
While political elites resoundingly condemn President Trump for his reported comment on "s — hole countries," let's pause to take a careful look at context and truth.
• 
President Trump's comment clearly offended many individuals, but was he referring to the poor and exploited people in the respective countries or the governments ruled by tyrants and despots who have pilfered our aid and extracted their country's resources to fund their lavish lifestyle?
• 
The American people elected a street fighter from Queens who will fight every day in their behalf, unfazed by the elites, whose elegant diplomatic discourse has resulted in a world replete with national security threats and challenges.
• 
... President Trump has demonstrated a keen sense of the mindset of hardworking Americans, as well as of our adversaries.
• 
The guardians of "correct" diplomatic discourse are in denial of their own inept failures, as their "correct" dialogue allowed adversarial nation states to grow from garden snakes to boa constrictors. 
• 
Members of the political elite also abhorred Ronald Reagan's reference to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."
• 
They scorned him when he walked away from arms reduction negotiations in Reykjavik over his refusal to give up missile defense.
• 
Yet ultimately, Gorbachev accepted Reagan's terms, and just a few years later, the Soviet Union collapsed without firing a shot, thanks to Reagan's clear understanding and resolute spirit.
• 
Where would we be today without missile defense?
• 
Winston Churchill was ridiculed and renounced by Neville Chamberlain and his "peace for our time" disciples for calling out Hitler as "a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder."
• 
Great Britain and Western Civilization were spared dominion by Nazi Germany through Churchill's unequivocal oratory and leadership. 
• 
In the moment of these statements, polite society disparaged these comments as dangerous, harmful, and self-defeating.
• 
However, in time and history, the political class was proven to be all that they accused these great leaders to be. 
• 
President Trump has a clear understanding of our adversaries and knows how to speak to them in a way they understand.
• 
Mr.  President, many thoughtful Americans trust your instincts as you send direct, clear messages to the world.
• 
Your track record in business, media, politics, and directing a reinvigorated economy deserves a great deal of respect as you work with your exceptional diplomatic and military advisors to clearly stake out American interests and secure our country.
      Sen.  Chelsea Manning?  To even think about rewarding this criminal with a Senate seat is beyond...  (Fox 01/17/2018)
• 
Like me, you were probably shocked to find out that a felony conviction – let alone one for betraying your country – does not disqualify you from serving in the Senate.
• 
And while Manning's chances ... are extraordinarily slim, the very fact that this reprehensible backstabber can even perpetrate this farce is shameful.
• 
Manning basically provided randomly chosen pieces of our national secrets to all of our enemies.
• 
Operations were compromised and partners in Iraq and Afghanistan were identified and put at risk.
• 
... this was a selfish act by a childish individual who put her own petty grievances above the safety and security of the entire country and endangered the lives of honorably serving members of the U.S.  military.
• 
... let's think about the unlikely event that Manning beats the odds and actually becomes a senator.
• 
Should that come to pass, the "world's greatest deliberative body," as the Senate likes to call itself, would seat a felon who purposely violated the oath of enlistment in the U.S.  Army and betrayed America and fellow soldiers.
• 
What's important to note is that senators are not required to obtain a security clearance to gain access to classified government material.
• 
All Manning would have to do is swear another meaningless oath and promise to obey it this time to once again gain access to our national security secrets, which she could leak again if she wished.
• 
It could even come to pass that this person who put our intelligence agencies and American lives at risk could serve on a committee providing oversight on the same agencies whose information she sent flying into the digital breeze.
• 
It will be very interesting to see how much support this #Resistance heroine, who has been very noisy in opposition to President Trump, can gain from the left.
• 
Regardless of the outcome, we now have been forced to at least contemplate this senseless possibility.
• 
That is a sad commentary on the state of our political system, and we are all lowered by it. 
      Ex-CIA officer: Trump’s ‘s***hole’ controversy matters because it antagonizes friends America...  (Fox 01/16/2018)
• 
President Trump's alleged use of "tough language" last week during a congressional meeting on immigration led to yet another partisan fight between bickering Americans.
• 
Democrats labeled the president's remarks racist while Republicans mostly shrugged.
• 
Just Trump being Trump.
• 
In fact, some of the president's supporters wondered why the fuss.  "Who died?  No one."
• 
And that really is the heart of the matter.  For Trump supporters, there's no harm if the president shoots from the hip and upsets the delicate egos of foreign leaders or snowflake Democrats.
• 
To hell with them all.  He wasn't elected to play nice.
• 
That's a fair point.  Trump's victory represented a new direction for the country, with a mandate to shake up America's democracy.  And that he has.
• 
But let no one be fooled that Trump's approach – even if you love it – is without costs.
• 
To explain, the world has entered the early stages of a new Cold War.
• 
On one side are nations like the United States who have come to embrace the often slow and messy path of democracy.
• 
Why stick with it?  Our many wars and revolutions have taught us that no other path offers the freedoms we need for our people – any people – to thrive.
• 
Unfortunately, there are other nations who fundamentally disagree.  China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea believe that communism, monarchies, and religious dictators are better suited to decide humanity's fate.
• 
They don't want individual freedom.  They want control of the masses.  Suppression of free will.  Dominance by force.
• 
The first Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and ushered in what many in the West hoped would be the dawn of world peace and prosperity.
• 
One important player, however, remained elusive.  Communist China.
• 
In the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton – along with a Republican Congress – believed that if the West could get China to more fully engage with outsiders, the communist overlords might eventually come to embrace democratic freedoms.
• 
If China's economy were more fully integrated with the rest of the world, their embrace of dictatorship would surely lessen.
• 
Better yet, economists argued, cheap goods from China would allow Western consumers to buy more stuff.  More stuff would in turn mean bigger, better economies for all.
• 
American businesses flooded into Chinese provinces at a staggering pace, lured by the promise of cheap labor and big profits.
• 
And that's when the wheels came off of Clinton and Company's grand experiment.
• 
First went the economic promises.  As researchers now acknowledge, the American economy didn't get bigger and better for all of its citizens.  Only for some.
• 
The others – especially communities that lost out to cheap Chinese labor – were devastated.  They have yet to recover. 
• 
The economic losers became the angry voters.
• 
China offered Western businesses a poisonous exchange: you can have access to China's market but only in partnership with Chinese companies.
• 
Within a few years, Chinese businessmen would steal product designs and related intellectual property and instead launched their own enterprises that pumped out identical products.
• 
One might assume that Chinese officials would vehemently deny such tactics.  On the contrary.  They've gleefully encouraged the idea, calling it "bandit innovation."
• 
U.S.  intelligence officials estimate that the Chinese Communist Party's treachery has cost the American economy and her taxpayers in the low trillions of dollars...
• 
As the communists stole the global economy, so too did they kill the dream of a democratic government.
• 
And what of the Chinese people?  Experts highlight that the average citizen lives in a dystopian police state...
• 
If their present is crushing, the future looks far worse.  The government has announced an investment of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence designed to track and monitor the activities of each citizen.
• 
An ascendant China has also flexed its destabilizing muscle around the world.
• 
... the ultimate goal is to degrade the influence of the United States, India, and Japan throughout Asia and beyond.
• 
In short, China is aiming to lead the world.  Democracy and its freedoms will be pushed aside while communism will be celebrated and encouraged in its place.
• 
And that takes us back to Trump and the allegations of "s***hole" countries. 
• 
... it runs the risk of pushing weak-kneed countries into the eager arms of an intoxicating China that's willing to embrace dominance, control, and suppression of a restive people.  Of any people.  Of all people.
• 
Make no mistake, this is the fight of our time.
• 
But we cannot allow our differences to distract us from the sobering reality that we are in the very beginning of Cold War II.
      Of Crudeness and Truth: Thoughts on President Trump's latest verbal tempest  (JWR 01/15/2018)
• 
Nothing scandalizes a leftist like the truth.
• 
Point out that women and men are different, that black Americans commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, that most terrorist acts are committed by Muslims, and the Left leaps to its collective feet in openmouthed shock...
• 
This is racism!  This is sexism!  This is some sort of phobia!  I'm shocked, shocked to find facts being spoken in polite company!
• 
No one is really shocked, of course.  This is simply a form of bullying.
• 
The Left has co-opted our good manners and our good will in order to silence our opposition to their bad policies.
• 
The idea is to make it seem impolite and immoral to mention the obvious.
• 
The bullying is highly effective and very dangerous.
• 
In England, in the city of Rotherham, at least 1,400 non-Muslim girls, some as young as 11, were brutally raped by Muslim immigrants over a period of years in the 2000s.
• 
Police and other officials worked to keep the facts hidden because, according to multiple reports, they were afraid of being called racist.
• 
Think about that: police officers did not want to seem racist, so they stood by and let their city's children be raped.
• 
The same thing goes on in other cities in England and throughout Europe.
• 
And in fact, some who have spoken out have had their careers curtailed by manufactured scandal. 
• 
Here in the states, the First Amendment has so far allowed old-fashioned American loudmouths to fight the system whenever they could find ways around our monolithic corporate media.
• 
But the Empire of Lies is quick to strike back. 
• 
No person of importance on the right seeks to silence anyone on the left.
• 
The Left, on the other hand, is broadly committed to ostracizing, blacklisting, and even criminalizing right-wing speech.
• 
Enter President Donald Trump.  He is a rude and crude person.  He speaks like a Queens real estate guy on a construction site.
• 
And because he does not have good manners, he thoughtlessly breaks the rules with which the Left has sought to muzzle those who disagree with them. 
• 
If Donald Trump's boorishness crashes like a bull through the crystal madhouse of their leftism — well, good.  It's about time.
• 
I don't know exactly what Trump said in a closed-door meeting with senators at the White House this week.  Unnamed sources say that he referred to some African countries and Haiti as "shitholes." Maybe so; sounds like him.
• 
Various media knuckleheads have reacted to the alleged comment by calling Trump "racist," "Nazi," "Evil," and a "terrorist sympathizer."
• 
(Personally, my first thought on hearing about the remark was: "What squirrely little tattle-tale of a weasel went running to the press with that?" But never mind.  That's just me.)
• 
Let's state the obvious.  Some countries are shitholes.  To claim that this is racist is racist
• 
They are not shitholes because of the color of the populace but because of bad ideas, corrupt governance, false religion, and broken culture.
• 
Further, most of the problems in these countries are generated at the top.
• 
Plenty of rank-and-file immigrants from such ruined venues ultimately make good Americans — witness those who came from 1840s potato-famine Ireland, a shithole if ever there was one!
• 
It takes caution and skill to separate the good from the bad.
• 
For these very reasons, absurd immigration procedures like chain migration, lotteries, and unvetted entries are deeply destructive.
• 
They can lead to the sort of poor choices that create a Rotherham.
• 
Trump's suggestions — to vet immigrants for pro-American ideas and skills that will help our country — are smart and reasonable and would clearly make the system better if implemented.
• 
So, when it comes to the Great Sh-thole Controversy of 2018, my feeling is: I do not care, not even a little.
• 
I'm sorry that it takes someone like Trump to break the spell of silence the Left is forever weaving around us.
• 
I wish a man like Ronald Reagan would come along and accomplish the same thing with more wit and grace.
• 
But that was another culture.  History deals the cards it deals; we just play them.  Trump is what we've got.
• 
For all the bad language, for all the loose talk, I would rather hear a man speak as a man without fear of the Nurse Ratcheds in the press and the academy than have him neutered and gagged by a system of good manners that has been misused as a form of oppression.
• 
Better impoliteness than silence.  Better crudeness than lies.
• 
We have seen the effect of uncontrolled immigration on Europe.  It is very, very bad.
• 
The fact is: some countries are sh-tholes.
• 
I don't want this to become one of them.
      Michael Goodwin: Trump may be digging himself into a 's — hole'  (Fox 01/15/2018)
• 
As President Trump nears his first anniversary in office, he faces an unforgiving political landscape.
• 
Every word he says and every action he takes will either help him keep a Republican Congress or hand control to Democrats.
• 
And if Dems get the gavel, impeachment could be the result.
• 
This is the binary world Trump inhabits, and seen through that lens, the uproar over the president's disparaging remarks about Haiti and other poor countries helps Dems in their goal of hobbling if not ending his presidency.
• 
Consider that a potty-mouth president is hardly a new phenomenon.  John F.  Kennedy, Lyndon B.  Johnson and Richard Nixon said far worse things, not to mention the words Bill Clinton must have used during his Oval Office trysts.
• 
But Trump is in a unique position.
• 
Not because of what he says or does, but because of the reaction to it.
• 
With over half the country needing no more reason than his election to demand his removal, and with many Democrats promising impeachment if they gain power, every mistake is potentially fatal.
• 
Each one gives the anti-Trump media license to go from zero to DEFCON 1, signifying an extreme national emergency.
• 
Yet while a biased media hyperventilating is no virtue, Trump's great flaw is that he keeps giving them ammunition.
• 
Did he forget that Democrats are out for his blood?
• 
Didn't he learn anything from the torrent of White House leaks that bedeviled his early months?
• 
For my money, "s***hole countries" is not by itself a racist remark.  It's certainly crude and shouldn't be said by a president, but those countries are a total mess.
• 
Central America is the murder capital of the world, and Haitians have been fleeing their country for years because they've given up hope it can be fixed.
• 
And the context matters: Trump and Congress were bargaining over the fact that Haitians, El Salvadorans and people from African countries who were admitted years, and in some cases decades ago, after emergencies were allowed to stay indefinitely.
• 
You don't have to be a racist to conclude that isn't sound immigration policy, and that America should pick the immigrants who can contribute to its prosperity and security.
• 
This ... is shaping up as ­another moment where style beats substance, and identity politics ­determines policy.
• 
... Trump has an impressive list of achievements, and his presidency marks an important course correction for America.
• 
But the job isn't done.  To have a successful presidency, Trump needs to finish what he started and that means keeping a Republican Congress for four years.
• 
For that to happen, he must start behaving as if his future depends on every word he says every day.
• 
Because it does.
• 
And if he needs to blow off steam without blowing the lid off his presidency, he ought to remember the sage advice often attributed to President Harry ­Truman.
• 
If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.
      Who is Sean Penn to lecture Trump about compassion?  (Fox 01/14/2018)
• 
Who is Sean Penn to lecture anyone about compassion?
• 
After all, it is Sean Penn who enabled and befriended the repressive and ruthless Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, using his Hollywood clout to lend credibility to Chavez and to spread lies about the "successes" of Chavez's disastrous socialist revolution.
• 
Of course, Penn was not alone.  Actor Danny Glover and filmmaker Michael Moore also lavished Chavez and his successor, Nicholas Maduro, with praise and support as Venezuela spiraled into chaos and poverty.
• 
So did Democratic Socialist Sen.  Bernie Sanders of Vermont.  Sanders' website once stated that the American Dream was dead and more likely to be found in Venezuela than the U.S
• 
Under Chavez and Maduro, Venezuela went from being the economic envy of Latin America – rich in oil and with a vibrant economy – to being one of its poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
• 
Today, thanks to the nationalization of oil production and government-imposed price controls, Venezuela is a country of hunger, deprivation, food shortages and humiliations that proud Venezuelans never thought they would be forced to endure.
• 
So what has Sean Penn said about these horrible indignities and abuses suffered by the Venezuelan people?  Nothing.
• 
Where is his "compassionate" op-ed to show concern for the victims of Venezuelan socialism and repression?  Silence.
• 
Meanwhile, President Trump – whom Penn calls "an enemy of compassion" over his reported use of vulgar language to describe some parts of the world in a closed-door Oval Office meeting – has been unequivocal in voicing his support for the Venezuelan people.
• 
President Trump has condemned Venezuela's socialist oppressors and made the quest of the Venezuelan people for freedom and prosperity one of his top three international concerns, behind North Korea and Iran.
• 
I do agree with Penn on one thing.  Immigrants and refugees who have escaped the corrupt, dysfunctional, crime-ridden, socialist and communist regimes of Latin America are precisely the kind of hard-working and grateful people we should be welcoming to the U.S. They truly appreciate the blessings that Penn takes for granted.
• 
Unlike Penn, these immigrants understand that it is democracy and American free-enterprise that have made our country the best and most prosperous in the history of the world.
• 
They know that nothing has lifted more people out of poverty than entrepreneurial capitalism. 
• 
And they resent the ignorant complicity of members of the Hollywood elite, like Sean Penn, in the destruction of their country and the misery and poverty it has wrought.
• 
"We need to educate our children to be wary of those who promise us ‘free' things."
• 
"I don't care if it's a bag of rice or a washing machine.  Nothing is worth your freedom.  It's priceless."
• 
This new immigrant knows more about America, freedom, and the fruits of free enterprise than Sean Penn and socialist Hollywood pals will ever know.
      Ron Hosko: The truth about fatal shootings by police  (Fox 01/14/2018)
• 
... "Nationwide, police shot and killed nearly 1,000 people in 2017." The exact number of such deaths the Post counted was 987.
• 
... the flawed story takes the reader just where discerning people might expect – to the discredited myth that racist police are targeting and gunning down unarmed black men and boys for no reason other than the color of their skin.
• 
"...  Last year, police killed 19, a figure tracking closely with the 17 killed in 2016.  ..."
• 
Wait a minute.  Note that while the issue of unarmed black males being shot by police drew enormous news coverage last year – enough to make the average person think there was a massive wave of such shootings – ... only 2 percent of those who died as a result of police shootings were unarmed black men and boys.
• 
Yet four paragraphs later, the Post story blows the poisonous dog-whistle of race – even though 98 percent of people shot by police last year were not unarmed black males.
• 
"National scrutiny of shootings by police began after an unarmed black teenager from a suburb of St.  Louis was fatally shot by a white police officer in August 2014.  The death of 18-year-old Michael Brown sparked widespread protests, prompted a White House commission to call for reforms, galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and led many police agencies across the nation to examine their use of deadly force."
• 
What the Post states, as far as it goes, is true.  But writers of the Post article know – or certainly should know by now – that a Justice Department report cleared Police Officer Darren Wilson of Ferguson, Missouri of any wrongdoing for his shooting of Brown.
• 
The report states: "Not only do eyewitnesses and physical evidence corroborate Wilson's account, but there is no credible evidence to disprove Wilson's perception that Brown posed a threat to Wilson as Brown advanced toward him."
• 
Simply stated, Michael Brown was no martyr for "police brutality." Brown was a thug and a thief.
• 
He stole a pack of $50 cigarillos from a convenience store, menaced the shopkeeper and shoved him out of the way.
• 
Brown then walked a few blocks and attacked Wilson, a uniformed police officer sitting in his marked police SUV, and tried to grab Wilson's gun.
• 
Do that in any city in the world – no matter what your race or ethnicity – and you put yourself in immediate risk of deadly force being used against you.
• 
Police are not required to allow anyone to grab their guns and kill them.
• 
... near three-quarters of the 987 people who were fatally shot by police last year posed a grave threat to police and others because they were armed with their own knife or a gun.
• 
Put the Post's numbers in perspective, because the paper chose not to do so.
• 
... a more realistic estimate of assaults on police last year would be roughly 75,000.
• 
... remember that each year thousands of cops are feloniously assaulted and injured by dangerous attackers.  And despite the danger, and their annual face-to-face contacts with tens of millions of us, police fatally shot only 987 people last year – a tiny fraction of 1 percent of those who assaulted the cops.
• 
What's truly remarkable is that thousands more people weren't killed as they assaulted police with the intent to seriously injure – or in some cases with the intent to kill – the law enforcement officers.
• 
So the Post story should not be focused on police excess.  It should be focused on the remarkable degree of restraint exercised by police.
• 
No police officer in his or her right mind sets out to kill anyone – and no officer finds the experience enjoyable or thrilling.  It is a nightmare they all want to avoid.
• 
... in the overwhelming majority of police shootings, officers are acting to protect themselves or others from the prospect of imminent death or injury.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Trump not a barbarian and he's right.  America is far too nice  (Fox 01/12/2018)
• 
... Trump's "offensive words" about Haiti and African nations.  There are reports that Trump called those countries by a crude name.
• 
If he did, he certainly could have chosen his words more carefully.
• 
But... who cares?  If he said it, he told the raw truth.  As usual, he was right on the money.
• 
Trump summed up the weakness of America — we're far too nice.  We think about everyone, but our own people and our own taxpayers.
• 
Why on earth would we allow the world's poor, unskilled, desperate and dependent masses to come into our country, while we're $20 trillion in debt?
• 
We aren't running a charity, we're running a country.
• 
As usual, Trump told the raw truth.  Yes, he offended some people.  So what?  We elected him because he's a bull in a china shop. 
• 
The truth hurts.  Get used to it.  Trump's not going anywhere.  He has a tough job to do, to set America on the right course. 
      Don't remove Trump with the 25th Amendment  (Fox 01/10/2018)
• 
In ancient Greece, the sons of the great playwright Sophocles tried to have him declared incompetent because he spent so much time working on his tragedies and not enough time taking care of his estate.
• 
Something similar is happening today.  President Trump's opponents want him declared incompetent because he concentrates so much on his tweets and because they claim he doesn't properly take care of his presidential duties.
• 
To remove the president from office under the 25th Amendment, Section 4 would have to be invoked.  It allows the vice president to become acting president if it's determined the president is incapable of discharging his duties.
• 
As a practical matter, it won't be happening any time soon.  It would require the consent of Vice President Pence and over half the Cabinet, and it's hard to imagine any of them would go along with it.
• 
But the fact that invoking the amendment is being seriously considered by a not insignificant number of citizens is frightening.
• 
It's one thing to oppose President Trump.  It's another to play politics through psychiatry.
• 
The truth is that Donald Trump as president is pretty much the same man we saw on the campaign trail.  He announced his candidacy with a speech many thought outrageous.  All during the campaign, he tweeted up a storm.  Even after he got his party's nomination, he didn't pivot, as some expected, and stayed on the unconventional course.
• 
The public saw this, liked him (or at least his populist message) and voted him in.
• 
There's no denying that President Trump is unorthodox.  But he's also gotten a fair amount done – appointing judges, signing numerous executive orders, cutting regulations and getting a tax bill through Congress.
• 
Most likely this is the real reason so many want him removed.
• 
But there's a difference between being crazy and driving your opponents crazy.
• 
By the way, Sophocles won his case.  In court, he read from his latest play, "Oedipus At Colonus," and the jury declared him competent.
• 
When it comes to President Trump, he's already been tried in the court of public opinion.
• 
The American people got a good look at him and decided he should be president.
• 
To remove him now on sham charges would not be an example of politicians upholding their constitutional duty.
• 
It would amount to a coup.
      Alan Dershowitz: Don't diagnose Trump — respond to him  (Fox 01/09/2018)
• 
Is President Trump mentally ill, suffering from dementia, or both?  Some mental health professionals and others are arguing that he should be removed from office because the answer to at least one of those questions is "yes."
• 
I believe this is a dangerous course to follow.
• 
A Yale psychiatry professor has suggested the possibility that President Trump might be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
      Others have proposed that he be required to undergo psychiatric or psychological  ()
• 
Still others have suggesting invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution and declaring the president incompetent.
• 
I find it unprofessional, unethical and absurd for any mental health professional who has not examined President Trump to offer a diagnosis or psychiatric prediction about him.
• 
We are all entitled to our opinions regarding the president's political and personal qualifications to serve.
• 
...  psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have no more right to pathologize a President or a candidate because they disagree with his or her political views than do prosecutors or politicians have a right to criminalize political opponents.
• 
I have been writing in opposition to the criminalization of political differences for decades, because it is dangerous to democracy.
• 
It is even more dangerous to pathologize or psychiatrize one's political opponents based on opposition to their politics.
• 
Getting mental health professionals to declare political opponents mentally ill was a common tactic used against political dissidents by the Soviet Union, China and apartheid South Africa.
• 
Perfectly sane people were locked up in psychiatric wards or prisons for years because of phony diagnoses of mental illness.
• 
The American Psychiatric Association took a strong stand against the use of this weapon by tyrants.
• 
... I understood how dangerous it is to diagnose political opponents instead of responding to the merits or demerits of their political views.
• 
It is even more dangerous when a democracy like the United States begins to go down the road of pathologizing political differences.
• 
It's one thing to say your opponents are wrong.  It's quite another to say they are crazy.
• 
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, some of his most extreme critics were not content to say they disagreed with his policies – or thought he was unqualified because of his temperament, background, or skill set.  Instead, they questioned his mental health.
• 
... the American Psychiatric Association declared it to be unethical for a psychiatrist to offer any kind of a diagnosis on a public figure without having examined that person.
• 
... numerous psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are violating that sound ethical principle by diagnosing President Trump, who they have never examined
• 
We should continue to debate the merits and demerits of President Trump's policies, effectiveness, personality and other factors that are relevant to his presidency.
• 
Those who oppose the president are of course free to criticize him, to work for the election of a Democratic Congress in 2018, and to support another candidate for president in 2020.  That's how democracy works.
• 
But let's leave diagnoses to doctors who have examined their patients and not remove a duly elected president of the United States from office on amateurish speculation that he is mentally incapable of functioning in office.
      Dr.  Manny Alvarez: Trump's mental health and the duty doctors have to the wider world  (Fox 01/09/2018)
• 
Let's get one thing straight: Under no circumstances should a doctor diagnose anyone without a physical examination.
• 
So why is it that a psychiatrist at one of America's most highly revered medical institutions is able to meet with more than a dozen lawmakers — all Democrats with the exception of one Republican...  — to brief them on what she believes is an "unraveling" President Trump, having never examined him?
• 
Lee and her colleagues warned officials on Capitol Hill of their belief that President Trump is becoming unhinged and that they are "already seeing the signs."
• 
In order for her to validate her assessment, she would need to physically examine the president, review his medical history, and look at any specific medical data that was relevant to her diagnosis — just to start.
• 
Not only is it unethical to render a professional medical opinion based on casual observation, it undermines the entire diagnostic process and further stigmatizes mental illness.
• 
In subsequent interviews, Lee even went as far as to claim that should government officials not take action now in regarding the president's mental state, it could mean the "extinction of the human species."
• 
Over the past two weeks, her opinions have caused a media firestorm, giving her a bigger platform to continue to make damaging and irresponsible statements. 
• 
Many doctors make the mistake of diagnosing medical conditions through the media.  And by doing so, they are participating in one of the most unethical activities a physician can be party to.
• 
For Lee and her colleagues to attack a sitting president based on his public appearances and Twitter interactions is perhaps even sanctionable in the eyes of the medical community of which they participate.
• 
There's a big problem today in America where, because of the power of social media, people can easily fall victim to the court of public opinion before ever being tried for their perceived crime.
• 
... we need to hold our physicians and medical community at large to a higher standard than that.
• 
Let's remember the oath we all took to become healers and not be so nonchalant when it comes to practicing medicine by throwing around dangerous diagnoses.
      Tomi Lahren: 'Wackadoodle' Liberals Turn to New Conspiracy Theory After Russia 'Nothing Burger'  (Fox 01/09/2018)
• 
There's been a lot of talk lately about President Trump's mental stability.
• 
Robert Mueller's so-called "independent" Russia investigation has proven nothing ... and is nothing but a sorry and expensive waste of resources designed to discredit a president that Beltway insiders and Hollywood liberals don't like.
• 
If anything, we're learning through other reporting that Hillary Clinton was cozier with the Russians than the president.
• 
... so lefties and mainstream media hacks have to move on to this new means of sabotage: Declaring the president mentally unfit for office.
• 
Excuse me, the fact you don't like him or didn't vote for him doesn't make him mentally unfit.
• 
"He's mean," or "I don't like his Twitter feed" aren't grounds for impeachment, sorry.
• 
Why are some of you trying so hard to get rid of a president that's winning for the American people?  Why?
• 
If the steady defeat of ISIS, a tax cut for 80 percent of Americans, consistent economic growth, record highs in the stock market and the resurgence of American jobs, energy and hope is all crazy - I don't want sane!
• 
Importing poverty, crime and illegal immigrants is crazy.  Recognizing 64 gender options is crazy.  Playing nice with crazy dictators is crazy.  Forcing the American people to have health insurance they don't necessarily want is crazy.  Opening our pocketbooks even wider for the government, that's crazy.
• 
Our president is more rooted in reality than all these wackadoodle liberals calling for his mental evaluation.
• 
What's crazy is they can't and won't see any of the positive change this president has made because they are too wrapped up in themselves, their feelings, and salacious gossip to recognize what's really happening in this country...
      Tammy Bruce: 'Fake but important' Trump book proves liberals don't care about the truth  (Fox 01/07/2018)
• 
The story is meant to be an expose of a chaotic Trump White House, filled with whiney, gossipy aides who think the president dumb and churlish.
• 
The books ends up as graffiti, paying homage to every fabulous fantasy of a cosmopolitan smart-set drowning in their fear and loathing of the president.
• 
Mr.  Wolff admits in this note he's not sure what's true and what isn't.  ... He also confesses he, "settled on a version of events I believe to be true."
• 
"Read the book, see if you don't feel like you are with me on that couch in the White House, and see if you don't feel alarmed."
• 
The facts and truth don't matter, we are essentially told.  Trust the fabulist to make you feel alarmed, because feelings are what's important.  Just don't ask if anything is real.
• 
"... it has the power to change others' behavior and perception of the president and the White House... He was paranoid before; now one should expect him to trust virtually no one in the White House."
• 
... then giddily imagines how no one of quality will want to work in the White House, and can barely contain her excitement about how this book will negatively affect the president's relationships with our allies.
• 
Not because anything is true, but simply because the claims are in a book.
• 
"...  the scenes in his columns aren't recreated so much as created — springing from Wolff's imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events..."
• 
The willingness of Trump-haters to believe anything negative about the president bodes well for Trump fabulists, and has taken on pathological proportions.
• 
"... [H]e believes in larger truths and narratives.  So he creates a narrative that is notionally true, that's conceptually true.  The details are often wrong, it's more than — it's more than not 100 percent true.  It's a lot false."
• 
Mr.  Wolff and his book are important, but not for the reasons liberals think.
• 
The book itself and the ensuing coverage are confessions that liberals and their media have abandoned reality for a fantasyland of fear, madness and victimhood because, pathetically, it makes them feel better.
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Pot is dangerous, not funny — a doctor tells us why  (Fox 01/07/2018)
• 
As a physician, my doctoring knowledge tells me that making marijuana legally available is a bad idea, except perhaps for certain medical conditions.
• 
Marijuana is a potent mind-altering drug that can cause serious harm, as I explain below.
• 
It will be just one more substance we have to warn our children to stay away from.
• 
... many people use marijuana even where it remains illegal.  But legalization will lead to increased use and make many people believe it is not all that dangerous.
• 
Sadly, it's very likely that the American people will become more and more acclimated to marijuana use in the years ahead, acknowledging it as just another way to "feel good."
• 
How do we as a society benefit from legalizing marijuana?
• 
Maybe it makes sense from a financial standpoint – perhaps it will cut illegal sales and it will certainly generate tax revenue and create jobs.
• 
But what about the overall health of our citizens?  Shouldn't that take precedence?
• 
Can there not be other creative ideas for generating money and reigning in crime?
• 
From a health standpoint, why is legalization of another mind-altering drug the right thing to do?
• 
The U.S.  is already in the midst of a devastating prescription opioid and heroin crisis.
• 
Too often, marijuana is treated as a harmless substance – something to joke and giggle about, and something that we see the people we admire on TV, in movies and elsewhere enjoying as a break from the workaday world.
• 
The message?  Treat yourself to an ice cream cone, a piece of cake, a beer or some pot.  It's OK to enjoy yourself. 
• 
It sure looked like CNN was doing its best to indoctrinate the public on the normalization and acceptance of marijuana.  As a medical doctor, I found this encouragement and joking to be both irresponsible and disappointing.
• 
What causes the "high" people experience is marijuana's effect on over-activating parts of the brain containing specific brain cell receptors.
• 
This leads to feelings of an altered sense of time, other altered senses, changes in mood, impaired body movement, impaired memory and difficulty in thinking and problem-solving.
• 
... the younger a person begins using pot, such as in the teen years, the greater the declines in general knowledge, impaired thinking, learning difficulties and lowered IQ.
• 
And no matter what proponents of marijuana use will tell you, marijuana use can lead to the development of a substance use disorder.
• 
There are however, ongoing studies on cannabidiol, a component of marijuana that does not have the mind-altering effects of THC.
• 
That may hold potential promise in helping conditions like drug-resistant epilepsy and some psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, substance use disorders, schizophrenia and psychosis.
• 
Here's a better idea – how about encouraging people to get "high" on taking good care of themselves?
• 
It's the little things, such as making every bite of food count, using physical activity every day to naturally release an endorphin high, relieving stress by watching a sunrise or sunset, or getting good feelings by helping others.
• 
Those are the kinds of "highs" that are positive, life-affirming and with few risks to our health.
• 
Smoking marijuana and slipping into a THC-induced mind-altered state has been shown time and again to have more negatives associated with it than positives.
• 
No matter how much fun using marijuana looks like on TV or in the movies, no matter what your friends say about it, no matter how many people tell you it's harmless, and no matter what laws politicians pass to get votes or raise tax revenue, remember one thing: unless you have certain medical conditions where the drug may be beneficial, you are better off without it.
      The real problem with Fusion GPS' Steele dossier  (Fox 01/06/2018)
• 
... called for the investigation of former British spy Christopher Steele, who wrote the dossier after he was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. 
• 
Fusion GPS initially received funding from the Washington Free Beacon, and then was paid by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee for the dossier that Steele produced.
• 
... "had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier, and they urged the (Justice) department to investigate."
• 
... now it's clear that the dossier was nothing more than an expensive political dirty trick by the Russians, the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign.
• 
We now know that the Fusion GPS dossier was nothing more than propaganda, much of it fed to Steele and Fusion GPS by current and former Russian intelligence operatives.
• 
In short, the Democrats, the Clinton campaign and the media facilitated the Russians' most effective campaign tactic to undercut Americans' faith in two important institutions: government and the media.
• 
To be clear, it would appear that many in the mainstream media, our government and one of our major political parties were willing stooges in a massive Russian misinformation campaign.
• 
Because the dossier fed into their biases against Donald Trump, many ate it up – hook, line and sinker.
• 
Yet, rather than own up to their failures, the media are doing what most people do when caught in a lie or a serious error in judgment: changing the narrative, shifting the blame and just making up another story.
• 
"The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation."
• 
In other words, our government was weaponized against private citizens based on a piece of partisan propaganda. 
• 
... members of the left and the media are now working to reverse themselves, to undermine the very role they reported the dossier played in the investigation, to find something else – anything else – to blame for triggering the Russia investigation.
• 
If the fake dossier funded by Democrats spurred on the Russia investigation and was in many ways the impetus for the probe, this calls into question the entire legitimacy of the investigation.
• 
In addition, it would confirm in many ways what President Trump has been saying all along: that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is in fact nothing but a political witch hunt meant to nullify the 2016 elections.
• 
But it's another issue that should give every American – regardless of political affiliation – pause.
• 
Did a political party in power weaponize government against its opponents in an attempt to hold onto power?
• 
And was the self-appointed watchdog of government – a free, but at many times dishonest press – unwittingly or wittingly complicit in the effort? 
• 
The very troubling aspect, and an ironic one, is that for 90-plus years phony dossiers, rumors and innuendo were used by the Soviet Union's KGB spy agency to send innocent people to imprisonment in the gulags.
• 
The state-controlled media did nothing to expose this, and were in fact used as tools by the government.
• 
And we should never forget that the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for what turned out to be propaganda fed to its Moscow correspondent by the Russian government.
• 
We are now seeing some of the same behavior: a phony dossier used as justification to spy on American citizens, used to spin up investigations that are illegitimate, all wrapped in whisper and rumor campaigns and anonymously sourced stories.
• 
See related US Media (Michael Ramirez, 08/12/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Say goodbye to Alexa and Siri, resist the temptations of Google Home and make your life more...  (Fox 01/06/2018)
• 
In the first week of 2018 we learned that "most of the computers in the world" have dangerous security flaws that make them vulnerable to hackers, criminals, authoritarian regimes, our own security services – you name it.
• 
It means that pretty much anything you do online is at risk.  Your data, your money, your privacy.
• 
Delightfully enough, the geeks responsible – while failing to prevent these disasters – have at least managed to come up with some catchy names for them: Spectre and Meltdown.
• 
What staggers me about all this is the almost total lack of accountability or contrition.
• 
Can you imagine the reaction if we learned that Boeing knew about dangerous design flaws affecting every single one of the company's planes?
• 
... at the same time it is telling us we can't trust the safety or security of any computer, anywhere, the tech industry is busy also telling us that we should get ready for a world where computers are literally everywhere.
• 
... the tech companies are breathlessly promoting all the innovations they're about to force down everyone's throat, like it or not.
• 
Artificial intelligence, we are told, will be "everywhere" – running your home, your kitchen, your bath.  No aspect of life will be untouched by the robot revolution.
• 
And this is supposed to be progress?  What a disaster in the making.
• 
The more dependent we become on technology, the more we put ourselves in danger.
• 
Do you really want to give giant tech companies like Google and Amazon such control over your life, especially now that we know that the design of all this computing power is fundamentally flawed?
• 
Putting our faith in big, centralized, technocratic and technological systems is enormously risky because they are inherently fragile.
• 
And the bigger they are, the bigger the risk.
      Silicon Valley's drug-fueled, secret sex parties — One more reason to hate the hookup culture  (Fox 01/06/2018)
• 
We typically picture the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley as brilliant if geeky walking intellects, hunched over their computers, inventing new gadgets.
• 
... revealing that Silicon Valley is as sexually debauched as Hollywood, the political world and the media.
• 
For real reform, we have to dig deeper.  A hedonistic ethic pervades all our public institutions.
• 
Universities hold sex weeks where porn stars are speakers and sex toy companies display their wares.
• 
It should surprise no one that the hookup culture is metastasizing on campuses.
• 
Before reaching campus, students are primed by high school sex education courses that typically focus on the physical...
• 
Other segments of adult culture are complicit in sexualizing children at ever-younger ages.
• 
Advertisers use sex to sell, filmmakers use sex to entice viewers, musicians film raunchy videos.
• 
The sexual liberation ethic stems from an underlying idea that the world is a product of blind, material forces.
• 
... "the loyalty oath of modernity" is that "nature is without conscious design ... the emergence of Homo sapiens was without meaning or telos" (purpose).
• 
... no wonder those with power feel entitled to use other people for their own gratification.
• 
... at the root of moral issues is the question: What kind of cosmos do we live in?  Are we products of blind material forces?  Or does the natural world reflect some kind of purpose – and behind it, a Person who loves us and has a purpose for our lives?
      Want to get more family-friendly entertainment on TV and in the movies?  Here's how  (Fox 01/02/2018)
• 
Some nights I flip and flip and flip through the television channels searching for something family-friendly to watch.
• 
It blows my mind that I have several hundred channels and yet there are so few choices.  The same is often true when looking for a movie for the family to go see.
• 
... so many of our available choices today contain profanity, sexual innuendo (or more), fractured families and graphic violence.
• 
Lack of respect for others is often rampant – and one doesn't have to look far to see that a steady diet of the bad content in many of our television shows and movies is having an impact on our youth and our culture.
• 
... just as we wouldn't let our children reach into the trash can to pull out a cookie surrounded by garbage, we can't afford to fill their hearts and minds with trash.
• 
Even a little bit of bad content can make a lasting impression on young minds. 
• 
A wise parent will remember that what goes into our hearts and minds is what will come out.
• 
Make sure that what your children are watching is something that matches your values.
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      Suppose President Barack Obama Spent Year 1 Battling 'Collusion'?  (JWR 12/21/2017)
• 
Imagine how Democrats, the media, academia and Hollywood would have reacted had the newly elected President Barack Obama, America's first black president, spent the first year of his presidency with his campaign and transition teams under investigation for "collusion" to steal the election.
• 
Imagine if, from the very moment Obama won the election, Republicans reminded the country that Sen.  Obama campaigned against what he considered President George W.  Bush's dark, hawkish vision of foreign policy.  And that Obama wanted to curry favor with Russia, whose assistance Obama wanted to secure the Iran nuke deal his administration so desperately wanted
• 
Imagine Obama supporters' reaction had Republicans, immediately after Obama's election, pushed the following narrative.  Russia wanted Obama to win so Vladimir Putin could get him to reverse the Poland and Czech Republic defense deals that Russia strongly opposed.  Obama, as president, delivered.
• 
Imagine the explosion in this country had Bush's top intelligence official called the newly elected Obama a Russian "asset" who does Putin's bidding, just as former National Intelligence Director James Clapper recently described President Donald Trump.
• 
Imagine if cable news televised hearing after hearing where Republicans aggressively questioned Obama officials about "collusion" with the Russians to win the election.
• 
Imagine that "after all this time and expense" spent on an Obama collusion investigation, Democrats argue that investigators found no evidence of collusion, but then the investigation shifts.
• 
The probe goes from whether Obama worked with Putin to win the election to whether anyone lied to investigators during the investigation — no matter the fact the "lies" had nothing to do with whether illegal collusion occurred.
• 
Imagine how Obama supporters would react to Republicans who first attributed Obama's win to illegal collusion, but then began saying, "It's not the crime; it's the cover-up," or "It's the obstruction of justice."
• 
Even more strident Republicans would likely note that the Communist Party USA no longer runs its own candidates for president but now supports Democrats, as they did Obama.
• 
In fact, we really don't have to imagine.  There is a parallel.
• 
Recall how quickly Obama defenders cried racism when Republicans simply expressed policy differences.
• 
Editorials in virtually every major newspaper would blast an investigation of Obama.  Most would call it racially motivated.
• 
An avalanche of angry editorials and opinion pieces would attack the "subversive effort to overturn this historic election."
• 
Cable TV commentators on CNN and MSNBC would have predicted, and prepared to cover, riots in the streets should Obama be impeached.
• 
Black Lives Matter leaders would encourage people to "take to the streets."
• 
Leaders would shout, "They can't even define 'collusion.'" "When did trying to get dirt on your opponent become a crime?"
• 
"This is nothing more than an attempt by white racists to undo an election because they still cannot believe a black man won."
• 
Every House and Senate Democrat would gather on the steps of the Capital to show solidarity, denounce the Obama probe and demand the firings of investigators who, in their view, "have shown bias."
• 
$Civil rights leaders would call it "political lynching" by a party that wants "to bring back Jim Crow, turn back the clock on civil rights and suppress the black vote."
• 
Leaders would warn of an impending "civil war" if the probe continued.
      Sessions needs to stop the misuse of intelligence for politics  (NYP 12/17/2017)
• 
"Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," Schumer ­declared.
• 
Schumer was right about a vendetta, but wrong about timing.
• 
It's now clear that intelligence officials already had started "getting back" at the next commander in chief.
• 
They started in the summer of 2016.
• 
In early August, Mike Morell, who was acting head of the CIA ­under Barack Obama, broke with agency tradition by entering the ­political fray to endorse Hillary Clinton.
• 
He praised her as "highly qualified" and said Trump was "not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security."
• 
That same month, the FBI was also busy with its pro-Clinton, anti-Trump playbook. 
• 
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office — that there's no way he [Trump] gets elected — but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.  It's like an insurance policy in the ­unlikely event you die before you're 40 .?.?."
• 
Here's the obvious question: What was "it" that's "like an insurance policy"?
• 
Was it the Russian dossier and its salacious, unverified accusations against Trump then being shopped around Washington?
• 
Or was the insurance policy the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, which was only weeks old — and which Strzok was leading?
• 
Strzok was a busy man, working both sides of the presidential fix.  ... he also was a major player in the Clinton e-mail probe and helped to soften the language so Comey could legally exonerate her.
• 
If that were all, it would be enough.  But there's more, much more.
• 
A ranking Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, was secretly meeting with Fusion GPS, the firm that was paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to produce the dossier.
• 
And get this: Fusion GPS has confirmed that Ohr's wife was working for the company on the anti-Trump contract.
• 
... dismissed Strzok when the department's inspector general alerted him to the damning texts, but Strzok is still working for the FBI.
• 
Those actions are baby steps next to the monstrous facts: Leading members of the intelligence community tried to tilt the election to Clinton and, having failed, tried to undermine the Trump presidency.
• 
How vast was this conspiracy and who else was involved?  Most important, how high did it go?*
• 
"So, he must have thought, ‘Who are these guys?  Are these guys out to get me?  Is this a political organization?  Can I think about them as a political organization when I become president?'"
• 
That is an astonishing admission.  And one that should finally stir the somnolent Jeff Sessions.
• 
The attorney general has gone missing when he is needed most.
• 
The emerging evidence follows earlier warning signs that include Comey's suspicious actions, Loretta Lynch's tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton during the e-mail case and the unmasking of Trump associates from intercepted phone calls.
• 
They all fit a consistent pattern of weaponizing intelligence and law enforcement for political purposes.
• 
In stark terms, Hillary Clinton got a free pass and Trump got sabotaged — by the same people.
• 
... along the way, Sessions' limited recusal mushroomed into a vow of inaction.
• 
Meanwhile, his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, looked like a deer caught in the headlights last week when House GOP members demanded to know whether the FBI paid Steele and whether the Trump dossier was used to get a surveillance warrant against Trump associates.
• 
Rosenstein said he knew the answers, but couldn't give them.
• 
I take that to mean the answer is yes, which would amount to compelling evidence that the Justice Department, FBI and CIA under Obama worked with the Clinton campaign to stop Trump.
• 
Americans are steadily losing faith in their government, and the CIA and FBI are not exempt.
      Trump shuts down ginned-up liberal 'uprising' in three words  (Fox 12/18/2017)
• 
You would've thought they were preparing for the apocalypse.
• 
Former Obama White House Ethics Chief, Walter Shaub, tweeted that he was "stocking up" on gear to "take the streets." In his words, it was supposed to be a "defining moment for the Republic."
• 
Actor-turned-activist George Takei tweeted that Americans should "shut the country down."
• 
Cenk Uygur, the founder and CEO of far-left online news show "The Young Turks" prophesied that this should be an "uprising like we've never seen in America."
• 
Former Attorney General Eric Holder drew what he called an "absolute red line."
• 
Their message was clear: if President Trump fires special counsel Robert Mueller, the American people should act as if their 241-year-old experiment in democracy has come to an end.
• 
But unfortunately, when asked about the firing on Sunday night, the president shut down all of the rumors (and all of their plans) by simply declaring, "no, I'm not."
• 
Make no mistake.  The left will soon decide on another issue (or rumor of an issue) to incense their base and stir outrage in our country.
• 
First, regardless of their empty assurances that their uprising will be peaceful — their rhetoric says otherwise.
• 
They pay lip service to holding a peaceful protest while using inflammatory language like "stock up on gear" and "shut down the country."
• 
You can't spew alarmist, end-of-the-world rhetoric and then expect your base to respond with careful, dignified street protests.
• 
Second, liberals' selective outrage is appalling.  Moveon.org, the organization behind the protests, made their motto "nobody is above the law."
• 
Ostensibly, that's an idea that both sides of the aisle could get behind.  Patriotic Americans would agree that all citizens are equal under the law.
• 
But to many who hold progressive political views, that idea only applies to one side of the political spectrum.
• 
Notably, these same activists made no such calls for mass protests after former FBI Director James Comey cleared Hillary Clinton of criminal charges a year ago.
• 
And there was no indignation from these folks after it came to light that the FBI softened the language in Comey's statement in her favor.
• 
That's why it's difficult to believe that these activists are genuinely motivated to uphold the rule of law, and not just their own political ideologies.
• 
One thing is true: the President's words may have temporarily halted what the left saw as a "defining moment for the republic."
• 
But they will find new opportunities.  New pots to stir.  And new calls for chaos.
• 
See related Which One? (Mike Lester, 06/13/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Washington Post attack on Trump about Russia briefings is deeply flawed fake news  (Fox 12/16/2017)
• 
It is clear to me that the Post story is designed to advance the left's teetering Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
• 
The Post article's authors ... say that a Jan.  6 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) said it was an "objective reality" that Russia meddled our election to help Donald Trump win.
• 
The Post article repeatedly asserts that President Trump's refusal to accept this assessment means he is refusing to recognize the threat to U.S.  national security posed by Russia.
• 
The truth is that the January ICA is far from objective truth and had serious problems.
• 
... intelligence community procedures on drafting this type of analysis were not followed and it reflected the views of only three intelligence agencies – not all 17 as the mainstream media claimed.
• 
... the January ICA on Russian interference in the 2016 election was drafted by a group of about two dozen hand-picked analysts, a major violation of intelligence community procedures.
• 
So what did the Washington Post article say about the huge problems with the January ICA?  Absolutely nothing.
• 
The reporters claim that the president's skepticism about intelligence assessments of Russian meddling in the election and his interest in establishing a working relationship with Russia represents something nefarious.
• 
Never mind that no evidence whatsoever of such collusion between Trump or his campaign and Russia to influence the presidential election has surfaced, despite multiple investigations since mid-2016.  The reporters also ignored that the Obama administration sought to establish a working relationship with Russia.  Remember Hillary Clinton's "Russia Reset?"
• 
I believe President Trump's reluctance to accept the findings of U.S.  intelligence agencies on Russian election meddling is understandable, given the major flaws in the January 2017 ICA as well as the incredible hostility that intelligence officers expressed against him before and after the election.
• 
Current and former intelligence officers have been trying to undermine Donald Trump since the summer of 2016 by calling him "a traitor," stating they would refuse to brief him when he was a presidential candidate and leaking details of his intelligence briefings to the media.
• 
Finally, the Post story misses the boat on President Obama's decision in late December 2016 to expel Russian diplomats and close two Russian diplomatic compounds to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 election.
• 
The article discusses at length how the Trump administration considered lifting these sanctions.  However, it fails to discuss how the sanctions likely were imposed by the Obama administration to sabotage President Trump's Russia policy.
• 
President Obama imposed these sanctions on December 29, 2016.  It was extraordinary for an outgoing president with only 22 days in office to take such dramatic action without the consent of the president-elect, even though the sanctions were certain to result in retaliation by Russia during the next president's term.
• 
One has to ask why President Obama chose December 29, 2016 to sanction Russia when Russia had committed many other heinous acts during his presidency, such as invading and seizing Crimea and supporting rebels in Ukraine who shot down a Malaysian Air flight in 2014.
• 
President Obama's 11th hour Russia sanctions were not just an attempt to sabotage the Trump administration's Russia policy.
• 
They also were a trap to catch Trump officials in a supposed Logan Act violation by discussing these sanctions with Russian officials before Trump was sworn in.
• 
It's too bad that the authors of the Post article did not explore the suspicious nature of President Obama's last-minute Russia sanctions on Russia.
• 
The sanctions appear to have been part of a larger strategy by the Obama administration, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to abuse the enormous power of U.S.  intelligence agencies, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Office of the President to discredit and defeat candidate Trump and then cause problems for President Trump.
• 
But expecting the Washington Post to do these things is too much to hope for from one of America's leading Fake News outlets.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Did the FBI and the Justice Department, plot to clear Hillary Clinton, bring down Trump?  (Fox 12/15/2017)
• 
There is strong circumstantial evidence that an insidious plot unprecedented in American history was hatched within the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to help elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. 
• 
And when this apparent effort to improperly influence the election did not succeed, the suspected conspirators appear to have employed a fraudulent investigation of President Trump in an attempt to undo the election results and remove him as president.
• 
Such a Machiavellian scheme would move well beyond what is known as the "deep state," a popular reference to government employees who organize in secret to impose their own political views on government policy in defiance of democratically elected leadership. 
• 
However, this apparent plot to keep Trump from becoming president and to weaken and potentially pave the way for his impeachment with a prolonged politically motivated investigation – if proven – would constitute something far more nefarious and dangerous.
• 
Such a plot would show that partisans within the FBI and the Justice Department, driven by personal animus and a sense of political righteousness, surreptitiously conspired to subvert electoral democracy itself in our country.
• 
... there are plenty of facts that lay out a damning case based on circumstantial evidence.
• 
"Part A" was to devise a way to exonerate Clinton, despite compelling evidence that she committed crimes under the Espionage Act in her mishandling of classified documents on her private email server.
• 
It seems the Obama Justice Department and FBI conjured up a "Part B" just in case the first stratagem failed.  This would be even more malevolent – manufacturing an alleged crime supposedly committed by Trump where no crime exists in the law. 
• 
And so, armed with a fictitious justification, a criminal investigation was launched into so-called Trump-Russia "collusion."
• 
It was always a mythical legal claim, since there is no statute prohibiting foreign nationals from volunteering their services in American political campaigns. 
• 
More importantly, there was never a scintilla of evidence that Trump collaborated with Russia to influence the election. 
• 
No matter.  The intent may have been to sully the new president while searching for a crime to force him from office. 
• 
Page: "And maybe you're meant to stay where you are because you're meant to protect the country from that menace." (This is clearly a reference to a Trump presidency). 
• 
Strzok: "Thanks.  And of course I'll try and approach it that way.  I can protect our country at many levels..."
• 
As the lead investigator in the Clinton email case, he is the person who changed the critical wording in Comey's description of Clinton's handling of classified material, substituting "extremely careless" for "gross negligence."
• 
... this alteration of two words had enormous consequences, because it allowed Clinton to evade prosecution.  This removed the only legal impediment to her election as president.
• 
It appears that Strzok was instrumental in clearing Clinton by rewriting Comey's otherwise incriminating findings.
• 
... Strzok was the agent who reportedly signed the documents launching the bureau's Trump-Russia probe.  And he was a lead investigator in the case before jumping to Robert Mueller's special counsel team.
• 
If there is any doubt that Strzok and Page sought to undermine the democratic process, consider this cryptic text about their "insurance policy" against the "risk" of a Trump presidency.
• 
Strzok: "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office – that there's no way he gets elected – but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.  It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40..."
• 
The reference to "Andy" is likely Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who was also supervising the investigation of Clinton's emails at the same time his wife was receiving roughly $675,000 in campaign money in her race for elective office in Virginia from groups aligned with Clinton. 
• 
What was the "insurance policy" discussed in Andy's office?  Was it the FBI's investigation of Trump and his associates?  Or was it the anti-Trump "dossier" that may have been used by the FBI and the Justice Department as the basis for a warrant to wiretap and spy on Trump associates?  Perhaps it was both. 
• 
The "dossier" was a compendium of largely specious allegations about Trump, compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.  The dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.  Comey called it "salacious and unverified."
• 
The dossier scandal recently ensnared Bruce Ohr, a top Justice Department official...  Ohr's wife worked for Fusion GPS.  This created a disqualifying conflict of interest for Mr.  Ohr.
• 
He was legally obligated under Justice Department regulations to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation of Russia's role in the election, but he did not. 
• 
Congress needs to find out whether the dossier was exploited as a pretext for initiating the Russia probe against President Trump.
• 
It would also be unconscionable, if not illegal, for the FBI and Justice Department to use opposition research funded by Clinton's campaign to spy on her opponent or his campaign.
• 
Both agencies have been resisting congressional subpoenas and other demands for answers, which smacks of a cover-up.  Since the Justice Department cannot be trusted to investigate itself, a second special counsel should be appointed. 
• 
This new counsel should also reopen the Clinton email case and investigate the conduct of Strzok, Page, Comey and others who may have obstructed justice by exonerating Clinton in the face of substantial evidence that she had committed crimes. 
• 
If Strzok or anyone else allowed their political views to shape the investigations of either Clinton or Trump and dictate the outcomes, that is a felony for which they should be prosecuted. 
• 
The Mueller investigation is now so tainted with the appearance of corruption that it has lost credibility and the public's trust.
      Toxic Hatred of Trump a Sign of Non Compos Mentis  (JWR 12/12/2017)
• 
Unlike the millennials today who haven't a clue about history, I grew up in the Cold War and knew all about communism and all forms of socialism.
• 
The nuns in my school taught about the dangers of Marxism and assigned us to read Animal Farm and 1984. 
• 
When the Democrats pushed through their job killing Affordable Care Act in 2009, it was clear where the Obama legacy was headed and his socialist policies were what conservatives objected to not the color of his skin yet any criticism drew leftwing charges of racism.
• 
At no point, however, did the majority dissolve into today's hate-spewing, violent and militant Deep State bent on removing our sitting president.
• 
Ever since Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States, his adversaries have lost their collective minds especially those in the Republican Party.
• 
The fact is there should be no 'Never Trumpers' since his election.
• 
Those seeking to remove him via impeachment are nothing less than treasonous, self-serving, petulant, and just plain stupid.
• 
President Trump may be brash, outspoken and prone to politically incorrect tweets but he has done nothing wrong.
• 
I'm glad he tweets because he takes his point directly to the people without it being filtered by a hostile press which by the way manages to tweet faux news on a daily basis.
• 
In fact, President Trump has been incredibly effective in restoring the country to its former relevance.
• 
The stock market is booming; employment is the highest in years and unemployment is at its lowest.
• 
Yet those calling for his impeachment after his having been in office less than a year are displaying evidence of being non compos mentis.
• 
One can almost understand why the Democrats are devastated by his ascent to the presidency but the outcry among the GOP elite is not only inexplicable but downright destructive to progress.
• 
Hatred of President Trump has become self-toxic to the haters who are losing whatever credibility they ever had.
• 
The mainstream media is a joke with a slavish mission to remove a president they despise who has actually performed quite well yet is unacceptable to the minions of the left.  They twist reports to suit their narrative and end up with egg on their faces.
• 
If journalism has died, it has been killed by its wrongheaded allegiance to a very flawed ideological partner, Barack Obama, who demonstrated his hollow character and ignorance while on a trip abroad by comparing the Trump administration to Hitler's.
• 
This at a time when Donald Trump did what no president has had the cojones to do by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
• 
... they need to take a deep breath, look in the mirror and say — "Donald Trump is president of the United States and we accept him for the good of our country."
• 
We deplorables did it in 2008 and 2012 and survived with our sanity intact.  Here's hoping the mainstream media will do the same.
      Matt Lauer was fired a week ago for appalling behavior, not ‘toxic masculinity’  (Fox 12/06/2017)
• 
We are seeing the fruits of a movement – both political and social – underway for decades, to tear down the traditional roles of men and women in society. 
• 
Hollywood and the media not only romanticized the shift in cultures, but took it further with decades of objectification of women in film and print, and normalizing abhorrent behavior.
• 
They tore down cultural institutions like marriage and the family, and replaced it with a vacuous, relativistic idea that has shaken our society and devastated our morality.
• 
I'm talking about the war on what progressives, extreme feminists and the cultural elites (Hollywood and the entertainment industry) have branded as "toxic masculinity."
• 
Yet it is these very groups that enabled and protected the likes of Weinstein and Franken and, as revealed last week, Matt Lauer.
• 
... the left's and feminists' willingness to look the other way for decades as male allies publicly supported their causes while they privately abused women...
• 
Yet today, these enablers insist on pinning their mess on the "toxic masculinity" of every male.
• 
After decades of conditioning to objectify, and even enabling toxic masculinity because it suited their purposes, many in the liberal elite are acting shocked – shocked!..
• 
In its attempts to blame all men for certain behaviors, the left is trying to avoid the fact that it created toxic masculinity.  It created the werewolves and the vampires with their twisted views of the world and the genders and love and sex — it created the rapacious male.
• 
Combine this with the objectification of other people and the premise that we're all the random result of chance, why wouldn't you demand immediate gratification for personal gain?  One follows the other and we are in many ways seeing the inevitable end of these ideas. 
• 
It should be hoped that we will question everything we've been conditioned to: are we just finite objects eking out our 70 or 80 or 90 years on this rock spinning around the sun in space, or is each one of us a unique creation, caught between the eternities with an immortal soul, with a greater purpose than just to exist for a moment in time?
• 
When you warp the essence of who we are and bend them to fit your twisted views of reality and purpose, you quickly end up with inconsistencies and wrong conclusions about literally everything: a human being's purpose and meaning, of belonging, of the genders, of sex, of love.
• 
But let's be honest: aren't all unchecked desires in every human being brutal and ugly?  Aren't all human actions abhorrent when motivated by twisted desires and beliefs?
• 
It's about teaching them gentle strength, to have self-discipline and to serve, to be noble in a world that wants them to be anything but noble, to be non-conformists in a world that seeks to conform them to its warped views of reality.
• 
It's time that we as a society and a culture start having these conversations about who we are as human beings.  To refuse to have them is to ask for more of what we're currently seeing.
• 
See related Democratic Hero (Glenn McCoy, 11/20/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related A Tale of Two Bills (Glenn McCoy, 07/09/2015) cartoon from Adult picture album
• 
See related Shocked (Michael Ramirez, 10/13/2017) cartoon from Adult picture album
      How an FBI official with a political agenda corrupted both Mueller, Comey investigations  (Fox 12/05/2017)
• 
How is it possible that Hillary Clinton escaped criminal indictment for mishandling classified documents despite incriminating evidence that she violated the Espionage Act? 
• 
Why did Donald Trump become the target of a criminal investigation for allegedly conspiring with Russia to influence the presidential election despite no evidence that he ever did so?
• 
The answer, it seems, comes down to one person who played a vital role in both cases: Peter Strzok, deputy director of counterintelligence at the FBI. 
• 
Strzok was exchanging politically charged texts to an FBI lawyer that denigrated Trump and lauded Clinton at the same time he was leading the bureau's criminal investigation of Clinton.
• 
He is also the one who changed the critical wording of then-FBI Director James Comey's description of Clinton's handling of classified material that resulted in no charges being brought against her. 
• 
Then, Strzok reportedly signed the document launching the 2016 investigation into Russia's meddling in the election and whether the Trump campaign played any role.
• 
After leading the FBI's probe into Trump, he then joined Robert Mueller's special counsel team as an integral investigator. 
• 
Thus, it appears that one man with a strident political agenda accomplished his twin goals of clearing Clinton and accusing Trump, evidence be damned.
• 
The messages were so politically incendiary and so threatened the integrity of Mueller's investigation that Strzok was quietly canned over the summer from the special counsel team where he was a pivotal participant.
• 
Did Mueller or anyone else notify Congress that both the Trump investigation — and the Clinton case before it — were corrupted?  Of course not.  It was covered up.
• 
Mueller surely knew that if the truth was revealed it would further discredit his Trump-Russia probe which had already taken on the stench of dead fish.
• 
Importantly, all of the anti-Trump and pro-Clinton messages should be made public.  Americans should decide for themselves whether our system of justice has been compromised by unscrupulous influences.
• 
Just how rife with political prejudice and corrupt motives is the special counsel's investigation? 
• 
Instead of choosing prosecutors who could be neutral, fair and objective, Mueller stacked his staff with democratic donors.
• 
We were supposed to simply trust Mueller's judgment, notwithstanding his own disqualifying conflict of interest under the special counsel statute that demanded his recusal.
• 
The Trump-Russia investigation is now awash in illegitimacy.  Mueller and those who work for him have squandered all credibility.
• 
It is imperative that the special counsel be dismissed, the current staff fired, and a new counsel appointed to reevaluate the evidence objectively.
• 
Do not expect Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to make these changes.  He, too, should be removed in his capacity as Mueller's supervisor.  As both a witness and prosecutor, Rosenstein has his own conspicuous and disabling conflict of interest.  Yet, he has refused to step aside.
• 
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is duty-bound to remove both Mueller and Rosenstein.
• 
The computer accounts of the entire staff need to be examined by Congress and the DOJ Inspector General.
• 
Every member of Mueller's hand-picked staff must now be examined.  The special counsel has proven he cannot be trusted with his assembled team of partisans.
• 
In the meantime, the Department of Justice must now, belatedly, reopen the Clinton email case and reexamine fairly and impartially all of the evidence to determine whether criminal charges against her should be sought.  The statute of limitations has not expired.
• 
Sadly, the FBI is no longer the respected premier law enforcement agency in America.  People like Peter Strzok have politicized the bureau, discredited its work and done immeasurable damage.  So, too, have James Comey and Robert Mueller. 
• 
President Trump is right — the FBI's "reputation is in tatters," and the Clinton probe was "phony and dishonest."
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      NFL owners appear poised to pay nearly $100 million bribe for nothing  (Fox 11/30/2017)
• 
NFL owners seem poised to donate nearly $100 million (including some contributions from players) over seven years to support the favorite social justice causes of the players.
• 
But in a perfect show of how incompetent they are, the owners will get nothing from the players in return.
• 
No promise to stop disrespecting the national anthem or any other meaningful concessions.
• 
Who taught these clowns to negotiate, Neville Chamberlain?  Obviously, they are used to trying to buy their way out of problems.
• 
Can you even imagine the sum total spent bailing their pampered players out of legal beefs, domestic violence and sexual misconduct issues?
• 
It would likely dwarf even Congress and Hollywood.  But do they really think this will solve their problem?
• 
Now the owners have taught the players that disrupting the business that feeds them all will bring the players more satchels of cash to toss around to pet causes, in a frenzy of virtue signaling.
• 
So the NFL owners look like they will cave in and hope, hopelessly, that this will buy them some good will.
• 
What the owners should have done is said quite simply and emphatically: "Stand for the anthem or sit for the game – period."
• 
Let them sit out the game, and play their back ups.  Most of these guys are too over-leveraged spending their newfound wealth to miss too many paychecks.
• 
Better to have one fight on principle standing up for the national anthem and flag both literally and figuratively, then to set yourself up for a series of cringing capitulations week after week and year after year.
• 
The victorious players will now see their ability to extract funds for any cause, even their own enrichment, to be greatly enhanced.
• 
... by kneeling themselves, the owners have simply ensured that they will feed a social justice crowd that knows no compromise.
• 
They would have been much better off to read to the end of that Kipling poem on Dane-geld and do the hard thing now:
• 
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld, / No matter how trifling the cost; / For the end of that game is oppression and shame, / And the nation that pays it is lost!"
• 
These wannabe social justice warriors have plenty of their own cash and plenty of time outside the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" to pursue whatever causes they wish.
• 
Americans should not stand for their disrespect, and I sure won't.
      America, we have it good - blessings and gratitude this Thanksgiving season  (Fox 11/26/2017)
• 
... here is my point: In America, we have it good.
• 
Our infrastructure is reliable, our gasoline is cheap, our food is affordable, and the choices endless.  We should be thankful that America is a nation whose backbone was?and largely still is?the family.
• 
Americans enjoy amenities that people from other eras would have fainted over — hot water on demand, the ability to maintain personal hygiene, smartphones, paved roads, hospitals and backyards not roaming with dangerous animals.
• 
We are blessed to be a nation of over 300,000 churches, and we still enjoy the ability to freely broadcast Christian content via the airwaves and online.
• 
America was founded on Christian principles.  In our country, problems may be addressed with peaceful elections without violent revolutions.
• 
Regarding the proliferation of churches throughout the colonies, Thomas Paine in 1776 said, "Where, say some is the King of America?  I'll tell you, friend, He reigns above!"
• 
As God has uniquely blessed America, it is only prudent to consider how to keep America in this position.
• 
We do not deserve God's hand of blessing.  But this Thanksgiving season, let's be grateful for it and humble enough to pray, realizing that the sins of this nation are causing His hand of blessing to be removed.
• 
See related Happy Thanksgiving (Michael Ramirez, 11/23/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Ten congressional Democrats want lenient treatment for young terrorists who murder Israelis  (Fox 11/24/2017)
• 
Palestinian terrorist leaders often use teenagers to commit acts of terror because they know the Israeli legal system treats children more leniently than adults.
• 
Now 10 Democrats belonging to the Congressional Progressive Caucus are trying to give terrorist leaders yet another reason for using young people to murder even more innocent civilians.
• 
... calling on the State Department to "prevent United States tax dollars from supporting the Israeli military's ongoing detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children."
• 
"This legislation highlights Israel's system of military detention of Palestinian children and ensures that no American assistance to Israel supports human rights violations ....  Peace can only be achieved by respecting human rights, especially the rights of children.  Congress must not turn a blind eye the unjust and ongoing mistreatment of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation."
• 
It is well established that recruiting and using young Palestinians to wage terror on Israeli civilians is part of the modus operandi of Palestinian terrorist leaders.
• 
For decades, members of the radical Palestinian political and religious leadership have been stirring up young people to wage war against the Jews and the Jewish State.
• 
This was seen in the gruesome intifada that began in 2000, in which Palestinian teenagers committed dozens of attacks against Jewish Israelis on buses, in cafes and at nightclubs.
• 
More recently – in what has become known as the "lone-wolf" intifada – children as young as 13 have stabbed Israelis with scissors, screwdrivers and knives. 
• 
While noting that children between the ages of 12 and 17 are held and prosecuted by Israeli military courts, the bill fails to acknowledge that some of the most barbaric terrorist attacks against Jewish Israelis have been committed by Palestinian teens.
• 
A Palestinian in his late teens – from a nearby village controlled by the Palestinian Authority – chose a Jewish house at random and fatally stabbed three members of a family as they ate their Sabbath dinner.
• 
The Palestinian "child" murderer also wounded several other family members, while one mother hid her young children in an upstairs room until the terrorist left.
• 
... a similar attack that occurred only six years earlier when two Palestinian teens armed with knives broke into the Fogel family home in Itamar as they slept on Friday night.
• 
The "children" butchered the mother, father and three of their children – including a 3-month-old baby as she slept in her crib.
• 
In August 2016, the Israeli parliament (Knesset) passed a bill allowing imprisonment of terrorists as young as 12.
• 
"This law was born of necessity.  We have been experiencing a wave of terror for quite some time.  A society is allowed to protect itself.  To those who are murdered with a knife in the heart it does not matter if the child is 12 or 15.  We've witnessed numerous cases where 11-year-old children were suicide bombers.  Perhaps this law will also do something to protect these children from being used to slaughter people."
• 
So I ask: What do these members of Congress think Israel should do?  If children as young as 13 were roaming the streets of New York, Los Angeles or Boston stabbing elderly women as they shopped at the supermarket or waited at a bus stop, would the Democrats protest the apprehension and prosecution of the perpetrators?
• 
No country in the world would tolerate terror in its cities, regardless of the age of the terrorists.
• 
Israel has a right – according to international law – to protect its citizens from constant terror attacks, including those committed by young Palestinians.  It actually has an obligation to do so.
• 
... rather than condemning the abhorrent and unlawful use of children as terrorist pawns, the 10 congressional Democrats chose to single out Israel for punishment.
• 
People of good faith on both sides of the aisle should call out this double standard for what it really is: an attack on Jewish victims of teenage terrorism and the Jewish State.
      This Thanksgiving, thank private property.  Every day, it protects us from the tragedy of the commons  (Fox 11/22/2017)
• 
Ready for Thanksgiving?  Before you eat that turkey, I hope you think about why America has turkeys for you to eat.  Most people don't know.
• 
Everyone's heard about that first Thanksgiving feast — Pilgrims and Indians sharing the harvest.
• 
They almost starved because they acted the way some Bernie Sanders fans want people to act.  They farmed collectively.
• 
But communal farming creates what economists call "the tragedy of the commons."
• 
I repeated an experiment economics teachers sometimes do to demonstrate the tragedy of the commons.
• 
I assembled a group of people, put coins on the floor in front of them and said, "I'll give you a dollar for each coin you pick up.  But if you leave them down there for a minute, I'll give you two bucks per coin, and then three bucks.  Each minute the coins increase in value by a dollar."
• 
If the group waited, they'd make more money.
• 
Did they wait?  No.
• 
As soon as I said "Go!" everyone frantically grabbed for coins.  No one wanted to wait because someone else would have gotten the money.
• 
Collective action makes people more greedy and short-sighted, not less.
• 
Then I changed the rules of the game.  I divided the floor into segments, so each person had his or her own property.  Then we played the game again.
• 
This time there was no coin-grabbing frenzy.  Now patient people anticipated the future.
• 
"I want to reap the most benefit," said one.  "(On the previous test) I wanted it now, whereas this is going up, and it's mine."
• 
Exactly.  When you own property, you want to preserve it, to allow it to keep producing good things.
• 
That beneficial pattern disappears under collectivism, even if the collectivists are nice people.
• 
The Pilgrims started out sharing their land.  When crops were ready to harvest, they behaved like the people in my experiment.
• 
Some Pilgrims sneaked out at night and grabbed extra food.  Some picked corn before it was fully ready.  The result?
• 
"By the spring," Pilgrim leader William Bradford wrote in his diary, "our food stores were used up and people grew weak and thin.  Some swelled with hunger."
• 
Adding to the problem, when people share the results of your work, some don't work hard.  The chance to take advantage of others' joint labor is too tempting.
• 
Fortunately, the Pilgrims were led not by Bernie Sanders fans or other commons-loving socialists, but by Governor Bradford, who wrote that he "began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could ... that they might not still thus languish in misery ... After much debate (I) assigned each family a parcel of land ... (T)his had very good success, because it made every hand industrious."
• 
There's nothing like private ownership to make "every hand industrious."
• 
Private property became the foundation for building the most prosperous nation in the history of the world, a place where people have individual rights instead of group plans forced on everyone.
      Trump's historic impact on the federal court system will help our nation prosper for decades to come  (Fox 11/22/2017)
• 
... the president is restoring the intended purpose of the federal judiciary – to uphold the rule of law as outlined in the Constitution.
• 
Our Founding Fathers intended for the judicial branch to be an impartial institution with the sole mission of interpreting the law and ensuring it is applied fairly to all Americans.
• 
Under the Obama administration, judges instead cast themselves as political activists pursuing a liberal-leaning agenda.
• 
Our Founders fully understood the threat that a politically saturated judicial branch posed to our God-given and legally protected American freedoms.
• 
... President Trump has already taken monumental steps to restore the integrity of the federal bench by appointing originalist judicial nominees who will apply the law as it is written, rather than in the way current political forces desire.
• 
The left and the media are panicked because they know the large-scale changes President Trump is making will have long-lasting, history-shaping effects.
• 
Federal judicial appointments are for life, and President Trump is selecting relatively young individuals, by federal court standards.
• 
In addition to serving longer terms, these judges will also bring new experiences and aptitudes into the judicial system.
• 
This can be tremendously helpful as cases involving cybercrime, data theft, and malicious use of technology become more common.
• 
While it is easy to focus on the U.S.  Supreme Court, lower and appellate court judges will make decisions that impact ordinary Americans on a daily basis for decades to come.
• 
This Trump transformation in the judiciary could establish the most pro-American, pro-individual rights federal bench in modern American history.
• 
... the Trump revolution taking place in the federal court system will help our nation continue to prosper by ensuring that our judges protect our lives, liberty and core values for decades to come.
      NFL national anthem protests are teaching our children to NOT be thankful for America  (Fox 11/22/2017)
• 
The message?  Don't be thankful for the many blessings America has given you.  Instead, act ungratefully, disrespectfully and unpatriotically.
• 
And sadly, some children are now following that example.
• 
Unbelievably, the coach said: "I felt like it was a good teaching moment for me."
• 
Teaching what?  Hatred of America?
• 
If students banded together in a planned show of disrespect for a rainbow flag – the symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride – you'd better believe they'd be punished for intolerance.
• 
And if students held a protest objecting to radical political Islam, there's no doubt they'd be disciplined for bigotry.  The same would happen if students denounced and disrespected any country on Earth – with one exception.
• 
When student football players disrespect America, our anthem and our flag, what happens?  They get applauded by the left.
• 
On Sept.  28, football players at Monroe Township High School in New Jersey knelt during the national anthem.
• 
Two referees walked off in protest, leaving the legitimacy of the game in doubt.  Only the refs were punished, being suspended for the rest of the season.
• 
What should happen next is that a parent of any American student insulted by the disrespect for America should demand that the school enforce Monroe's bullying policy and discipline the kneelers.
• 
Normally I don't encourage making a federal case out of school disciplinary matters, but if the left keeps jumping us with culture rumbles, we have to take their own weapons to use on them.
• 
      Marc Thiessen: Yes, the Clintons should be investigated  (Fox 11/21/2017)
• 
President Trump's critics are arguing that GOP calls for the Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton and Democrats' ties to Russia are an effort to distract from the real Russia investigation, into potential Trump-Russia collusion.
• 
No, they are not.
• 
Ever since Watergate, the mantra of all major corruption investigations has been to "follow the money."
• 
Well, Americans of all political stripes should be outraged by the fact that both Democrats and Republicans in Washington are up to their eyeballs in Kremlin cash.
• 
This should suggest to objective observers that Russia was using its money to influence both sides in order to advance the Kremlin's interests.
• 
And it means that any full and impartial investigation of Russia's efforts to influence our political process needs to follow the Russian money flowing into the coffers of the Clintons, their foundation and their top associates.
• 
... "shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, [former President Bill] Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock."
• 
In total, $145 million went to the Clinton Foundation from interests linked to Uranium One, which was acquired by the Russian government nuclear agency Rosatum.
• 
Ask yourself: How many half-a-million-dollar speeches has Bill Clinton given to Kremlin-linked banks since Hillary Clinton was defeated?
• 
How much Russian money is flowing into the Clinton Foundation's coffers today?
• 
If Donald Trump had given a $500,000 speech paid for by a Kremlin bank, and his private foundation had accepted $145 million from Vladi­mir Putin-linked oligarchs and their Western business partners, do you think that his critics would be insisting there was nothing to see here?
• 
We should all be deeply concerned by how much Russian cash was sloshing around Washington, and how much of it found its way into the bank accounts of the Clintons and those around them.
• 
And we should all, Democrats and Republicans alike, want to get to the bottom of it.
• 
As Americans, it goes against our sensibilities to encourage the Justice Department of one party to investigate the vanquished candidate of the other party.
• 
But does the fact that Clinton lost mean Americans don't deserve to know the full extent of Russia's efforts to influence our political process?
• 
They played both sides, and in so doing preyed on the singular weakness of the Clintons and those around them — greed.
• 
Any impartial investigation of Russia's efforts to meddle in our democratic process needs to include a full inquiry of the Russian money flowing into Clinton world.
      Charles Manson — America's poster child for our fascination with evil and fear  (Fox 11/20/2017)
• 
No one will miss Charlie Manson.  Yet we keep searching for his heir.
• 
As his body rots on his route to hell, it's worth remembering what he accomplished – which was to order the deaths of nine people, poison the minds of his flock of followers, and somehow trick an entire subculture of the the American population – and even today, their heirs – into believing that he possessed the secret to an enlightened path to a higher form of life.
• 
He got three dim-witted, lost-to-the-world girls to go out on consecutive nights and kill innocent victims in what Manson hoped would look like the kick-off of a race war.
• 
Manson, not the first but the most famous charlatan spiritual guru we've seen, knew how to play on our secret fears of inability and inadequacy.
• 
Have doubts about yourself?  I'll give you the answers.  But first I must inseminate you with my wisdom.
• 
Then I need your unquestioning adherence to all I say, and order you to do.
• 
He beguiled with fake mysticism, some off-key music and the promise of enlightenment – because he somehow intuited that that is what we were looking for and feared we could not find on our own.
• 
Manson actually inspired and drew a blueprint for new generations of would-be shamans, swamis and gurus, who inherited his far-off stare, his mysterious mannerisms, and his bow-before-me-and-learn way of presenting himself to the world.
• 
And we, poor fools now as in 1969, nearly 50 years after he dispatched his deadly and devoted posse to paint his insane vision of fatal paradise, still fall for the promise of enlightenment in return for slavish devotion.
• 
The answer to Manson's appeal is to return to the known, perhaps less alluring but proven tenets of goodness, faith in God, and hard work.
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: The incredible new chapter in the Hillary Clinton chronicles  (Fox 11/16/2017)
• 
The Department of Justice will soon commence an investigation to determine whether there should be an investigation (you read that nonsense correctly) of a scandal involving the Clinton Foundation and a company called Uranium One
• 
... will also be investigated to see whether there should be an investigation to determine whether she was properly investigated.  (Again, you read that nonsense correctly.)
• 
Only the government can relate nonsense with a straight face. 
• 
When President Donald Trump fired FBI Director Jim Comey last spring, the attorney general's stated purpose for recommending the firing was Comey's dropping the ball in the investigation of Clinton's email when she was secretary of state.
• 
... notwithstanding a mountain of evidence of her grossly negligent exposure of secret and top-secret materials, which constitutes the crime of espionage — the FBI director decided that because no reasonable prosecutor would take the case, it should be dropped.  Weeks later, the DOJ ratified Comey's decision.
• 
At the same time that Clinton was failing to safeguard state secrets, she was granting official State Department favors to donors to her family's charitable foundation. 
• 
There are dozens of examples of this so-called "pay to play," the most egregious of which is the Uranium One case.
• 
When the FBI got wind of the Giustra donation and Secretary Clinton's approval and the Kremlin involvement, it commenced an investigation of whether Clinton had been bribed.
• 
At some point during former President Barack Obama's second term, that investigation was terminated.
• 
At the same time that the FBI was looking into Uranium One, American and British intelligence agents were surveilling Donald Trump.
• 
After being confronted by irate Republican members of the House and Senate judiciary committees, who demanded to know why the investigations of these matters had been terminated, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed that he has asked career DOJ lawyers to commence an investigation of all of the above to determine whether an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate all of the above.
• 
This is the investigation to determine whether there should be an investigation.  This is also the DOJ's reluctance to do its job.
• 
Can the government investigate itself?  The short answer is yes, and it has done so in the past.  But it hardly needs an investigation to determine whether there should be an investigation.  The job of the DOJ is to investigate probable violations of federal law.  Sessions should not shy away from this and should not push it off to another independent counsel.
• 
We have one independent counsel already because his target — let's be candid — is the president of the United States.  That is a potato too hot for the DOJ.
• 
But Hillary and Bill Clinton, the FBI's tampering with the political process, and the use of intelligence-captured communications for political purposes are not.  It is profoundly the duty of the DOJ — using its investigatory arm, the FBI — to investigate all this.
• 
The evidence in the public domain of Clinton's espionage and bribery is more than enough to be presented to a grand jury.
• 
The same cannot be said about FBI involvements with the Steele dossier or the use of intelligence data for political purposes, because we don't yet know who did it, so we need aggressive investigation.
• 
But none of this presents the type of conflict that exists when the president is a target, and none of this requires an independent counsel.  All of this simply requires the DOJ to get to work.
• 
That is, unless the lawyers in the leadership of this DOJ are fearful of investigating their predecessors for fear that their successors might investigate them.
• 
Whoever harbors those fears has no place in government.
      Our culture is experiencing a hostile takeover.  We must stop rejecting God if we ever want it to end  (Fox 11/11/2017)
• 
The recent Texas church shooting, the terrorist driving a truck through a crowd in New York City, and the Las Vegas massacre may seem shocking – but to anyone who has been paying attention, they should not.
• 
Our culture is undergoing a hostile takeover.  American society used to be governed by Judeo-Christian do-unto-others morals.
• 
But we have drifted (been pushed, really) into a hedonistic YOLO (You Only Live Once) cultural morass.
• 
The upshot of this is a distinct lack of respect for human life in general, as well as a pervasive, insidious obsession with self.
• 
This is the "me" generation, the "selfie" culture, the "entitlement" mentality.
• 
And what is entitlement, except the narcissistic assumption of deserving and demanding what is not earned?
• 
Our cultural crisis is exhibited by egotistic multimillionaires demonstrating on football fields against the police instead of seeking solutions to rampant inner-city violence; coddled young people demanding free birth control and socialized health care...
• 
We've replaced our moral imperative to do what's right with a personal obsession of what's in it for ME?
• 
But no amount of self-love can fill the God-shaped hole in someone's heart.  We are created and called to love each other, and no self-absorbed spa treatment or Instagram post can supplant our innate yearning for love from God.
• 
The spirit of our time is gradually revealing in our culture a subversive, resolute, and increasing hatred toward God and Christianity, and an irresistible temptation toward evil that betrays man's innate desire for power: a longing to be God.
• 
So, like a child throwing a tantrum in a toy store, some people must deny the existence of God and his inherent goodness, and lord their power over weaker people.
• 
Society, still trading in our inherited moral capital, might verbally condemn the behavior.
• 
But that's just lip-service, because we've succumbed to the YOLO moral relativism and forgotten our metric for right and wrong.
• 
The YOLO culture seeks not content of character, but equality of outcome.
• 
Self-destructive loathing and jealousy stems from the hypocrisy that started in kindergarten, when children are taught: You are an accident of nature, and survival of the fittest is the law of the land.  Now, don't bully.
• 
Attacks against the only one who preached forgiveness and grace, goodness and love – and any who support him – will increase: He challenges the YOLO worldview taught in public school.
• 
To survive and prosper as a nation, we must reaffirm our Judeo-Christian heritage, indivisible, under God.
• 
Because if you only live once, it's survival of the fittest, and it's all about you, then laws are meaningless.
      Memo to DACA protestors: Stop shouting and start humbly persuading  (Fox 11/11/2017)
• 
Hundreds of protestors stormed the Hart Senate Office Building near the U.S.  Capitol on Thursday, hung banners and staged a loud demonstration demanding a no-strings-attached solution to allow immigrants brought to our country illegally as children to remain here.
• 
About 800,000 such immigrants have been protected from deportation since 2012 under a program begun under the Obama administration called DACA...
• 
Since DACA recipients entered the United States as children, they had no say in violating our immigration laws.
• 
As such, they comprise a totally separate category from adult illegals who willfully violate our rules.
• 
I believe a compromise can be reached.  But unruly, disrespectful activists make that process harder with their outrageous tactics.
• 
It is only reasonable for the White House to require more resources to protect our border and action to move toward a merit-based immigration system in return for continuing DACA protections.
• 
Importantly, illegal immigrants – no matter how much empathy I maintain for them – have no standing to make loud demands of the American people.
• 
Their attitudes should convey incredible gratitude that this country – unique among nations – shows such compassion to people who do not belong here legally.
• 
As a pro-DACA Latino, I urge these groups to cease using the leftist radical tactics of the so-called "Occupy" movement, and instead make a humble, reasoned case to persuade America why they should be allowed to stay.
• 
Many of these activists would respond that they are, in fact, Americans.
• 
... the term "American" can be defined in precisely six words: a citizen of the United States.
• 
It is a legal term in a country where rights are defined by laws – not by force.
• 
I am a citizen because I was born here, and I thank God daily for that good fortune.  My father was a citizen because he immigrated here legally.
• 
This concept is not difficult to understand and is not up for debate.
• 
I hope and pray that the DACA young adults are soon welcomed permanently into our country, and I humbly ask Congress and President Trump to ignore the radicals and work expeditiously toward a reasonable compromise.
• 
See related Demand Work (Paul Nowak, 04/04/2006) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Guest Demonstrators (Chip Bok, 04/11/2006) cartoon from USA picture album
      Rep.  Marsha Blackburn: To save lives and money, we must cut off federal funding for sanctuary cities  (Fox 11/09/2017)
• 
Over two years ago, Kate Steinle was shot and killed on a San Francisco pier.
• 
A convicted felon illegal alien, Garcia Zarate, is currently on trial for Steinle's murder.
• 
Zarate had previously been deported five times and was to be deported again until the local sheriff's office released him because of San Francisco's sanctuary city policy.
• 
California took things a step further recently by declaring itself a sanctuary state.  New Jersey has also threatened to provide statewide amnesty.
• 
Sanctuary cities and states threaten public safety, cost taxpayers' money and encourage lawlessness.
• 
Liberals cheer sanctuary policies as compassionate, but the reality is far different.  Ask the Steinle family.
• 
Sanctuary cities endanger their citizens.  When Phoenix dropped its sanctuary city policy in 2008, its murder rate fell 27 percent the following year, and other violent crime rates also fell.
• 
Why are we protecting criminals who have already broken the law when they entered our country?
• 
In addition to being less safe, sanctuary cities cost hard-working taxpayers money.
• 
That money could be putting food on the table for struggling middle-class families.  Where is the compassion for them?
• 
Sanctuary policies are lawless, delusional and open up a Pandora's box of consequences.
• 
They promote open borders by serving as a magnet for illegals lured here by the false hope of amnesty.
• 
Every state becomes a border state and every town a border town.
• 
Further, if liberal politicians can ignore one law, what is to stop them from ignoring others?  Where does the madness end? 
• 
Kate Steinle would most likely be alive today if the law had been followed.
• 
California's decision to become a sanctuary state is similar to the open borders vision that is destroying Europe.
• 
If lawlessness prevails, we will eventually become a sanctuary country. 
      Libs think you're Stupid.  Are You?  (JWR 11/07/2017)
• 
Another mass shooting, this time in a Texas church and we hear the same old mantra from Democrat leaders and the lamestream press.
• 
It's guns.  We need more gun laws to combat right wing hate speech that's driving these incidents.
• 
What they will not tell you is that most of these mass killings are committed by jihadists, left wing psychotics and atheists.
• 
They also ignore that it is the hate speech on the left that has spurred attacks on recent innocent victims.
• 
GOP congressman Scalise was shot and almost killed at a charity baseball practice; Sen.  Rand Paul was attacked at his home by another Bernie Sanders supporter who broke five of his ribs.
• 
It is not tea party advocates knocking out total strangers on the street just because they're white.
• 
It is not right wing bureaucrats targeting conservative groups in the government agencies.
• 
In New York City, another metropolis ruled by Democrats who make it impossible for good citizens to get legal guns, an Isis fan just used a truck to mow down and kill bike riders and pedestrians.
• 
Turns out this militant had been questioned by Comey's ineffectual FBI in 2015 but as usual couldn't find enough to charge him.
• 
Seems also that this jihadist came here under a ridiculous program initiated by Democrats, of course, that allowed immigrants to come here permanently by lottery and this killer from Uzbekistan brought in 23 family members.
• 
What you will not hear from the major media about the shooting in the Baptist church in Sutherland Springs is that the killer, now known as Devin Patrick Kelley, was an atheist and Bernie Sanders supporter who was stopped while still reloading his deadly weapon by a civilian gun owner, Stephen Willeford. 
• 
That spoils the narrative so unless you're a dummy you should ignore this feeble attempt to demonize the NRA again.
• 
If there had been one civilized gun owner in any of those murder scenes, the killer's victims would have had a better chance of survival. 
• 
The celebrities who have felt comfortable threatening the life of President Trump since his election are responsible for most of the hate speech encouraging violence against conservatives.
• 
I don't recall right wing comics holding up a decapitated head of Obama or showing his dead body of the cover of a rap album but Kathy Griffin and Snoop Dog got away with that.
• 
Most of the supposed vandalism and hate tactics by conservatives have been exposed as hoaxes perpetrated by the left.
• 
Since the 2016 election, liberals and Never Trumpers have collectively lost their minds. 
• 
The entertainment industry seems to take delight in using foul language and trash talk by late night talk show hosts, movie stars and the dumb hostesses of The View but I've never put much credence in their intellectual prowess any way.
• 
But if you're one of the many Americans who laugh at their jokes and who still watch SNL then I'm sorry but the liberals may have pegged you just right.
      Ditch political correctness and wise up.  Empower cops to fight radical Islamic terrorists...  (Fox 11/07/2017)
• 
... when you're a cop looking for radical Islamic terrorists ... well, let's just say you don't look in a convent, a monastery or a rabbinical seminary.
• 
Is this politically correct?  Absolutely not.  Is it simple common sense?  Of course it is.
• 
There's no question that the vast majority of Muslims in America are peaceful, law-abiding and hardworking men and women.
• 
But there's also no question that a small subset of Muslims in this country don't fit the above description, because they support the aims of radical Islamic terrorists.
• 
And an even smaller, very tiny subset actually engages in terrorism.
• 
Finding these people after they commit terrorist acts is challenging.
• 
Finding them before they commit terrorist acts and stopping them is incredibly difficult.
• 
A basic principle of police work is that you use logic and common sense when searching for criminals of any kind.
• 
You can't search for everyone everywhere, so you narrow the field of possible suspects
• 
Where might a radical Islamic terrorist be?  Well ... wild guess ... mosques, other areas where Muslims get together, and Muslim neighborhoods.
• 
One thing's for sure: you won't find any radical Muslim terrorists who are not Muslims.
• 
Yet in New York City last week, where a radical Islamic terrorist drove his truck into innocent people on a bike path on Halloween – killing eight and injuring a dozen – police and other law enforcement officials are being handcuffed.
• 
They are being told to ignore their common sense and training, and not focus on Muslims when looking for Muslim terrorists.
• 
... the Halloween terrorist ... was radicalized here in the United States, not in his home country ... where in the U.S.  did the radicalization take place?
• 
No one lives in a vacuum.  Radicalization is a process that includes both internal and external catalysts and occurs in many environments.
• 
That principle was laid out in a report created by the New York City Police Department's Intelligence Division in 2006 titled "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat: The NYPD Report."
• 
Mayor Bill de Blasio caved in to demands from the American Civil Liberties Union and several Muslim activist organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and ordered the counterterrorism report removed from both the NYPD's website and its training manuals.
• 
And if that was not enough, the mayor also ordered the police to discontinue standard police practices of surveillance and undercover operations of the group most susceptible to radical Islamic terrorists...
• 
De Blasio's absurd action came in response to a 2012 lawsuit filed in Newark, New Jersey by Muslim advocates.
• 
They claimed that the NYPD was profiling them strictly on the basis of their religion and that they had suffered irreparable damages as a result of police actions.
• 
One of the mosques in New Jersey that claimed to have been unjustly surveilled was the Omar Mosque in Patterson.
• 
This is the same mosque attended by Sayfullo Saipov, the now-accused self-proclaimed ISIS follower who struck on Halloween.
• 
Yet NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller stated publicly that the Saipov case has nothing to do with Islam or which mosque someone attended.  How quickly he forgets.
• 
Back then, he clearly acknowledged the obvious fact that that radical Islamic terrorists have connections with Muslim communities.
• 
Here's the bottom line: We need to spend less time worrying about being politically correct and more time worrying about how to protect the American people from bloodthirsty radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill and injure as many of us as possible. 
• 
At some point, we have to let the police be the police and investigate terrorists and other criminals – regardless of religion, ethnicity or race – based on tried and true procedures.
• 
It would have been as silly to search for Mafia kingpins in mosques as it would be to try hunting down ISIS terrorists at Knights of Columbus meetings.
• 
Hopefully, the NYPD ... will be allowed to go where the evidence leads, utilizing every tool at its disposal and not bow to political correctness when investigating potential terrorists and their hideouts.
• 
Perhaps the tool most needed in fighting radical Islamic terrorism today is a strong backbone. 
      Wake up America, Islamic terrorism targets you!  (INN 11/05/2017)
• 
The claim that the perpetrator of the November 1, 2017 NYC bicycle-path-terror is a "lone wolf" ignores the wider context of Islamic terrorism, oversimplifies and underestimates the threat, alleviates the pressure off anti-US Islamic rogue regimes, and derails counter-terrorism. 
• 
The NYC bicycle-path-terror was carried out by a member of the Islamic "pack of wolves" - not by a "lone wolf" – which has been systematically brainwashed and molded by the most effective production-line of Muslim terrorists: hate-education and incitement conducted by Islamic leaders, educators, social media and imams in mosques (and in US prisons!) in Muslim countries as well as in the US.
• 
"Prison radicalization primarily occurs through anti-US sermons provided by contract, volunteer, or staff imams, radicalizing inmates who gain religious influence and extremist media... similar to that of Iran and Hezbollah....  These radicalization efforts expand beyond prison walls, resulting in potential threats to society at-large...."
• 
The NYC bicycle-path-terrorism was not an aberration, but an integral episode of 1,400 years of the intra-Islamic tectonic reality ... and the 14 centuries of Quran-sanctioned terrorism against the abode of the "infidel."
• 
In fact, terrorism has dominated Islam from the 7th century, when three of the first four Caliphs (Umar, Uthman and Ali), who succeeded Muhammad, were assassinated by fellow Muslims.
• 
... this act of terrorism was intensely integrated with – not isolated from – a fundamental pillar of Islam, the Jihad (the Strive, the Holy War), which commands Muslims to emulate previous struggles against the enemies of Islam, within the context of the eternal battle between the Abode of Islam and the Abode of the "infidel."
• 
In order to defeat Islamic terrorism, Western societies – led by the US – must rid counter-terrorism of the "lone wolf" mentality; acknowledge the inherently non-compromising nature of Islamic terrorism and confront Islamic rogue regimes (just like rogue gangs at home) militarily, not diplomatically; recognize the centrality – and obliterate the infrastructure – of hate-education and incitement in the US and other Western democracies, as well as in Muslim countries; preempt, rather than react.
      New York Times’ coverage of Mueller is peak liberal bias  (NYP 11/05/2017)
• 
A friend likens The New York Times to a 1960s adolescent who refuses to grow up.
• 
In a perpetual state of outrage, it is a newspaper of college snowflakes who embrace all forms of diversity except thought.
• 
It sees its liberal politics not as a point of view, but as received wisdom that cannot be legitimately disputed.
• 
The fixation on conformity reached a new low last week when the paper rolled out a coordinated attack on those of us who believe special counsel Robert Mueller ought to resign.
• 
In the Times' view, there are only two reasons to question Mueller's credibility: insanity or treason.
• 
And so we detractors stand accused of engaging in a conspiracy that will embolden adversaries like Russia and produce a "constitutional crisis."
• 
The animating impulse for the assault is obvious — the Times is locked into its mission of destroying President Trump, and, like Hillary Clinton, still cannot accept Trump's election as legitimate.
• 
... the paper, following a bad habit it developed during Barack Obama's presidency, is not content with advocating its positions.
• 
Behaving like a party propaganda outlet, it takes a coercive approach to anyone with a different view.  Objections are demonized as heretical.
• 
... carries the unavoidable assumption that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia, and so critics of Mueller are subversives with unpatriotic aims.
• 
... flatly declared doubts about Mueller unwarranted because "there is no evidence to support the assertion that the Democrats hired Fusion GPS with the purpose of getting Russians to spread ‘wild allegations' about Mr.  Trump."
• 
... if the lack of evidence is sufficient to avoid investigation, why is Mueller still investigating Trump, since more than a year of FBI probes has turned up no evidence of Trump wrongdoing.
• 
The zeal to protect Mueller from any criticism raises the question of why the Times cares so much.
• 
With the mainstream media in lockstep with its jihad against Trump, why bother to smear a handful of skeptics?
• 
My great sin was to argue that Mueller's close relationship with his successor at the FBI, James Comey, was always a problem and that recent developments created a situation that was fixable only by resignation.
• 
Those added conflicts include the revelation that Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party paid for the Russian dossier against Trump, with some of its paid sources linked to the Kremlin.
• 
Because the FBI reportedly used the dossier to launch its probe of Trump and considered hiring its author, any probe faithful to Mueller's assignment would include an examination of the FBI's role in 2016.
• 
Moreover, as questions grow about whether the Obama White House used the dossier as justification for unmasking Trump associates picked up in wiretaps in an attempt to swing the election to Clinton, Mueller's probe must also examine the previous administration.
• 
But that, too, is an impossible task for him because he spent more than four years working for Obama, where he was a colleague of Clinton's.
• 
Resignation under these circumstances is not a radical idea...  a judge with Mueller's relationships and history would almost certainly be recused from overseeing those cases, so why should a special counsel investigating the president be held to a lesser standard?
• 
And if Justice Department rules required Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from anything related to the 2016 campaign because he was a Trump surrogate, those same rules should apply to Mueller's relationship with Clinton, Obama and Comey.
• 
In the end, the Times' rabid ­defense of Mueller resembles the debacle of its 2016 campaign coverage.
• 
It never saw Trump's victory coming because it was blinded by its hatred for him and contempt for his 63 million voters.
      Islamic terror is not a law enforcement puzzle, it’s a war.  Here’s how to show we get it  (Fox 11/04/2017)
• 
On each occasion we seem to go through the same ritual — sympathy, condemnation, a parade of well-meaning statements from government officials insisting that the terrorists "will not win."
• 
... the response of our leaders, in government and the bureaucracy.  They still seem to be treating Islamist terror as a law enforcement issue, rather than what it is: a war waged on us by an ideologically-driven and globally-distributed enemy.
• 
First, we should remove all known Islamists from our country.  If they are not U.S.  citizens, they should be immediately deported.  If they are naturalized U.S.  citizens, they should first have their citizenship revoked.
• 
"Every single person who we have intelligence upon, who is known to be involved in terrorism...  we deport and send them back to where they came from.  We do not allow them to roam free on our streets and murder and maim and disfigure our children."
• 
Second, we must force the big tech companies to help our security services track down terrorists and prevent attacks.
• 
Google announced earlier this year that it can track your online browsing and your movements in the real world by combining credit card data with data from your smartphone and services like Google Maps.
• 
But when the authorities ask tech firms to help in the fight against terror, suddenly they're all about privacy.
• 
Third, we need to force Saudi Arabia to pay reparations for their role in incubating today's terror threat.
• 
Over the years, the Saudis have funded a huge number mosques in the world — and with that funding came the vile, medieval strain of Islam known as Wahhabism (or Salafism) that is at the heart of today's Islamist ideology, whether practiced by ISIS, Al Qaeda or any other of the murderous death cults.
• 
Fourth, we need to toughen our own immigration procedures, just as President Trump pledged to do this week.
• 
No more entry by lottery; extreme vetting for everyone who wants to come to America and fits the profile of a potential Islamist supporter or sympathizer — whether they have become radicalized or not.
      Judge gives deserter Bowe Bergdahl a slap on the wrist, our military members get a slap in the face  (Fox 11/04/2017)
• 
His case is a sad reminder of why we should never engage in prisoner exchanges with terrorists and why deserters should be dealt with harshly.
• 
When Bergdahl deserted in 2009, a number of search efforts for him took place that endangered the lives of U.S.  soldiers and left some severely wounded.
• 
Military investigators found that Bergdahl walked away from his unit.  His actions were planned and thought out.
• 
One soldier in his unit said that Bergdahl mailed his belongings back home to his parents before deserting. 
• 
Further, Bergdahl sent an e-mail back to his parents saying that he was ashamed to be an American.
• 
Bergdahl was charged with and later pleaded guilty to "desertion and misbehavior before the enemy." He could have received a life prison sentence.
• 
Instead, he received no prison time, a reduction in rank, a fine and a dishonorable discharge.
• 
President Trump called the decision "a complete and total disgrace to our country and to our military." Our president is right.
• 
It's a sad day for our military justice system and all those who serve in our armed forces.
• 
Bergdahl deserved and should have received prison time.  Yes, disgrace is the right word.
• 
When an American enlists in the U.S.  military, he or she takes the Soldier's Oath.
• 
The oath reads in part: "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, (and) that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same."
• 
The soldiers who risked their lives and sustained injuries searching for Bergdahl lived up to the Soldier's Oath.  Bergdahl did anything but live up to it because he was a deserter.
• 
His sentence was an insult to all those who wear the uniform of America's armed forces.
      How’s “diversity” working out for you?  (INN 11/03/2017)
• 
The reason we keep getting acts of terrorism is because we keep importing terrorists.
• 
That is not politics.  That is mathematics.
• 
... since the early 1990s we had a program named the "Diversity Visa Lottery." So each year some 50,000 people are invited into our country from hellholes all around the globe, like Uzbekistan.  Over there it is 96.3 percent Muslim, coincidentally.
• 
That is where the Manhattan murderer came from... and, along with the rest, was welcomed with smiles over the years from types like NY Gov Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Sen.  Chuck Schumer. 
• 
But that did not stop them from taking the stage to further dump on Trump and even though ashen-faced from shame, they continued to grandstand their Liberal pieties.
• 
As if none of this was their doing and if it came again between them and us, between migrants and citizens, they'd still choose the migrants.
• 
The very definition of the program, in view of the word "lottery," means that we are GAMBLING with our security.
• 
Under these terms, we don't really know who's coming. 
• 
In other words, we don't really know who we're betting on.  Democrats and even some Republicans don't care.
• 
Trump cares.  "The safety of our citizens comes first," says Trump.
• 
What a novel concept if you are a Liberal. 
• 
But the world and its experts took it to mean a Jewish problem rather than a universal problem.
• 
So nobody gave a damn.  Let the Israelis deal with it; it's got nothing to do with us. 
• 
They refused to learn... learn that, sooner or later, the same jihadists will come knocking anywhere and everywhere. 
• 
From the terror tunnels of Gaza to the streets of New York, they will come.
• 
Now even here jihadists feel they can get away with murder so long as they've got airheads like CNN's Jake Tapper to assure us that Allahu Akhabar really means peace. 
• 
Tell it to the dead, Jake. 
• 
It's a wonderful world of immigration jihad so long as they've got the fools of the world on their side – from de Blasio in New York City to Merkel in Berlin.
      Bowe Bergdahl wasn’t a victim, he’s a traitor  (Fox 11/03/2017)
• 
... Bergdahl put other soldiers in danger.  Despite his trauma, he had to realize that desertion would jeopardize those attempting a rescue operation.
• 
... the platoon that searched for Bergdahl went without food and limited water for 19 days.  Chief Petty Officer James Hatch came under fire while looking for Bergdahl.  Hatch was shot in the leg and has had 18 surgeries in the aftermath.
• 
By honoring Bergdahl in 2015, despite a full 2009 Army report indicating his desertion from duty, President Obama intentionally misled the American public and has contributed to the cynical belief you cannot trust comments emanating from the White House.
• 
When Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice maintained that Bergdahl represented the Army with "honor and distinction" she undermined the heroism of thousands who have defended the principles in this land of the free.
• 
Bergdahl was not a victim, albeit some will make this argument; he was an instrument to be used by President Obama in his desire to empty U.S.  military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
• 
Five Taliban prisoners being held at Guantanamo were released in exchange for Bergdahl and three are now fighting for Al Qaeda.
• 
I have it on good authority that the Taliban were prepared to return Bergdahl for cash exclusively.  But that was not what President Obama wanted.
• 
As a consequence, the United States paid a price in spiritual loss, political legerdemain and military morale.
      After NYC terror attack, let's use common sense to protect ourselves from radical Islamic terrorists  (Fox 11/03/2017)
• 
... radical Islamic terrorists have been launching attacks here in the United States for years, with the deadliest occurring on Sept.  11, 2001.  These attacks are not going to stop unless we first admit that we have been and are under attack and – finally – take strong steps to prevent further attacks.
• 
For eight years, the Obama administration refused to even use accurate language and terminology to describe what was occurring here in the U.S., as our nation suffered violent assaults in the name of Islam.
• 
... more than 200 individuals have been charged with terrorism-related crimes in the U.S.  since 2009...
• 
These aren't "lone wolves." These are individuals working toward the same goal, via the same broad organization known as ISIS and related groups. 
• 
Our nation's population reflects more than 200 years of diversity in one form or another; we didn't need another visa program to achieve that goal.
• 
... the Schumer visa program and others aren't simply adding new ethnicities, cultures or creeds to our shores; they are giving radical Islamists from regions other than the Middle East the opportunity to enter.
• 
Once here, these radicals don't assimilate.  Instead, they connect with like-minded Islamists to plan and perpetrate acts like the ones we witnessed on Tuesday afternoon in New York.
• 
Raise your hand if you think it was good idea to allow a young disaffected Islamic man with no prospects, no ties to the U.S., and only his religious zeal to keep him going into our country. 
• 
We as a nation must disabuse ourselves of the naive notion that somehow our Western values are magically transferred to all newcomers to our shores and embraced and lived by those individuals.
• 
The Western values of respect for freedom, human dignity, tolerance and peaceful coexistence – as well as the West's Judeo-Christian system of thought that gave root to those values – are not respected in many parts of the world.
• 
As a result, the only diversity we seem to be importing from these countries – short of legitimate, heavily vetted refugees, such as Christian minorities ­– is the diversity of hate for the United States and our institutions.
• 
... we must accept that there is evil in the world and that no matter how much we would like to avoid it, evil can never be appeased.  It is voracious and ever-encroaching and it can only be stopped and destroyed by forceful action.
• 
Radical Islam is evil; it is full of hatred and seeks to destroy our way of life.  Our way of life and our system of government, is anathema to radical Islam – like oil and water, they will never mix.
• 
And so we must take a strong stance and stop acting as though common sense is the same thing as intolerance.
• 
Common sense tells us that in addition to having a realistic view of immigration, we should address the breeding grounds of hatred that we have allowed to fester within our own nation.
• 
We can no longer allow radical clerics who preach hatred of America in mosques on American soil, seeking to radicalize young Muslim men in particular.
• 
By some estimates there are dozens and dozens of radical mosques in the United States. 
• 
The venomous words of the radical clerics are ticking time bombs.  It is only a matter of time before even more hands and feet are set into motion by this incitement, and therefore only a matter of time before more American people lie dead on American streets.
• 
Diversity and tolerance are America's strengths, but we should not sacrifice innocent American lives in the name of these lofty goals.
• 
It's time the Trump administration and Congress did what the Obama administration refused: reset our nation's visa process across the board to meet America's needs and values, intensively vet all visa applicants, and limit entry from countries on the State Department terrorist watch list.
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: Mueller's ultimate target is Trump.  Here's what could happen next  (Fox 11/02/2017)
• 
... indicted a former Trump presidential campaign chairman and his former deputy and business partner for numerous felonies.
• 
Both were accused of working as foreign agents and failing to report that status to the federal government, using shell corporations to launder income and obstruction of justice by lying to the federal government.
• 
... the government revealed that a low-level former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and become a government witness.
• 
The alleged crimes of Manafort and Gates appear to have nothing to do with Trump, nor have they any facial relationship to the Russians.
• 
So why were these two indicted by a grand jury hearing evidence about alleged American assistance to Russian interference with the 2016 presidential campaign?
• 
When prosecutors confront a complex series of potentially criminal events, they often do not know at the outset of their investigation where the evidence will lead them.
• 
Sometimes they come upon a person who they believe has knowledge of facts they seek and that person declines to speak with them.
• 
Such a refusal to speak to the government is perfectly lawful in America, yet it often triggers a prosecution of the potential witness so that prosecutors may squeeze him — not literally, of course — for evidence to which they believe he can lead them.
• 
The ultimate target of Mueller's investigation is President Trump.
• 
It is standard operating procedure when prosecutors have a high-level target to charge those below the target with something just to get them to cooperate.
• 
The danger of such a deal is that Manafort and Gates may offer to tell Mueller what they think he wants to hear — even if it is not truthful — so that they can have their prison exposure lessened.
• 
There is more danger in the seemingly smallest of this week's Mueller-generated events. 
• 
In a profound miscarriage of justice, federal law permits FBI agents to lie to us but makes it a crime for us to lie to them.
• 
It appears that Papadopoulos was gathering evidence for Mueller, probably by talking to his former Trump campaign colleagues while wired...
• 
Because Papadopoulos admitted under oath that he lied to FBI agents, the courts will treat his guilt as certain.  That gives Mueller great leverage with him.
• 
He also knows that if Mueller likes what he hears, a five-year prison term could be reduced to six months.
• 
Hence, Papadopoulos could be a treasure-trove for Mueller on the production of any evidence linking the Trump campaign and the Russians...
• 
Papadopoulos has already produced a wild tale about meetings with a Russian professor and a female Russian government agent in London that the FBI apparently believes.
• 
I have argued for years that squeezing defendants and witnesses by threats and promises to get them to spill the beans is a form of extortion or bribery — not much different from the extortion and bribery that the government regularly prosecutes.
• 
"You tell us what we want to hear and we will ask a judge to go easy on you.  If not, you will suffer great losses."
• 
It is bad enough that the feds can legally lie to us and get away with it, but can they also legally threaten and bribe witnesses to testify against us and get away with it?
• 
Can they do this to the president?
• 
In a word, yes.  ... Squeezing witnesses and defendants is a way of life for federal prosecutors.
• 
For the president, it is the tip of a dangerous iceberg.
      Ex-CIA officer: Mueller also needs to investigate US intel’s attempts to damage Trump  (Fox 11/02/2017)
• 
The scandalous series of memos – which contained allegations of treason and impropriety by then-candidate Trump and his campaign – took on renewed life after it was confirmed that the document was little more than a political hit job paid for by both Democratic and Republican operatives.
• 
But while the headlines may shift, Mueller's attention to a dossier-related scandal must not.  Indeed, the dossier is almost certainly connected to the most audacious crime of the 2016 campaign.
• 
America's senior law enforcement and intelligence officials were directly involved in the targeting of a democratically elected president for political assassination.
• 
By spreading the dossier throughout D.C.'s political class, the nation's spymasters virtually assured that the document's allegations would be leaked and given undue credibility.
• 
So why did they do it?
• 
Curiously, however, these spymasters also said that they gave the document no particular credence after having investigated its treasonous allegations.
• 
Why would our senior intelligence and law enforcement officials bother highlighting a debunked dossier when they knew it would leak to the press, thereby giving it a degree of credibility and life it wouldn't otherwise deserve?
• 
First, one or all of these spymasters may have been influenced by their profound dislike of Trump as a person.
• 
A second possibility is that these officials and their political chiefs may have been spooked by known or suspected connections between Trump's campaign and Russian operatives.
• 
In short, Obama officials may have been fearful that a "corrupted" President Trump would shut down any collusion investigation before the facts were known.
• 
Putting aside whether there's any truth to these fears, it would still be wildly illegal for America's spymasters to leak information to the media designed to damage a president.
• 
Officials working for the CIA and FBI are strictly regulated regarding their political activity, not to mention barred from disclosing classified or protected government information. 
• 
And that suggests a third and much more likely motivation of the intentional leakers: politics.
• 
It's reasonable to believe, then, that leaking a dossier alleging treason might severely wound Trump and his agenda for the duration of his presidency.
• 
Which begs the question: which spymaster had the greatest motivation to try to bring down the president?  And was he alone in his efforts?
• 
... Comey admitted to having the motivation, access, and ability to conduct what would effectively be a covert influence operation designed to damage the president.
• 
... there was a wholesale effort by the Obama administration to spread or disseminate classified information throughout the government and into the public domain that dealt with possible contacts between associates of Trump and the Russians.
• 
In short, there were others – many others – who were joining Comey in a similar "brief to leak" operation designed to throw sand in the gears of a Trump presidency.
• 
Regardless of who was involved or their precise motivation, one thing is certain: the spymasters' decision to spread the dossier's accusations contributed to nearly a year of political chaos that has roiled the nation.
• 
... even if one agrees that Trump is not fit to serve, voters of all stripes should be outraged by the spymasters' attempts to damage him.
• 
Indeed, one can disagree with Trump's agenda or find him personally distasteful but that does not give license to ignore unlawful behavior by America's law enforcement and intelligence communities.
• 
Said differently, we cannot support an illicit political assassination simply because it brings about misfortune to those we oppose.
• 
Accordingly, it's time for Mueller to investigate our national security community with the same ferocity that he's shown in his likely prosecution of Trump associates.
• 
It's time to investigate the scandal of America's spymasters. 
      Cal Thomas: Trump, Mueller and Manafort — Get ready for more magical thinking  (Fox 11/02/2017)
• 
Predictably, the major media are celebrating this as the beginning of the end of the nascent Trump presidency.
• 
"Will Manafort Sing?  If so, it may mark the beginning of the end of this presidency."
• 
Look for more of this wishful thinking that the establishment, the Democrats and all of the mainstream media have been hoping for since Trump won the election.
• 
What Manafort stands accused of has nothing to do with the 2016 election, or with Russian "collusion."
• 
No one, so far, has produced any evidence the Russians affected the election's outcome.
• 
This is all about overturning the results and keeping "the swamp" full for those who live in it and reject change.
• 
Real collusion might be in the significant share of U.S.  uranium sold to the Russians during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state (she signed off on the deal), followed by a $500,000 fee paid to her husband for a speech in Moscow and the millions of dollars that subsequently flowed into the Clinton Foundation from uranium investors.
• 
Special counsel Robert Mueller and Congress should investigate that Russian connection, along with the role of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign (and the earlier Republican role) in creating an anti-Trump dossier that has been shown to be a fraud and yet was used to justify the appointment of Mueller.
• 
If the reason for Mueller's appointment is fraudulent, how can it be said that his investigation, which includes staff attorneys who made donations to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, is not tainted?
• 
Congress is the proper avenue for such investigations, not special counsels, who can "go rogue" if they wish.
• 
No matter which party controls government, the other party does all it can, by whatever means, to undermine those elected.
• 
This behavior solves no problems.  It is only about grabbing and holding onto power.
      How Many More Americans Have to Die Before We Throw Away the PC Garbage?  (Fox 11/01/2017)
• 
We've got radical Islamic terrorists ready, willing, and honored to kill us on planes, trains and automobiles with knifes, guns, explosives and trucks.
• 
And we've got federal judges, top Democrats, and bleeding heart kumbaya liberals placing Islamic sensitivity, diversity options, and political correctness over reality, American lives, and national security.
• 
If he shouted "Allahu akbar," the motive and inspiration are crystal clear.
• 
Better question is: why the heck was he here in the first place?
• 
He wasn't airlifted in by ISIS, we let him in the front door - we rolled out the red carpet for him just like we did the 9/11 hijackers.
• 
... he was issued a green card by President Obama's DHS in 2010.  Isn't that something?
• 
Did you know nearly 1.8 million green cards were issued to nationals of predominantly Muslim countries from the September 11th attacks in 2001 through 2015?
• 
Now your liberal friends might tell you this is in the spirit of inclusion, love, tolerance and diversity but here's a reality check: ISIS and the dozen-plus other radical Islamic terrorist groups exploit this diversity and blissful ignorance and use it to attack and kill Americans. 
• 
It's called "civilization jihad" and it's not just coming, it's here.  It's not Islamophobic to point out the radical problem within Islam.
• 
It's reality, it's right in front of our faces, and it's not going anywhere so either we learn to confront it, name it and keep it the hell out or we sit back, bite our tongues, twiddle our thumbs, hold hands and pretend the evil doesn't exist.
• 
We tried the blind-eye politically correct BS for 8 years and look where it's gotten us.
• 
Yet, we still have these federal judges and Democrats who prefer political correctness and feelings to our safety and national security.
• 
Enough.  How many more Americans have to die before we throw away this PC garbage and understand the threat?
      New York terror attack — We've seen the face of evil but our politicians want us to look away  (Fox 10/31/2017)
• 
... there may be a legitimate debate about whether President Trump is unfairly singling out Muslims in his efforts to make America safe.
• 
But when a terrorist kills Americans – this time, with a rental truck – and then shouts "God is great" in Arabic, the president's zeal is understandable.
• 
There is no way to protect every block in our cities, every field on our farms, every school in our suburbs.
• 
We have become accustomed to our freedom to move around as we wish, and to gather with whom we choose.
• 
We stroll our streets without paying attention to what's around us...  If we're on a bike lane, we assume no four-wheel vehicles will intrude.
• 
The problem is that terrorists – those whose perverted view equates God's greatness with acts of bloodshed – know how clueless we are, and exploit our assumption that nothing bad can happen to us.
• 
And it is that careless confidence that makes us easy prey, soft victims for determined evildoers.
• 
Even before the names of the perpetrator and the dead and injured are known, there will be warnings not to stereotype, not to sully the reputation of any faith or ideology.  Don't link radical Islam with terror.
• 
... the same de Blasio who pompously defied Trump's call to dismantle so-called sanctuary cities, making it tougher for authorities to find and corral criminals.
• 
"Don't let the terrorists change our life in any shape, manner or form," said Gov.  Andrew Cuomo, just two hours after the attack took place.
• 
That's right, New Yorkers.  Listen to your governor.  Don't take any extra precautions in how you live your lives.
• 
Don't admit that there are evil people in the world who want to kill you, then exhort God's greatness.
• 
Don't use that ugly word — war – to describe our conflict with radical Islam.
• 
Don't offend.  And don't defend.  It might upset someone.
      NYC terror attack: Halloween horror would have been much worse without top notch NYPD  (Fox 12/01/2017)
• 
The Halloween assault in Lower Manhattan was straight out of the ISIS playbook.  ... jihadi leaders have been urging the faithful to turn ordinary cars and trucks into killing machines to "mow down the enemies of Allah."
• 
... Sayfullo Saipov, 29, a green-card holder from Uzbekistan in Central Asia and resident of Florida, responded to the call.
• 
... encouraged followers to attack "large outdoor conventions and celebrations, pedestrian-congested streets, outdoor markets, festivals, festivals, parades, [and] political rallies." It even specified the ideal type, weight, and speed of a car needed for terror purposes.
• 
... numerous eye witnesses said that the man, dressed in dark clothing and carrying a pellet gun and a paint-ball gun, was screaming "Allahu Akhbar" — "God is Great" in Arabic.
• 
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pointed out another hallmark of a vehicle assault.  The perp, he said, was one of those "lone wolves" who "meant to cause pain and harm and probably death and the resulting terror."
• 
But it takes a pack to raise a lone wolf.
• 
Even if Saipov acted alone, he was part of a growing ideological fraternity numbering in the tens of thousands who now inhabit every region of the globe.
• 
Those seeking eternal glory have staged similar attacks in at least a dozen other cities — from Nice to Paris to Barcelona to London to Jerusalem.
• 
Like the attacks in these cities, the Halloween attack in Lower Manhattan was aimed at inflicting maximum carnage.
• 
There was no shortage of targets.  The streets between West Houston and Chambers were crowded with parents picking up their costumed children prepared for an evening of trick-or-treating.
• 
Pedestrians and bikers on the Hudson River bike path were stunned and helpless as Saipov careened his weapon through the crowd.
• 
With the collapse of its self-declared "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq, ISIS is on the run.  So are its adherents.
• 
But as the extremists disperse, the terrorist threat, paradoxically, increases.
• 
American and other intelligence agencies have long warned of a likely rise in vehicle and other attacks as the frustrated, furious faithful are forced to reorient their campaign.
• 
... Islamist terrorists have carried out more than a dozen vehicular assaults since 2014 that have killed more than 170 people.
• 
Such attacks are ever more likely ... since "unsophisticated tactics such as vehicle-ramming" are hard to prevent and capable of inflicting "mass casualties if successful."
• 
Saipov might have killed even more people had the NYPD not been the nation's premier counterterrorism force.  NYPD officers showed up in force minutes after the attack began, shooting Saipov before he could kill even more New Yorkers.
• 
After being heavily, and in many instances unfairly, criticized for allegedly violating civil liberties ... shut down a particularly controversial program that the intelligence unit had run early in its existence — a so-called "demographic unit" that collected information on the location and activities of Muslims suspected of terrorist intentions.
• 
Another critic was New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who lambasted the NYPD for surveilling New Jersey-based Muslims and asked whether the spying was "borne out of arrogance, or out of paranoia, or out of both."
• 
The so-called "flash-to-bang" trajectory of lone-wolf radicalization is accelerating.
• 
An individual intent on mayhem against "soft" targets is the toughest law enforcement terrorist challenge.
      The nuclear blast of Russian collusion  (INN 10/27/2017)
• 
For a year, the Democrats, aided and abetted by a Hillary Clinton supporting media and a Deep State Establishment which includes Obama hangovers in the new Trump Administration as well as ‘Never Trump' Republicans, have been searching under every rock and stone for evidence of a Trump collusion with the Russians.
• 
Before leaving office, FBI head, James Comey contrived to appoint his friend, Robert Mueller, to be the Special Counsel to investigate links between the incoming president and the Russians, portrayed as the greatest evil on the face of the planet.
• 
Now, it seems, the nuclear storm they unleashed of Russian collusion has suddenly changed direction and is blasting the Democrats and the Establishment fully in their own faces.  In a two-pronged attack their demons have turned against them in what Trump calls "the Washington swamp."
• 
The affair is likely to include the breaking news of a huge multi-million-dollar scandal involving the Obama Administration, the FBI, the Department of Justice under the Obama presidency, Hillary and Bill Clinton and their Clinton Foundation. 
• 
Under Obama and the Clintons, the United States sold 20% of its vital uranium reserves to America's most evil enemy, Putin in the Kremlin.
• 
Today, the United States has to import uranium to power its nuclear power plants – from Russia.
• 
Part of the agreement stated that none of this uranium could leave the United States but there is evidence that much of it has left America for Europe and, almost certainly to Russia.
• 
Russia also supplies Iran with much of their uranium for their nuclear projects.
• 
And, in a pay to play quid pro quo, $145 million made its way from the Russian actors in this deal (acting for the Kremlin) into the coffers of the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was acting Secretary of State.
• 
Her husband, Bill, travelled to Moscow to give a $500,000 speech before having a private chat with Putin himself in his Moscow mansion.
• 
This, after Obama was recorded on an open mic in 2012 telling Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, "tell Vladimir that after my election I have more flexibility."
• 
This was the jovial atmosphere that accompanied the Obama Administration's collusion with Russia which is now being revealed to have sold off one of America's most vital strategic and security assets to "the greatest threat to any nation" according to FBI's James Comey...
• 
... the Democrats unleashed a nuclear storm when they went after Trump on trumped up charges of Russian collusion.
• 
Now they are about to reap the storm they created.  It is likely to burn and destroy several Establishment figures.
• 
If this is part of draining the swamp, so be it.
      Gregg Jarrett: The Clinton cover-up, brought to you by the same guys who are investigating Trump  (Fox 10/18/2017)
• 
Damning new evidence appears to show that Hillary Clinton used her office as Secretary of State to confer benefits to Russia in exchange for millions of dollars in donations to her foundation and cash to her husband. 
• 
But there's more.  It seems it was all covered up for years by the same three people who are now involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump over so-called Russian "collusion."
• 
... the FBI gathered a multitude of documents, secret recordings, intercepted emails, financial records, and eyewitnesses accounts showing that Russian nuclear officials directed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Clinton during the very time that Hillary Clinton presided over a governing body which unanimously approved the sale of one-fifth of America's uranium supply to Russia.
• 
The corrupt scheme is said to have been financed by the Russians through bribes, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering.
• 
The FBI and the Department of Justice reportedly had the evidence in their possession before the uranium sale, but kept the matter secret and never notified Congress which would surely have stopped the transfer of uranium to Russia.
• 
It is a crime to use a public office to confer a benefit to a foreign government in exchange for money.
• 
It is often referred to as "pay-to-play," but it can be prosecuted under a variety of anti-corruption laws passed by Congress.
• 
... prosecutors are required to show a "quid pro quo" or "nexus" between the payments and the benefit provided.  But it appears that the FBI already possesses all the evidence it needs to make a compelling case.
• 
If Hillary leveraged her public office as Secretary of State for personal enrichment, but also used her charity as a receptacle or conduit for money obtained illegally, that would also constitute racketeering
• 
Racketeering is the use of a business for a corrupt and illegal enterprise.  ... Frequently, they devise a dual purpose company –one which operates lawfully from the front door, but unlawfully out the back door.
• 
... more than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state donated money to her foundation.  If Clinton was peddling access, was she also peddling influence?
• 
But why has there been no prosecution of Clinton?  Why did the FBI and the Department of Justice during the Obama administration keep the evidence secret?  Was it concealed to prevent a scandal that would poison Barack Obama's presidency?  Was Hillary Clinton being protected in her quest to succeed him? 
• 
The answer may lie with the people who were in charge of the investigation and who knew of its explosive impact.  Who are they?
• 
Holder, Mueller, Comey & Rosenstein
• 
Holder was a member of the "Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States" which approved the uranium sale to the Russians in 2010.
• 
Since the vote was unanimous, it appears Holder knowingly and deliberately countenanced a deal that was based on illegal activities and which gave Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America's uranium assets.
• 
It gets worse.  Robert Mueller was the FBI Director during the time of the Russian uranium probe, and so was his successor James Comey who took over in 2013 as the FBI was still developing the case.  Rod Rosenstein, then-U.S.  Attorney, was supervising the case.
• 
There is no indication that any of these men ever told Congress of all the incriminating evidence they had discovered and the connection to Clinton.  The entire matter was kept secret from the American public.
• 
It may be no coincidence that Mueller (now special counsel) and Rosenstein (now Deputy Attorney General) are the two top people currently investigating whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.
• 
Mueller reports to Rosenstein, while Comey is a key witness in the case. 
• 
It is not unreasonable to conclude that Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey may have covered up potential crimes involving Clinton and Russia, but are now determined to find some evidence that Trump "colluded" with Russia. 
      ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ actress and Hollywood conservative: Why the #Resist movement has it...  (Fox 10/18/2017)
• 
Since President Trump's election the progressives in the USA have decided that they are "the Resistance." Everywhere we look on social media we see the #Resist banner.
• 
From the virtue-signaling Hollywood celebrity to every leftist, tenured university professor, they have proudly declared themselves members of "the Resistance" club.
• 
... over the last fifty years leftist/cultural Marxist groupthink has taken over and infiltrated literally every aspect of society.
• 
That revolution was, in many ways, already won years ago and yet, they continue to fight on because for the left it won't be enough until every single one of us thinks exactly like them.
• 
The reality is that the #Resist movement is not the counter culture that they think they are.  They actually represent the status quo, and are supporters of the Establishment itself.
• 
Today's #Resist movement must be the first resistance in history that actually runs most of the nation and makes up most of the political and cultural Establishment.
• 
So, let's look at this Establishment that makes up the "Resistance" and see how very powerful and organized they are.
• 
First and foremost are academia and the education industry.  These are the Indoctrinators: from nursery school teachers, to tenured university professors and most of the administrators.
• 
They see their jobs more as social justice activism rather than teaching.  This is a "resistance" that has nearly all of academia on their side.  These are the most dangerous, for they are shaping the minds of our children and our future generations. 
• 
Then, there are The Enforcers: such as all the progressive social media giants like Facebook, You Tube and Twitter who push a leftist agenda and try to stifle conservative ideas and speech. 
• 
Add to that the high tech conglomerates such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft, the left-leaning CEOs of many huge multinational corporations, billionaires like George Soros, Ted Turner and Richard Branson, and the thousands of NGO's - all of whom spend millions promoting progressive causes.
• 
Next is the propaganda wing of the "Resistance," which just happens to be around 90 percent of the media entertainment complex, including most news channels, most newspapers, late night comedians, news anchors, ESPN and other sporting franchises and, of course, nearly all of Hollywood and most of its pundits, hangers-on and celebrities. 
• 
And last but not least, one of the wealthiest, most powerful political parties in the whole Western world: the Democratic Party and all their minions in the American civil service and the Deep State.
• 
... does it sound more like a vast, controlling, obscenely wealthy progressive network that uses every tactic at its disposal to oppose a democratic election result - from indoctrination and propaganda to the suppression of free speech and the violence practiced by Antifa.
• 
They say they are fighting "fascism" but then they use fascistic methods to bully, demonize and silence all who disagree with them.
• 
From Hillary calling Trump voters "deplorables" to the nearly militarized thugs of Antifa calling anyone with a conservative or libertarian viewpoint "Nazis," their aim is to dehumanize their opposition.
• 
Of course many of those who unthinkingly use the #Resist banner or wear pussy hats on marches or swoon to the rantings of Madonna are tragically ignorant of what they are actually supporting.
• 
... in fact, they are supporting those politicians and Establishment figures who are behind The Deep State: the powerful, and utterly corrupted part of our government that see themselves as rulers and elites, and not as representatives of the people. 
• 
The Constitution accepts that everyone is born equal but it's up to the individual whether they better themselves or not.
• 
Egalitarianism means equality of outcome and cannot freely exist without being forced on us through government mandates.
• 
For progressives this sounds great — it's the path to the utopian future they so desire (with John Lennon's "Imagine" piped through loud speakers ad nauseum).
• 
However, BIG government is required in order to enforce this global egalitarianism.  Pure Socialism, Communism and/or Fascism will soon follow.
• 
This is one of their main goals: make sure the people are helpless to fight against a tyrannical, military dictatorship.
• 
... to those who believe in leftist groupthink, egalitarianism is more important and noble than liberty.
• 
The #Resist movement is the antithesis of "resistance." They aren't the resistance, the rebellion or even anti-establishment.
• 
They are anti-freedom, pro-establishment and part of The Enforcers, right along with The Deep State. 
• 
I hope the American people can see the #Resist movement for what it actually is and treat its agenda with the derision it deserves, so we can survive this threat to the freedom and liberty of our USA. 
      Trump is not threatening the First Amendment; Americans' ignorance of what it means...  (Fox 10/16/2017)
• 
For the second time in as many months, Americans are demonstrating a profound ignorance of the First Amendment to the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
The president tweeted: "Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked.  Not fair to public!"
• 
Commentators claimed this threatened freedom of the press.
• 
"Recent reports that the president called for an increase in the U.S.  nuclear arsenal are absolutely false.  This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible."
• 
"With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?  Bad for country!"
• 
But if one takes the time to actually read the tweets and understand the First Amendment, you'll find that claiming President Trump is advocating for government regulation of the press is an absolutely baseless assertion and just another inane overreaction.
• 
First, let's understand what the First Amendment actually says and what it actually does.
• 
Contrary to popular belief, our Bill of Rights does not confer rights upon individuals, nor are our rights absolute.
• 
The Declaration of Independence acknowledges that our individual, unalienable rights are endowed by our Creator, not our government.  The mandate for American government is simply to best preserve and protect our preexisting rights.
• 
Thus, the First Amendment acts as a redundancy safeguard, or a check, against the specific, limited powers given through our U.S.  Constitution to government to operate in accordance with that mandate.
• 
In other words, just in case our federal government attempts to overreach its specific, limited powers provided in Articles I through III, the Bill of Rights tells Congress precisely what government cannot do.
• 
The First Amendment reads in relevant part: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." It is important to note here that the operative term is "abridging."
• 
Freedom of the press generally means that the government cannot interfere with the publication and distribution of information and opinions – not that the government may never impose restrictions.
• 
The law provides relief for defamation, including libel and slander.
• 
The Supreme Court has routinely upheld defamation laws and afforded civil liability remedies.
• 
If NBC published a provably false story with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity, President Trump (like any other public official) can file suit.
• 
This legal remedy doesn't amount to "government regulation" or remotely contravene the First Amendment's protection of freedom of the press.
• 
The president and Mattis are correct that the media bears responsibility for veracity and truthfulness.
• 
Is it really too much to require that the media are at least accurately reporting facts, even if their constitutionally protected opinions are clearly biased?
• 
If the media are allowed to publish with reckless disregard for the truth in reporting facts, at that point we have lost all credibility and the original purpose for the freedom of press. 
• 
Publish any opinion you want, mainstream media, but at least do your job and verify your facts first.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Trump doesn’t owe Obama anything  (NYP 10/14/2017)
• 
It's nine months into the administration, and there is no rest for the hair-on-fire coverage.
• 
Whether it's Trump's move to make changes to NAFTA, decertify the Iran deal, eliminate some ObamaCare rules or cut taxes, each is greeted with a collective howl of outrage.
• 
Every report is a parade of horrors that celebrates critics as truth-telling prophets.
• 
All the code words about cruelty to the poor and benefits for the rich are trotted out, capped with warnings about race and gender impacts.
• 
The hyperbolic language is designed to stoke partisan fear and rally the resistance. 
• 
Stripped of policy fig leaves, the media reaction amounts to, "You can't do that!  That's not how Barack Obama did it!"
• 
Never mind that unemployment is at a 17-year low and the stock market is at historic highs, or that it's boom times for consumer and business sentiment.
• 
The economic recovery is going global, but Trump, we are assured, deserves zero credit.
• 
The knee-jerk anti-Trump coverage shows that the media didn't learn anything from its biased performance during the 2016 campaign.
• 
It's still shilling for Democrats, with the left's political talking points echoed in headlines, articles and broadcasts.
• 
The media's abandonment of ­basic fairness adds to the nation's deepening polarization, and makes it difficult for any open-minded citizen to understand the significance of Trump's policy changes.
• 
That's not to argue that all his changes are self-evident improvements and that none will fail.  And there is no denying that he makes mistakes and contributes to the rancor with personal attacks on critics.
• 
But policy-wise, he deserves a fair assessment of his actions.  Instead, he gets automatic denunciation, as if anything he does is either stupid or corrupt.
• 
Take, for instance, the two most important moves Trump made last week — changes to ObamaCare rules and decertifying the nuke deal with Iran.
• 
It just so happens that those two items are the signature achievements of the former president.  It is also a fact that both were sold on backs of lies to the American people, and that both are falling far short of their promised objectives.
• 
Changes are not only welcome, they are necessary.  Yet from most of the coverage, you get the idea that Trump is messing with per­fection.
• 
But still Trump is the bad guy, even though he campaigned on a promise to repeal ObamaCare.  Congress has failed, so Trump is doing exactly what Obama did on so many occasions — using executive orders.
• 
Then there's the Iran pact.  Obama committed the US to a deal that was deeply flawed, both in content and scope.
• 
In addition to paving a way for the mullahs to get nukes, it completely ignored the fact that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism and, rather than curb the aggression, the deal has emboldened Iran.
• 
As Trump said Friday, "We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more ­violence, more terror, and the very real threat of Iran's nuclear breakthrough."
• 
His willingness to work with Congress and our allies to improve the terms are a compromise that stops short of withdrawal.
• 
That is a responsible move to bolster security for ourselves and our allies, yet Trump is reflexively denounced as reckless.
• 
What's truly reckless is the continuing bias of the media.
• 
They campaigned to defeat Trump last year, and now campaign to defeat his every action as president.
• 
• 
See related Gets Me Where I Want (Michael Ramirez, 02/25/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Eagle Scout: RIP Boy Scouts of America.  You were great for 100 years  (Fox 10/12/2017)
• 
The Boy Scouts of America stood for over a century on its strong foundation of Judeo-Christian values, growing boys into young men, and young men into leaders.
• 
As soon as the BSA changed the definition of the phrase "morally straight" in the generations-old Scout Oath back in 2013, allowing for homosexual membership, we all knew that this first compromise would not be the last.
• 
We all knew that it was only a matter of time before the BSA compromised itself into oblivion.
• 
The Boy Scouts has always been exclusively for boys.  As Ben Shapiro famously noted, it's in the name.
• 
There are plenty of organizations out there for all different varieties of youth.
• 
The Boy Scouts even have several co-ed programs for both boys and girls. 
• 
The girls already have the Girl Scouts.  If the Girl Scouts isn't working, why not work to fix that organization instead?
• 
There is absolutely no need for the Boy Scouts to change who they are to be "inclusive."
• 
The BSA has now effectively rendered obsolete both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts.
• 
More incredibly, I have to wonder why any parent would want their young teenage girls camping in the woods with young teenage boys?  Who exactly is okay with this?
• 
It is important for boys and young men to grow together free from the distraction of girls.
• 
I suspect the Almighty Dollar now motivates BSA more than the Almighty.
• 
Suddenly membership eligibility is now opened to a whole new demographic.  Draw your own conclusions there.
• 
This is what the Left does best: target and destroy everything good in America.
• 
They cannot compete with us on ideas, so they have to eliminate everything that makes us who we are.
• 
If they were truly motivated to provide girls, homosexuals, and "transgenders," with the same experiences Boy Scouts provides, then they would form their own youth organization.
• 
But it isn't really about that, is it?
      Former Navy SEAL and FBI Special Agent: Terror tactics are advancing faster than police tactics  (Fox 10/11/2017)
• 
... the tragic outcomes of most large domestic attacks that have occurred in the U.S.  could have been mitigated using military defensive tactics in and around special events and populated areas.
• 
Why aren't there counter snipers on the roofs of buildings around Las Vegas when large open-air events occur?
• 
Why were unchecked backpacks and duffle bags allowed in and around the most populated area of the Boston Marathon in 2013?
• 
Why do stadiums and arenas funnel tens of thousands of people through the same few exits at the end of every event?
• 
Why are civilians and law enforcement officials always caught off guard when an attack happens as if it were the first time evil has visited our nation? 
• 
Police departments should shift to training the total officer capable of engaging an enemy as effective as the military would in a warzone.
• 
Patrol officers should be outfitted and armed with long guns and body armor and trained in tactics that mimic the effective direct action techniques used by military Special Forces.
• 
... in order for our citizenry to remain safe and alive on a daily basis as well as at special events, it is imperative that changes occur in awareness and in the way people forward think their personal defensive tactics and response procedures.
• 
The bottom line is that we are involved in a war that has never been encountered in modern recorded history.
• 
It is a war that involves growing numbers of the mentally ill and people that have been brainwashed by extreme ideologies.
• 
Combine those warfronts with the plague of learned helplessness sweeping our citizenry and you can start to get a picture of how real this new type of war actually is and how violent it has become.
      As North Korea threatens electromagnetic pulse attack, questions over lapses in US grid security rise  (Fox 09/25/2017)
• 
For more than 15 years, security and intelligence officials — including former CIA Director James Woolsey — have been raising the alarm bells about the vulnerability of the U.S.  power grid to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.
• 
Only now as tensions with North Korea quickly escalate — with the rogue nation refusing to back down from its nuclear testing and threats of such an onslaught — is the matter really generating attention.
• 
"We recognize that an EMP event would have extremely dire consequences for the entire country, but where the challenge comes is in attempting to quantify those impacts."
• 
Earlier this month, state news agencies in the Kim Jong Un-dictated country explicitly cautioned that it could hit the U.S.  with an EMP offensive.
• 
A hydrogen bomb detonated at a high altitude would create an EMP that potentially could abolish prominent parts of the electrical grid.
• 
The higher the bomb's detonation, the wider the scope of destruction. 
• 
... up to 90 percent of Americans could die within a year of such an attack.  All the functions communities rely upon — hospitals, water, waste, transport, telecommunications, air control, medical care — could potentially be decimated for not days or weeks, but months or years.
• 
"The military doesn't think it is their job to make the grid resilient, even though 99 percent of their missions in continental United States rely on the civilian grid.  The utilities don't think it is their job because it is a national security problem.  Besides, they don't want to come up with the money, face more regulatory burdens or fool with making over parts of the grid with uncertain technical consequences."
• 
... financing grid security — given that it doesn't fall under the responsibility of one particular office — could have been done through slight rate increases, but efforts are typically bound by red tape.
• 
"If utilities want to increase their customer rates by one cent a kilowatt hour to help invest in a new effort for counter-terrorism or EMP they have to go to a public utility commission and convince them that these rate increases are beneficial and meet certain cost/benefit conditions."
• 
... any effort to harden the U.S.  power grid ... have fallen short at the public utilities level because of "more pressing threats like physical attack security and cybersecurity."
• 
"In the end, this process has left the U.S.  with antiquated and vulnerable infrastructure."
• 
"There is no unified or specified commander charged with specifically marshalling America's resources from the government and private sector into an active defense of the power grid.  There are civil services and regulatory bodies mostly focused on energy as utilities but nothing looks like an energy version of a military defense command."
• 
"If something happens in two weeks, we wouldn't be able to close all the gaps of vulnerability.  But having looked at this issue for a number of years, we are taking appropriate action given our set of responsibilities and authorities."
• 
... beyond the North Korea threat, ... Iran, Russia and China too have assimilated EMP attack into their military creeds, posing a significant peril to the United States.
• 
"The very existence of the nation is at stake.  We are facing explicit threats to use EMP against us from the North Koreans — and there is a lot of capability to execute such an attack in the hands of other enemies."
      Trump has every right to free speech, but his timing is off  (NYP 09/23/2017)
• 
Koch's response was that he didn't lose his First Amendment rights when he became mayor.
• 
He was right, just as Donald Trump retains his free speech rights even though he lives in the White House.
• 
Naturally, the president is being called "divisive" for his attack on the relative handful of NFL players who kneel rather than stand for the National Anthem.
• 
Commissioner Roger Goodell demanded "respect" for the league and some athletes whose politics lean left are piling on.
• 
They all have free speech rights, too, but Goodell's demand for respect is odd in the current context.  Respect is a two-way street.*
• 
Players who bring their politics to work ought to find another outlet or another job, and their employers should have the guts to demand compliance with certain norms of conduct.
• 
Fans also have the right to vote with their feet.
• 
"No one goes to a ball game to watch someone blessed with athletic talent protest by insulting the views of millions of Americans who honor and love this country and its flag.  If you don't want to honor our flag and our country, stay in the locker room till the game starts."
• 
In the midst of a nuclear showdown with North Korea, Iran's continuing threats, severe hurricane damage in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and a stalled GOP agenda in congress, Trump's plate already is more than filled.
• 
It's not clear to me how pushing a hot button in the culture wars helps him win in any of those far more critical arenas.
• 
Then again, as Koch often proved, distraction can be the best political strategy.  In that case, we should be grateful that Trump is giving the country something to argue about that isn't a matter of life and death.
      The Language of Losing  (JWR 09/18/2017)
• 
It's a truth all but entirely unacknowledged by anyone who matters in the western world.
• 
In any war, you have to be able to prioritize: You can't win everything, so where would you rather win?  Raqqa or Rotterdam?  Kandahar or Cannes?
• 
Yet, whenever some guy goes Allahu Akbar on the streets of a western city, the telly pundits generally fall into one of two groups: The left say it's no big deal, and the right say this is why we need more boots on the ground in Syria or Afghanistan.
• 
This year on 9/11 President Trump said he was committed to ensuring that terrorists "never again have a safe haven to launch attacks against our country".
• 
... the reason the west's enemies are able to pile up a continuous corpse count in Paris, Nice, Berlin, Brussels, London, Manchester, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Orlando, San Bernadino, Ottawa, Sydney, Barcelona, [Your Town Here] is because they have "safe havens" in France, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, North America, etc.
• 
Which "safe havens" are likely to prove more consequential for the developed world in the years ahead?
• 
... after 16 years of accelerating Islamic immigration, Europe has more no-go zones, more sharia courts, more refugees, more covered women, more Muslim-dominated schoolhouses, more radical mosques, more female genital mutilation, more grooming and gang rape, more Muslim Brotherhood front groups, more Muslim mayors and legislators, more Muslim-funded Middle East Studies programs at universities
• 
In Afghanistan, we're fighting for something not worth winning, and we're losing.  In Europe, Islam is fighting for something very much worth winning, and they're advancing.
• 
... the President forbore to mention Islam at all: Instead, we were attacked by "horrible, horrible enemies" and "enemies like we've never seen before".
• 
Well, we've seen a lot of them since, and they appear to have certain things in common - things that this President was once not shy about mentioning.
• 
Yet, insofar as Islam got a look in from officialdom, it was a passing reference in the speech of Defense Secretary "Mad Dog" Mattis: "Maniacs disguised in false religious garb thought by hurting us they could scare us that day."
• 
"False religious garb" means we're back to the standard Euro-squish line that all this Allahu Akbar I'm-ready-for-my-virgins stuff is a "perversion" of the real Islam, which is a peaceful faith practiced by millions of people...
• 
Stop me if you've heard this before, but these "maniacs" are hijacking this "religious garb" in order to peddle a "false" vision of Islam.
• 
Foaming-canine-wise, Mad Dog sounds about as mad as, say, Theresa May.
• 
I take it that, even in today's politically correct military, you can't earn the epithet "Mad Dog" simply by handing out diversity awards to the Transgender Outreach Liaison Officer of the Month, and General Mattis served honorably and impressively in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• 
But, when it comes to strategic clarity, that may be the problem.
• 
In Iraq, everyone's Muslim - mainly because all the Christians got chased out on America's watch.
• 
So it's both reasonable and necessary to distinguish between Muslims — between the ones who want to kill you no matter what, and the ones who might be more flexible on that point.
• 
General Mattis' line about "maniacs disguised in false religious garb" might be politic or even sincere when advanced in Tikrit or Basra, but delivered at the Pentagon it's the most feeble dissembling 16 years into an existential struggle.
• 
And its deployment on 9/11 itself — on the home front, on sacred ground where blood was spilled — is not a small thing.
• 
It underlines that, in a profound sense, the dreary endless unwon wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere are not just a peripheral distraction from the real, central front, but an obstacle that prevents even the shrewdest and bravest of men from framing the struggle correctly.
• 
Meanwhile, there's a cold war - the remorseless incremental Islamization of the heart of Christendom.
• 
... we were more clear-sighted with the Soviets: We understood that Afghanistan was peripheral, and that what mattered was preventing our enemies from hollowing out the free world.
• 
Today, the men running this new war think Afghanistan is the be-all and end-all, and that the hollowing out of the free world by the west's enemies is not merely irrelevant but in fact evidence of our moral virtue.
• 
And incidentally the continuous protestations that hardcore incendiary extremist Islam is an unfortunate aberration would be more persuasive if western politicians ever paid the slightest attention to genuinely moderate voices within Islam.
• 
But they don't. They either ignore or consciously marginalize them. Case in point — Yahya Cholil Staquf:
• 
"Western politicians should stop telling us that fundamentalism and violence have nothing to do with traditional Islam.  That is simply wrong...  The approach you describe won't work.  If you refuse to acknowledge the existence of a problem, you can't begin to solve it."
• 
He's right.  Which is why, 16 years on, we haven't begun to solve it.
• 
Maybe in lieu of this year's speakers they could book Mr Staquf for next year's Pentagon ceremony.  Or would that be Islamophobic?
      Why Democrats are scared to death of voter fraud investigations  (Fox 09/14/2017)
• 
For anyone who dismisses concerns about voter fraud, the unhinged reaction by the left at investigating it should, at the very least, make a logical person wonder what they're so concerned about.
• 
After all, if you believe the issue is false, or at the most an irrelevant factor in end results, you should welcome confirmation of that fact.
• 
Unless, of course, one fears the actual outcome may prove how voter fraud impacts local and state races to the point of shifting the balance of power in Washington, D.C.
• 
... evealed that out-of-state voters may have changed not only the outcome of the New Hampshire U.S.  Senate race, but also could have impacted who won the state's presidential contest.
• 
Liberals usually claim if there is fraud, it's so small and isolated that it doesn't impact end results.  The margins in New Hampshire prove the falsity of that argument.
• 
... a cacophony of liberal whiners and harpies demanded a dismantling of the commission itself.
• 
Because, you know, it's just so much easier to burn down something with which you disagree. 
• 
The ACLU's farcical headline serves as a good example of how panicked the left really is: "Kris Kobach Pushes Voter Fraud Lies While Meeting With Fellow Suppression Activists."
• 
"For a problem that critics say doesn't exist, Americans seem to have a lot of stories of voter fraud or the potential for it.  They are sharing those stories with President Trump's voter integrity commission as it wades into one of the administration's thorniest fights."
• 
"Democrats have vowed to use the legislative process to try to derail the commission..."
• 
Senate Minority Leader Charles E.  Schumer of New York compared the commission to the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and said he would try to eliminate the panel as part of a must-pass bill."
• 
Why so afraid, Chuck?
• 
The issue of voter fraud must be addressed so every voter can be sure that their right as a citizen is not being erased by a fraudulent vote.
• 
Last year, this newspaper reported on a variety of fraudulent situations demanding reviews, including dead people voting in Colorado, illegals voting in Virginia, some Pennsylvania citizens voting twice, underage voters voting in the Wisconsin primary, and vote rigging in Texas.
• 
"[A] Heritage Foundation database tracking documented voter fraud now contains 492 cases and 773 criminal convictions, with untold other cases unreported and unprosecuted."
• 
"Across the country, as Heritage's database shows, voter-fraud convictions include everything from impersonation fraud and false registrations to ineligible voting by felons and noncitizens.  American voter fraud continues apace, and the United States remains one of the only democracies in the world without a uniform requirement for voter identification."
• 
Democrats and their allies are afraid of something — an end to a scheme that they have relied on for far too long.
      Trump, in DACA decision, restores constitutional sanity to immigration laws  (Fox 09/05/2017)
• 
By executive fiat, President Obama granted amnesty to immigrants living illegally in the United States. 
• 
Obama had previously admitted he had no authority to end deportations of illegal aliens when he said, "The notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true."_
• 
Then he went about doing it anyway, conjuring a new breadth of hypocrisy.
• 
President Trump, is now taking the first step toward restoring sanity to the rule of law as it applies to the Constitution and immigration.
• 
... Trump is returning legislative authority to the legislature.  He is reinstating the separation of powers that are fundamental to our democracy.
• 
Under the Constitution, congress is vested with writing laws and the president is charged with executing those laws.
• 
At the end of the 19th century, the U.S.  Supreme Court declared that congress has "plenary power" (meaning full and complete) to regulate immigration.
• 
"Over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete."
• 
Nevertheless, Obama decided to usurp this power by unilateral directive, unconstrained by established checks and balances.
• 
... Obama bestowed a wholesale, blanket amnesty for an entire class of people.  He did so not for the reasons allowed by law, but for purposes that were purely political.
• 
Obama insisted he was forced to act because "congress failed to act." It was an appealing political argument, but utterly untrue.
• 
If a president can refuse to enforce a valid federal law, are there any limits to his powers?  What is to stop a president from rewriting other laws with which he disagrees?  Or to act where congress has declined or refused to act?
• 
Only congress is empowered to alter immigration laws that affect those who are here in the U.S.  illegally.
• 
It can either pass a new law or decline to do so.  A determination not to act is, by itself, a deliberate act.
• 
Congress considers and debates a great many bills.  Not all of them pass.  This is not a "failure" in a conventional sense, but a decision by declination.
• 
Obama twisted the law, ignored the Constitution, and abdicated his primary responsibility as chief executive.
      An open letter to Antifa  (Fox 09/01/2017)
• 
You've had quite a run spreading violence across our nation in the past few months.  And while you claim your name means you're anti-fascist, you've shown by your actions that you're really anti-American and anti-freedom.
• 
You've assaulted hundreds of President Trump's supporters at rallies.  You've vandalized property in the nation's capital after the Trump inauguration.
• 
And you've gone on an arson rampage because you were upset that former Breitbart News Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak at the University of California, Berkeley. 
• 
In Charlottesville, you arrived on the scene with clubs and shields, prepared to commit violence.  Instead, your sick plans were superseded by the monstrous behavior of neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members and other right-wing extremists as lunatic as you are.
• 
Last Sunday, near your operational headquarters in Berkeley, you proved again that you are a nest of Marxist vipers.
• 
You went on yet another violent rampage, attacking innocent conservative men and women who were holding a peaceful rally. 
• 
If there's anything you Antifa members hate it's free speech, the Bill of Rights and the United States of America.
• 
In this, you have a lot in common with the fascists you denounce, as well as communist tyrants.
• 
You so-called anti-fascists are really nothing more than communists yourselves, aren't you?
• 
No doubt you believe that you're on a roll and that through further assaults and intimidation you'll be able to change the political climate and remake our nation into Soviet American Union.
• 
You've had a field day picking on college millennials and unarmed reporters.  You've cold-cocked Trump supporters with rocks and attacked conservative women with pepper spray.
• 
And all the while, local police were forced to look on helplessly, under orders from liberal mayors who support "the resistance."
• 
You haven't actually met the real resistance yet, but with your determination for violence and bloodshed you probably will.
• 
The real resistance consists of millions of veterans, patriots and hard-working Americans who are sick and tired of Antifa violence and suppression of free speech.
• 
... you'd be wise to heed the words of the Bible and Matthew: ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword."
• 
Despite your name, we know you are outlaws who embrace violence and hatred of America in the same way as the communists, the Nazis, Al Qaeda and ISIS.
      Why should anyone condemn white nationalists if the left won't condemn Antifa?  (Fox 08/29/2017)
• 
Both the white nationalists and Antifa are moral degenerates who use political violence to advance their agenda.
• 
Antifa and the white nationalists are, in fact, kissing cousins, just as the Nazis and communists were.
• 
But the white nationalists and Antifa are pretty much the same, working at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
• 
One has a swastika.  The other has a hammer and sickle.  Both are symbols of repressive, murderous regimes.
• 
The only significant difference is that members of the media and much of the political left give Antifa the veneer of moral crusade that no one gives the white nationalists.
• 
Time and time again, Antifa is violent and thuggish.  They claim anyone they attack deserves it, just like the white nationalists claim minorities deserve it.
• 
... as we are seeing in Berkeley and elsewhere, the excuse of "punching Nazis" has become justification to punch anyone who is not with Antifa.
• 
The truth is that if the left does not do a better job of vocally condemning Antifa, there really well be less people on the right willing to condemn the white nationalists.
• 
And both will, as a result, have breathing room to grow when both should be stamped out.
• 
Polite society needs to shut them both down and the left needs to drop their claims of moral justification for Antifa's actions.
      Dinesh D'Souza: Democrats' big lies about white supremacy  (Fox 08/22/2017)
• 
The tragic events in Charlottesville seemed almost too good to be true from the point of view of the mainstream media and the political left.
• 
On the one side were the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen who seemed to be for Trump; on the other were the valiant leftists fighting against racism, Nazism and white supremacy. 
• 
The narrative confirms leftists in thier belief that Trump is the embodiment of fascism and white supremacy, and that racism and Nazism are on the right.
• 
... I am struck by the anomaly that the whole controversy erupted over the campaign to take down a monument to Robert E.  Lee. 
• 
Although Lee inherited a few slaves on his wife's side, he condemned slavery as a moral and political evil and looked forward to its end.  Lee also opposed secession.
• 
So how can a man opposed to slavery and secession become, for the left, a symbol of slavery and secession?
• 
... in heaping opprobrium on Lee, the left was advancing one of its big lies.  This is the lie that the South is to blame for slavery.  In this view the slavery debate was entirely a North-South debate.
• 
But in reality it was not so.  Certainly the secession debate of 1860-61 was between the North and the South.
• 
The slavery debate, however, which lasted from the 1820s through 1860, was between the anti-slavery Republican Party and the pro-slavery Democratic Party. 
• 
Part of the Democrats' big lie is to shift the blame for slavery from themselves to the South.  This licenses leftist intimidation, vandalism and even violence in the name of fighting Southern bigotry.
• 
But let's remember that most Southerners did not own slaves.  Most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves.
• 
Let's also recall that the Northern Democrats led by Stephen Douglas supported slavery with the same resourcefulness and determination as the Southern Democrats.
• 
The Democratic Party, after all, invented white nationalism and used it for almost a century to maintain their political supremacy in the South.
• 
Today the Democrats affirm every type of ethnic nationalism — black nationalism, Latino nationalism, Asian nationalism — except white nationalism.
• 
So whites can't show up to the multicultural picnic, because all these other nationalisms are mobilized against white nationalism.
• 
... Trump supports not white nationalism but American nationalism.  Trump's American nationalism, however, at least includes all Americans.
• 
In the end, we shouldn't worry too much about a bunch of rag-tag white nationalists and Klansmen who have very little power in America today.
• 
Skinheads, Klansmen and neo-Nazis don't control corporations or cultural institutions and so their influence is severely limited.
• 
The most dangerous fascism doesn't come from these losers.
• 
It comes from those who have the power to shut down free speech on campus.
• 
It comes from the studio bosses who destroy the careers of those who don't succumb to their political orthodoxy. 
• 
It comes from deans who manage billion-dollar endowments who can ruin the academic future of dissenters and make them into pariahs. 
• 
It also comes from journalists who use their power of expose and humiliate, to browbeat people into submission to political correctness and an ideological agenda.
• 
And politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who use the power of the state — the FBI, the Justice Department, the IRS — against their political adversaries. 
• 
This fascism of the institutions is far more dangerous than the fascism of the street, and this type of fascism comes entirely from the political left.
      Todd Starnes: Mitt Romney fears nation will fall apart unless Trump apologizes  (Fox 08/21/2017)
• 
These days the only collusion happening in Washington, D.C.  is between the mainstream media, Democrats and ‘Never Trump' Republicans – all hell-bent on destroying the Trump administration.
• 
And it appears the leader of the rampaging mob is none other than Mitt Romney, the failed Republican presidential candidate. 
• 
"The president must take remedial action in the extreme.  He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize.  State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100 percent to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville."
• 
Let's be clear – President Trump condemned the violence on both sides in Charlottesville, Virginia.  He also repudiated and denounced by name the white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.
• 
Let's be clear again – Romney appears to be furious because the president dared to condemn all the violence in Charlottesville — he dared to condemn the far left thugs who smacked around news reporters and tried to burn people with a flame thrower.
• 
Romney also seems outraged because President Trump dared to stand up to the cultural jihadists – hell-bent on turning American history into a steaming pile of politically correct rubble.
• 
Where was Romney when police were attacked with rocks and bottles and urine in Boston over the weekend?
• 
Where was Romney when an elderly woman was attacked and dragged through a park while she clung to an American flag?
• 
Where was Romney when Antifa caused mayhem in the state he once governed?
• 
In truth, the fury among Republicans and Democrats has nothing to do with white supremacists or Antifa or tearing down Confederate monuments.
• 
This is about silencing Donald Trump – and his supporters – the gun-toting, Bible-clinging, deplorables.
• 
Now, they are trying to convince the nation that President Trump and his supporters are a bunch of redneck, white nationalist, racist deplorables.
• 
You love America?  You're a racist.
• 
You stand for the national anthem?  Racist.
• 
You go to church on Sunday?  You're a homophobic racist.
• 
You want to secure the border?  You're a xenophobic racist.
• 
You want to make America great again?  You're a homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, cross-burning racist.
• 
They hate you, ladies and gentlemen.  They hate what you stand for.
• 
Romney wrote that unless the president renounces racism with "unprecedented candor and strength there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric."
• 
With all due respect, Romney should be much be more fearful of the great unraveling that would come if Trump is forced from office.
      Pres.  Trump, in his classically inartful way, was absolutely right  (INN 08/19/2017)
• 
I just did something fascinating.  I just watched the President's entire 14-minute impromptu news conference at Trump Tower on Monday that sparked all the latest barrage of anti-Trump screeds...
• 
Not the reportage about the conference, but the entire 14 minutes unedited, uninterrupted.
• 
I found myself agreeing with his every word.
• 
I did not find his tone or demeanor "unpresidential" in the least.  He sharply and explicitly condemned the Nazis and White Supremacists unequivocally.
• 
He also condemned the extreme leftists who premeditatedly came armed with weapons to smash up a demonstration that, rightly or wrongly, had been granted a legal permit.
• 
... but the demonstration had a permit.  Meanwhile, the Antifa Alt-Left thugs came with flame-throwers, bats, and shields, and they came to fight.
• 
All the while, the police did nothing for much too long.  Chaos and violence ensued.
• 
The media get exercised when President Trump does not parrot their scripts, but they never minded that Barack Obama would not call out leftist rioters and violent leftist organizations by name.
• 
As inner cities would burn, with innocents watching their life savings go aflame as mobs burned down their inner-city stores in cities from Baltimore to Ferguson, the Obama Administration avoided planting blame or naming hate groups.
• 
When a Jihadist murdered Americans serving our nation faithfully at Fort Hood, Obama attributed the murders to "workplace violence."
• 
Obama never could articulate the term "Radical Islamist terrorist."
• 
When Rep.  Gabrielle Giffords was shot by her own former supporter, a mentally ill clinger who had backed the Democrat, the media blamed the violence on Republicans like Sarah Palin.
• 
When Rep.  Steve Scalise was shot, and others were wounded, by a Bernie Sanders supporter who had set out to kill Republicans, the media avoided pinning blame on a left ideology and overheated rhetoric of leftist hate.
• 
But when the President of the United States rightly excoriated law-breakers and thugs on all sides of a street conflagration, he came in for a torrent of media abuse, forcing even level-headed bystanders to take cover.
• 
I came to learn, first-hand, that there are many fine, high quality, decent people in the South who truly recoil from the haters on the Right, who truly despise the bigots of today and are ashamed of the bigotry of the past, but who sincerely honor the memories of fallen war heroes of the South.
• 
They peacefully protest removing statues of Confederacy heroes like Robert E.  Lee and Stonewall Jackson because they see them as having been true military heroes and patriots who gave their everything to protect Virginia in particular, and the South in general, from being overrun by invading armies that threatened critical aspects of their way of agrarian life.
• 
Consider, as one example, the devastation and horror that General Sherman and his army wreaked upon the South, burning and looting Atlanta and other Southern cities along their march.
• 
Lee and Jackson were not politicians, they were men who felt duty-bound to serve their patrimony.
• 
I have seen the aesthetic beauty and passion that went into sculpting those monuments, and I have read the inscriptions that breathe not a word about slavery nor the social injustices of the Confederacy but of brave young boys, who never owned a slave – the vast majority of Southerners never owned slaves – but who gave their lives for their communities, for their honor, in some cases even for their women.
• 
I do believe, as President Trump tried to say in his way, that many of those at the demonstrations indeed were decent people motivated solely by wanting peacefully to preserve the heroes of their history, oblivious to the ramifications – that, sadly, their history includes much that is shameful, even if Lee solely was motivated by a soldier's rules of honor and service, as taught at West Point; even if Jackson was motivated solely by that same code of a soldier's honor and service, amplified by a religious believer's sense that he had a duty to country.
      Since when is being less bad than the Klan a major moral accomplishment?  (National Review, 08/18/2017)
• 
The greatest Nazi-killer of the 20th century was Josef Stalin.  He also killed millions of his own people and terrorized, oppressed, enslaved, or brutalized tens of millions more.
• 
The fact that he killed Nazis during the Second World War (out of self-preservation, not principle) doesn't dilute his evil one bit.
• 
Part of the problem is psychological.  There's a natural tendency to think that when people, or movements, hate each other, it must be because they're opposites.
• 
This assumption overlooks the fact that many — indeed, most — of the great conflicts and hatreds in human history are derived from what Sigmund Freud called the "narcissism of minor differences."
• 
Most tribal hatreds are between very similar groups.
• 
The European wars of religion were between peoples who often shared the same language and culture but differed on the correct way to practice the Christian faith.
• 
The Sunni–Shia split in the Muslim world is the source of great animosity between very similar peoples.
• 
The young Communists and fascists fighting for power in the streets of 1920s Germany had far more in common with each other than they had with decent liberals or conservatives.
• 
That's always true of violent radicals and would-be totalitarians.
• 
... alliances of convenience with social democrats and other progressives were a great propaganda victory for Communists around the world because they bolstered the myth that Communists were just members of the Left coalition in the fight against Hitler, bigotry, fascism, etc.
• 
This obscured the fact that whenever the Communists had a chance to seize power, they did so.  And often, the first people they killed, jailed, or exiled were their former allies.
• 
One of the only nice things about the alt-right is that its leaders are honest about the fact that they want nothing to do with traditional American conservatism.  Like the original Nazis, they seek to replace the traditional Right with their racial hogwash.
• 
The antifa crowd has a very similar agenda with regard to traditional American liberalism.  These goons and thugs oppose free speech, celebrate violence, despise dissent, and have little use for anything else in the American political tradition.
• 
In these tribal times, the impulse to support anyone who shares your enemies is powerful.  But it is a morally stunted reflex.
• 
This is America.  You're free to denounce totalitarians wherever you find them — even if they might hate the right people.
      First they came for our statues…  (INN 08/17/2017)
• 
Altogether three times, so far, Trump has been perfectly clear about his disdain for white supremacists but none of it counts for one reason.
• 
Because he is Donald Trump and they hate him and they hear him only from the filter of their own misconceptions, misinterpretations and prejudices. 
• 
Behind their high-minded moralizing lurks their animosity for one man, Trump.
• 
He asked if founders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are next to be toppled from our heritage and erased from our memories.
• 
... and they, the vandals, sure enough call themselves Social Justice Warriors. 
• 
More to the point, they are brutes, the Radicalized Left's Foot Soldiers and Remembrance of Things Past is not for them, that is, if it does not conform to their Progressive ideology.
• 
We don't get to pull ourselves from our roots as if the good, the bad and the ugly never happened.
• 
Once we do that, we've handed ourselves over to the mobs who want the past, present and future only to themselves.
• 
They – the Progressive vandals – they come with lofty words to commit the basest acts.
• 
They had their pretext in Virginia, but nearly every college campus is now owned and operated by the Violent Left.
• 
Why is Trump wrong to call them out?
• 
To the well-fed well-paid (Soros) mobs of the Left, the game is fair so long as diversity is THEIR diversity and only when free speech is THEIR free speech, not yours or mine.
• 
That's because he won't give them the satisfaction of blaming ONLY those despicable white supremacists. 
• 
He knows the Left, equally despicable and often brutish and barbaric.  They don't want to hear this.
• 
So what's next from the Index of Forbidden Works that doomed millions from the Spanish Inquisition?  Book burning?  Mob Rule?
• 
Trump is right.  Where does it end?
      Charlottesville never had to happen — How craven local politicians led our nation into tragedy  (Fox 08/17/2017)
• 
Charlottesville is a story of liberal hubris and political opportunism and the lives they cost.  It is a tragedy that never had to happen.
• 
This spring Charlottesville's ultra-liberal city council voted to remove an equestrian statue of General Robert E.  Lee that's been standing in a park in downtown Charlottesville since 1924, and to change the park's name from Lee Park to Emancipation Park. 
• 
Charlottesville is, and has been, a liberal enclave for a long time; in twelve of the fourteen years we have lived there the Lee statue, or the Stonewall Jackson statue nearby, never raised a progressive eyebrow.
• 
But after leftwing groups like Black Lives Matter began targeting Confederate Civil War monuments for vandalism and destruction in the aftermath of Ferguson, our city council decided it could score some points with BLM types by having the statue removed — and possibly avoid a violent confrontation with those same leftwing extremist groups.
• 
Statues of dead Confederate war heroes is an issue on which we can disagree.
• 
My great-great grandfather fought for the Union in the Civil War, and was severely wounded at the battle of Stones River.
• 
But I am sure neither he nor anyone in his Wisconsin regiment would have wanted that statue removed or the name changed 150 years later; any more than Ulysses S.  Grant or Lincoln – who spoke of the need for "charity to all and malice towards none" and "to bind the nation's wounds" in the aftermath of America's bloodiest conflict – would have wanted it.
• 
It was exactly those wounds our city council decided to reopen.
• 
Certainly if Mayor Mark Signer and other council members thought they could avoid future trouble this way, they were wildly wrong.
• 
Instead what they did was to create a cause for every crackpot Neo-Nazi and KKK group looking for some free publicity to rally around, and an opportunity for every crackpot leftist group on Saturday, to get into the action.
• 
... state police then did nothing as the Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and assorted neo-Communist extremists began arriving that morning in their own riot gear, including helmets and shields, and began flailing away at the neo-Nazi extremists who responded in kind.
• 
It's still not clear who ordered the police to "stand down;" perhaps no one did.
• 
Perhaps they simply did not want to appear on YouTube or the nightly news beating up a demonstrator, whether black or white, Brown or Red.
• 
They only finally moved in when Governor McAuliffe declared "a state of emergency," and only after a car driven by a white supremacist killed a young woman, Heather Heyer, after plowing into the crowd of rioters — rioters who should never been allowed to have contact with each other, let alone allowed to battle it out in the streets of Charlottesville.
• 
Meanwhile, two state troopers were dead after their helicopter crashed.
• 
At the end of the day they were two men simply doing their duty in a futile mission set by a do-nothing governor whose attention was focused on getting applause from the media, just like our mayor and city council — and just like the commentators afterwards who have worked hard to turn these deaths into an indictment of Donald Trump.
• 
A governor with any sense of honor and integrity would resign after a debacle like this; so would a mayor.  But of course McAuliffe and Signer won't.
• 
They are symptoms, not causes, of an American political culture that has become deeply sick.
      The Problem with Ethics  (JWR 08/16/2017)
• 
After eight years of an administration too feckless to acknowledge radical Islam as the leading force behind global terrorism and so vapid as to dismiss the Fort Hood massacre as "workplace violence," we have a right to expect the new regime to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis for what they are.
• 
The sad reality is that we have to let bigots and racists hold rallies like the one last weekend in Charlottesville. 
• 
The very term "hate-crime" is symptomatic of the ethical confusion of our times.  With left and right more polarized than ever, each side brands the other side as evil and thereby legitimizes its own hateful rhetoric.
• 
The result is that we criminalize the motives of people we don't like and excuse the actions of people we do.  And that just leads us deeper into the quagmire of moral anarchy.
• 
... ignorance, loutishness, and racism are not illegal, nor should they be.  If we want to live with freedom, we have to tolerate those who wield their freedom irresponsibly, if not criminally.
• 
And when they do cross the line into criminality, we should let the law work the way it was meant to work.
• 
What sparked this ugly episode was the removal of a statue of Robert E.  Lee, a southern hero revered in his time for his honor and nobility.
• 
Should we ignore General Lee's support of slavery because of his other virtues?  Or should we discount his virtues because he fought for slavery?
• 
No and no.  People are complicated, and often contradictory.  That's why attributing motive is both tricky and risky.
• 
It's easy for us in our age of equality to condemn man's oppression of man, as we should.
• 
But it's also unjust to demand the same level of moral clarity from those who lived in different times with different values.
• 
Indeed, when the values of future generations undergo another sea-change – as they will – who will defend us for our beliefs and actions before the indictment of our grandchildren?
• 
What are ethics but the slippery discipline of gleaning the spirit of the law from within the letter of the law?
• 
Even more slippery is the awareness that the morality of Man is subject to human bias and shifting cultural values.
• 
We dare not excuse every historical movement merely because it seemed right in its time; but neither should we condemn all those who lacked the moral clarity of our own times.
• 
So how do we navigate these treacherous moral waters?  We look to our leaders, who have the responsibility to help us set our collective moral compass as much as they have the obligation to steer the ship of state.
• 
King Solomon says, A magic rests on the lips of the king; let his mouth not betray him in judgment.
• 
You've got the helm, Mr.  Trump.  Be very careful what you do with it.
      Dinesh D'Souza: White Nationalists Belong With Dems But Are Politically Homeless  (Fox 08/14/2017)
• 
"Who invented white nationalism?  The Democrats.  And black nationalism?  Ditto.  So don't try & blame this on the GOP."
• 
"The way that the progressive Democrats have constructed their sort of multi-cultural totem pole, they encourage every form of ethnic nationalism except white nationalism."
• 
"...  white nationalists really belong in the Democratic party but instead are "in a sense politically homeless because if they show up at the multi-cultural picnic they're Satan."
      The Google Gulag  (INN 08/12/2017)
• 
Let me Google that for you. 
• 
James Damore is FIDE chess master who studied at Princeton, MIT and Harvard.  He had been working as a software engineer at Google for four years.
• 
Danielle Brown is the new Vice President of Diversity at Google.  She has an MBA from the University of Michigan and campaigned for Hillary. 
• 
She had been working at Google for a few weeks. 
• 
James Damore wrote a memo suggesting that Google should pursue ideological diversity, end discriminatory efforts to achieve identity politics diversity and be honest about gender differences.
• 
Danielle responded by denouncing his paper.  "It's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages."
• 
It was a difficult time because leftists at Google had to confront the horror of an original thinker in their ranks.  Some were so traumatized by his intrusion into their safe space that they threatened to quit.
• 
Pichai claimed that some Google employees were "hurting".  Social media accounts were full of bizarre claims that leftist employees were "afraid" to come to work.  But the only actual casualty was Damore.
• 
James Damore is what most people think of when they imagine a Google employee.  A brilliant original thinker with interests spread across the scientific and technological spectrum.
• 
But Danielle Brown is what Google actually is: a Hillary Clinton supporter who handled diversity at Intel and Google. 
• 
Google is a search engine monopoly that makes its money from search ads.  It began with a revolutionary idea from young engineers much like Damore.
• 
Then the engineers became billionaires.  And the company that began in a garage hired a Vice President of Diversity to get rid of the brilliant young engineers.
• 
The idea that made Google some twenty years ago was PageRank.  It was ahead of its time in utilizing social technology to rate the relevance of a page.
• 
The idea has since been cannibalized as Google's search algorithm favors its own products.  And increasingly it also favors its own political views.
• 
Google has embedded partisan attacks on conservatives into its search and news territories under the guise of "fact checks".
• 
It has fundamentally shifted results for terms such as "Jihad" to reflect Islamist propaganda rather than the work of counterterrorism researchers...
• 
Google had been previously accused of manipulating search results during Brexit. 
• 
... there's no reason to think that it will stop there until Google has completely cannibalized PageRank and replaced it with ProgRank in which search results will be dominated by left-wing sites in one category after another.
• 
Google's treatment of conservative users mirrors its internal treatment of conservative employees. 
• 
Internally, Google is a toxic environment where conservatives are threatened, blacklisted and even physically assaulted.
• 
Damore's case went public.  Countless other conservatives were forced out of Google and blacklisted by left-wing activists without their cases ever receiving public attention.
• 
Once upon a time, James Damore would have represented what was best about Google.
• 
But Google doesn't need brilliant minds.  It needs to find more ways to squeeze ad dollars out of its monopoly. 
• 
Damore was working on Google's search infrastructure.  And there's little doubt that he was wasted there.
• 
Google's goal is to streamline and shape search results for a mobile environment by giving users what it thinks they want rather than what they are actually searching for.
• 
Google isn't just politically left-wing, its product mindset has become all about forcing users to do what it thinks they should be doing. 
• 
When users search for results that Google doesn't like, it guides them to what it thinks they should be looking for.
• 
Google is approaching the ecological dead end of its technological niche.
• 
Meanwhile its Google.org philanthropy can fund pro-crime and anti-police causes.  Google Ideas, now known as Jigsaw, can try to get involved in the Syrian Civil War.
• 
And the herd of leftists it hired can police internal messaging by spamming angry social justice memes and waiting for an actual engineer to contradict them.
• 
That's what happened to James Damore.  It's happened to plenty of others before him. 
• 
When Google fired Damore, it sent a very clear message.  The message wasn't tolerance, but intolerance. 
• 
It said that its Vice President of Diversity knows more about biology than a researcher who received his biology degree in the top 3% of his class.
• 
It announced that there is no room for original thinking, heterodoxy or genius at Google.
• 
"The company was founded under the principles of freedom of expression, diversity, inclusiveness."
• 
But freedom of expression no longer comes before diversity.  It's breathing in the toxic fumes of fake inclusiveness and watching diversity vanish down the highway. 
• 
The gates of the internet cannot remain in the hands of a corporation intolerant of free speech.
• 
Google's monopoly doesn't only threaten the free market.  It threatens freedom of expression on the internet. 
• 
It's not just about James Damore.  It's about all of us.
      Trump must go on offense  (Fox 08/09/2017)
• 
Despite record job growth, the Dow over 22,000, illegal immigration down 70 percent and massive deregulation, the mainstream media still reports that Donald Trump's presidency is a failure.
• 
To put the final nail in the coffin of the opposition (Republicans, Democrats and the failing mainstream media) President Trump needs victories in three areas: legislative, the court of public opinion, and national defense and diplomacy.
• 
First, legislative – more specifically, health care.
• 
A handful of Republicans – after campaigning, raising money on and promising the repeal of ObamaCare – failed to deliver.
• 
He can propose a bill to repeal only the individual mandate and he needs to do it louder than anything else he has done to date.
• 
This would be very hard to vote against and the president would post his first legislative victory.
• 
Also in the legislative column: tax reform.
• 
What legislator would not want to go home to constituents and be able to say "we put more money in your paycheck?"
• 
... send Sarah Huckabee Sanders to the podium with an average middle class American making $50-60,000 a year, hold up his current paycheck, what he makes and what he takes home.
• 
Then you hold up a second paycheck with the same salary under Trump's tax plan highlighting the difference in the take home pay.
• 
"This is what President Trump stands for.  Congress, the bill is on your desk, make it happen."
• 
In the court of public opinion, Trump has been convicted by the mainstream media of Russian collusion.  The problem, though, is they have yet to produce any evidence for any of their criminal allegations.
• 
Here's the play: Trump challenges his largest critics on this.  Calling out Schumer, Pelosi, Waters and a few more saying that he will participate in the investigation to the fullest for 90 more days on the condition that if nothing is found, they resign their seats.
• 
If they don't respond in 10 days, he fires Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
• 
It's simply a PR play, they will NOT agree to this which gives Trump the opportunity to go on the offense and say, "The Democrats don't even believe in this investigation."
• 
Finally, national defense.
• 
Even with the 15-0 global decision against it at the UN Security Council, North Korea is going to continue to push the envelope until we do something.
• 
Sanctions will not work and will only further enrage the regime.
• 
We have a military machine unlike anyone else.  Time to use it!
• 
Park three carrier groups off the coast.  When North Korea launches another missile, we will assume – due to recent threats – that it is not a test and will shoot it down.
• 
When they fire another one we shoot that down and destroy the installation that it came from.
• 
Then shoot the next one down and destroy three more military establishments.
• 
During this time, the president needs to use his PR machine at the White House to continue to encourage Kim Jung Un to come to the table.
• 
President Trump is a different type of politician.  He made his mark by doing things aggressively and thinking outside the box.
• 
Mr.  President, do what you do best, run over your opponents and don't look back.
• 
"The Left would rather see our country fail than Trump succeed."
      Napolitano: Trump, Sessions and the Justice Department — a clash that should not be happening  (Fox 07/27/2017)
• 
How is it that parts of the DOJ cannot be controlled by the attorney general, whom Trump appointed to run the DOJ?
• 
And with a mountain of evidence of Clinton's espionage — her failure to safeguard state secrets, crimes far more treacherous than those alleged against Trump's campaign — why has she not been prosecuted?
• 
Shortly before he left office, President Barack Obama quietly changed a DOJ regulation so as to permit any federal intelligence agency ... that lawfully possesses raw intelligence data to share it with any one or more of the other intelligence agencies.  For generations, this had been prohibited.
• 
When Sessions became attorney general and learned whatever it is that the FBI learned about the Russians, he concluded that he might become a reluctant witness in the FBI investigation of the Russians because he had been involved in the management of the Trump campaign.
• 
Fearing this conflict and rejecting the toughness demanded of his office, Sessions recused himself from the management of all DOJ matters involving the Russians.
• 
Then ... deputy attorney general, overreacted and appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as an independent counsel to investigate the Russians and all related matters.
• 
Thus was born a now growing part of the DOJ, which is lawfully independent of the president and which has challenged him. 
• 
Whether Sessions stays or goes, the attorney general should not feel bound by Comey's decision to let Clinton go.  He should put the evidence of her crimes before a fresh team of prosecutors and instruct them to present it to a grand jury for indictment.
• 
And he should also identify and indict those in the Obama administration who started this mess with their leaks of raw intelligence data.
• 
The president is frustrated because he wants to do what he was elected to do.  Instead, the DOJ's lethargy and the independent counsel's zeal have him at bay.
• 
... a fair reading of the Constitution and a reasonable understanding of the separation of powers militate in favor of the doctrine of the unitary executive.
• 
That doctrine, which was well-accepted by the Framers, states succinctly that when it comes to the executive branch of the federal government, since only the president is accountable to the voters, only he can run the executive branch.
• 
The doctrine further articulates that since the consent of the governed is the base line for the government's moral legitimacy, we should not have agents in the government to whom the voters have never given consent.
      Liz Peek: Dirt on Hillary?  Who could resist?  (Fox 07/12/2017)
• 
Just to be clear: if an emissary of Borut Pahor, President of Slovenia, had emailed Hillary campaign apparatchik John Podesta last summer, offering scandalous dirt on Melania Trump, he would have turned down the meeting?  Give me a break.
• 
Weeks before the election, videos surfaced showing Clinton campaign workers strategizing on how to infiltrate and disrupt Trump rallies. 
• 
What Donald Trump Jr.  did in accepting a meeting with someone supposedly linked to the Russian government was dirty, and stupid, but it is not evidence that his father's campaign "colluded" with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton.
• 
That said, having a Russia-linked source offer up "dirt" on Hillary Clinton would have been irresistible.
• 
... Hillary and Bill Clinton appear to have done favors for political or business allies in exchange for substantial gifts to the Clinton Foundation.
• 
"... at least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during [Clinton's] tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation."
• 
... Hillary helped win approval for Russia's state nuclear agency (in other words, a government entity – directed by President Vladimir Putin) to buy a controlling interest in Uranium One, one of America's largest uranium mines, in exchange for $2.35 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.
• 
... At roughly the same time, a Russian investment bank staffed with numerous ex-KGB types paid Bill Clinton a $500,000 speaking fee
• 
... "Why was Bill Clinton taking any money from a bank linked to the Kremlin while his wife was secretary of state?" Does this resonate?  Will Special Counsel Robert Mueller ask the same question?  He certainly should.
• 
The uranium deal was important, in that it concerned a large stock of a U.S.  strategic asset.
• 
Also, the Kremlin had made expanding its access to uranium globally a high priority because it was hard at work building nuclear power plants such as the Bushehr facilities in Iran and similar projects in North Korea and Venezuela.
• 
In other words, the Uranium One purchase significantly boosted Russia's business and diplomatic prospects.
• 
Money actually changed hands between Russian entities and the Clintons, and favors were done.
• 
In that context, Donald Trump Jr.  was approached by a Russian source who promised incriminating evidence about Hillary.  Who wouldn't jump at the chance?
• 
There are important challenges facing our country.  You wouldn't know it from following the mainstream media, caught up as they are in faux scandals and the ever-lasting "Russia" story.
• 
Democrats and their allies in the press cannot and will not move on from the investigations into Trump's presumed ties to the Kremlin, even if it hurts the country.
• 
To do so would legitimatize the Trump presidency, and focus voters' attentions on the popular White House agenda – health care reform, lower taxes, infrastructure spending, protected borders, a stronger military and a roll-back of decades of suffocating red tape.
• 
Democrats cannot afford that.  They especially cannot afford to have Americans looking for their answers to our challenges – they don't have any.
• 
Which is why Donald Trump, and not Hillary Clinton, is president.
      While de Blasio whined in Germany, Trump was our defender  (NYP 07/08/2017)
• 
Donald Trump goes to Germany to defend Western civilization and promote economic growth.
• 
Bill de Blasio goes to Germany to throw verbal Molotov cocktails and promote socialism.
• 
One is the leader of the free world, the other is a great pretender.
• 
His decision to join an international rabble marked by vandalism and violence to "protest" Trump, the head of his own country and a citizen of his own city, shows where the mayor's heart is.
• 
He boasted to his hosts about the diversity of New York subway riders, as if that just started on his watch.
• 
Perhaps his sneaky disappearing act will persuade enough voters that it's time to find an alternative.
• 
Until they do, they're stuck with a mayor who neglects their cares to become a pet rock of the international left.  In his phone call, he said his role was to "set a tone and say we are not going to be intimidated by President Trump."
• 
Under that definition of his job, New York can go to hell and it's not his problem.  He's got more important things to do. 
• 
In contrast to the mayor's embarrassing trip, Trump was on a serious mission to combat terrorism and shape international trade rules to create more jobs for Americans.
• 
As he had in his Mideast visit, where he rallied Muslim nations, the president demonstrated a strong sense of purpose about confronting global threats to freedom.
• 
"The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.  Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost?
• 
"Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders?  Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?"
• 
Unlike his predecessor, Trump doesn't travel to apologize for America and surrender to multi-cultural sensitivities.
• 
He was elected to slam the brakes on the poisonous ideas that redistribution of wealth and managing decline are the president's chief duties.
• 
... gradually, and sometimes by fits and starts, Trump's America First agenda is emerging as a coherent doctrine that sees faith and family as a bedrock of national peace and prosperity.
• 
... we are engaged in a battle "for family, for freedom, for country and for God."
      Why Trump backers aren't swayed by media attacks, with or without Fox  (Fox 07/06/2017)
• 
And guess what?  They don't much care about wrestling videos and insulting cable news hosts.
• 
They think the president is doing just fine, that the media are out to get him, and that most of what obsesses the press is just noise.
• 
"What I do hear from my conservative friends — most still ardent Trump supporters — is a collective yawn at the Washington maelstrom.  Few care about his tweets — even about Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough and the CNN body slam.  The whacking of James Comey?  About time.  President Obama's appointee anyway.  Mr.  Trump's asking if Mr.  Comey could drop the Michael Flynn investigation?  It was a simple question, not obstruction of justice.  The Comey testimony?  Vindication for Mr.  Trump!  Mr.  Comey is a leaker, he lied under oath, and he's going down.  He'll be lucky if he doesn't serve prison time."
• 
"For many conservatives, they support Mr.  Trump because he's their de facto leader in a cultural war.  Liberals mock Christianity and demean Christian morals.  Conservatives respect our police and military, while liberals romanticize street thugs.  Conservatives' tax dollars help pay for public schools and colleges that indoctrinate liberal values."
• 
The president's attacks on media figures, even if sometimes tasteless, are seen by some people as slamming a group of elitists that doesn't respect them. 
      Napolitano: Why our Supreme Court justices unanimously agreed about Trump's travel ban  (Fox 06/29/2017)
• 
Lower federal courts had consistently ruled that the president's behavior was animated by an anti-Muslim bias...
• 
The Supreme Court unanimously saw it differently.  Here is the back story.
• 
I have argued for months that both the first travel ban executive order, signed Jan.  27, and the second one, signed March 6, were lawful and constitutional because the courts have ruled that the Constitution gives the president exclusively the final say on foreign policy and because they have ruled that immigration is one of the tools he can use to effectuate that policy.
• 
Moreover, Congress has expressly authorized the president to suspend immigration from stated countries for finite periods of time to enhance national security.
• 
In order to do this and pass judicial muster, the president's lawyers in the Department of Justice need only show that the president has a rational basis for his order.
• 
The traditional Judeo-Christian view of governmental decisions that limit the liberties or opportunities of many because of the anticipated behavior of a few is that those decisions are unjust and need not be obeyed.
• 
... we have come to the political and legal consensus that individual worthiness is personal and is not a characteristic of a group, and we have condemned other countries' governments for punishing the many because of the fear or behavior of a few.
• 
Yet the issue before the high court regarding the president's executive order is not its wisdom or morality or justness.  The issue is its lawfulness and its constitutionality.
• 
Bear in mind that there has been no trial in any of these cases.  The rulings appealed from were all preliminary in nature, based not on cross-examined evidence but on the judges' feel for the cases and their understanding of the law.
• 
... the Supreme Court ruling ....  did invalidate all injunctions imposed by the lower courts against the enforcement of the second order.
• 
In so doing, it ... created exceptions provide that immigrants from the six countries are exempt from the travel ban if they can show that they have a "relationship" with a person or entity in the U.S.
• 
... the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on the power of the president to use immigration travel bans as an instrument of foreign policy in October and will probably rule before Christmas.
• 
And this troublesome business of banning people from coming here because of their place of origin will be with us for a long time.
      Trump made a mistake naming Sessions as attorney general  (NYP 06/13/2017)
• 
Watching Attorney General Jeff Sessions try to bat away Democrats' smears and innuendo Tuesday, I had two reactions:
• 
One, he's been an honorable public servant who deserves better than an inquisition.
• 
Two, President Trump made a mistake in naming him attorney general.  It's an error that helped to set a national disaster in motion.
• 
The opposition is ruthless and without principle, but it couldn't get as far as it has without the president's inadvertent help.
• 
Start with the Dems, and their desperate hunt for collusion with Russia, obstruction of justice, or just jaywalking — anything remotely resembling a crime will do.
• 
Their fury knows no bounds, with character assassination now routine because they can't handle the truth about the 2016 election.
• 
No matter what question they ask or what insult they throw, the goal is always the same: overturn Trump's victory. 
• 
Either way, for them it's a win-win.  They win if Trump's agenda is stalled, and they win bigger if he gets impeached.
• 
It's a dirty business, but, unfortunately for the people who want the nation to change course, they're making progress.
• 
They still don't have an agenda of their own that will move the economy forward or protect America from terrorism, but they have managed to muddy the waters so much that Trump's popularity is sinking.
• 
They will continue their burn-it-down, blow-it-up strategy as long as it works.
• 
Some of the blame has to go to Sessions...  Sessions knew almost from day one that he would have to recuse himself from any investigation of the campaign because of Justice Department regulations.
• 
That fact alone should have persuaded Sessions to turn down the job, or persuaded Trump to name someone else.
• 
The entire Trump presidency ... now hangs in the balance of an unrestrained independent investigation, instigated by the president's enemies, all because the president picked an AG who could have no role in the most important decision of the young administration.
• 
Sessions said his recusal was required by regulations because he had been a campaign adviser and a Trump surrogate, and the ethics rules prohibit him from involvement in any investigations of the campaign.
• 
With that knowledge, he and Trump should have re-thought his taking the job.
• 
... it seems likely that Trump didn't know about the rules and that they never discussed the implications of Sessions' role in the campaign.
• 
The case is a perfect example of how Trump, the ultimate outsider, is bedeviled by the culture of insiders.
• 
A fundraising email sent under Trump's name captured the frustration.  "If you told me this would happen in America, I wouldn't believe you."
• 
"The losing political party is using a conspiracy theory — without having a single shred of evidence — to DERAIL a constitutionally-elected president."
• 
There is much truth in the charges, yet truth alone is not nearly enough to win the day.
• 
The president needs to find solutions that get the public back on his side, and he needs to find them fast.
      'This is war': Florida sheriff urges citizens to arm themselves in case of attack  (Fox 06/10/2017)
• 
"Folks, now more than ever is the time for our citizens to be prepared to serve as the first line of defense, not only for them, but for their families."
• 
"What's next is to fully understand that this is war, and you better be prepared to wage war to protect you, your family, and those around you if attacked."
• 
... attackers rely on people running, hiding, and waiting for help, rather than fighting back.
• 
"What they don't count on is being attacked themselves, having to become defensive to save their own lives."
• 
... calling 911 means officers are on their way, but ... "Until they arrive, it's up to you and those with you to neutralize or eliminate the threat."
• 
encouraged people to take self-defense classes, and urged those with concealed weapons permits to carry their guns with them at all times.
• 
"No matter who you are or what your position is on guns, there's no denying the fact that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun or a knife is an armed and well-prepared citizen or law enforcement officer."
      Sean Hannity: Comey reveals himself to be a Deep State political hack  (Fox 06/09/2017)
• 
Comey confirmed several times that the president and the White House did not ask him to stop the Russia investigation.
• 
Comey said multiple times that President Trump was not and never was under investigation
• 
We also learned that Comey was selectively leaking information to the press to try and damage the president
• 
Comey admitted that Lynch was able to pressure him into toning down his own language when speaking publicly about Hillary Clinton's email investigation. 
• 
Comey has failed the American people at every single turn.  He disrespected our Constitution.  He didn't care about equal application of the rule of law.  He created a two-tiered justice system, one for Hillary and Bill Clinton, and one for the rest of America, by ignoring the many, many crimes we know she committed.
• 
From whitewashing Hillary Clinton's illegal email server to ignoring the Clinton Foundation's pay-to-play schemes, Comey has been a no-show.
• 
He was obsessed with Russia, but only when it came to Trump.
• 
He couldn't care less when the Clintons gave Moscow control of 20 percent of our uranium.
• 
Sadly, James Comey is nothing more than a partisan and a political hack, and his testimony once again proved that.
• 
And the disgruntled, fired employee admitted he leaked details of his own memo, allegedly written after meeting with Trump, hoping that it would bring about a special counsel.
• 
From clearing Clinton, to obeying Loretta Lynch's orders to soft-peddle the server investigation to his inexcusable treatment of the president, James Comey has proven time and time again that he is unfit to serve our country.
• 
The real story is how Deep State dolts like James Comey have been manipulating facts, leaking information and blocking the duly elected president from doing his job.
• 
See related Hillary's Private Server (Mike Lester, 07/06/2016) cartoon from Government picture album
      Cal Thomas: The secular progressives reveal [again] why they are not fit to lead anything  (Fox 06/06/2017)
• 
For sheer hilarity and hyperbole it's hard to beat a recent headline on a Washington Post editorial ... "Trump turns his back on the world," it screamed.
• 
A close second goes to the headline on a New York Times piece by columnist David Brooks: "Donald Trump Poisons the World."
• 
Dishonorable mention goes to former presidential adviser David Gergen, who said on CNN that Trump had committed "one of the most shameful acts in U.S.  history."
• 
The secular progressives have again revealed their diminished capacity, which ought to disqualify them from leading anything, especially the country.
• 
The central argument supporting "climate change" has been that a "scientific consensus" exists on the subject.  Two things about this.
• 
The first is that climate scientists who disagree on that consensus have been largely shutout of the debate.  Their papers and ideas are blocked from mainstream scientific journals and, thus, are not subject to peer review.  Politics appears to have overshadowed science.
• 
Second, there have been numerous cases in the not too distant past where an empirical conclusion among scientists was touted as rock-solid truth, but which later, after further examination, proved to be dead wrong.
• 
Newsweek magazine featured a cover story in 1975 about "global cooling." That was supposed to be a scientific consensus.
• 
President Trump should counter his critics by convening a White House conference on climate.
• 
In addition to the apostles of climate change, he should invite scientists — and only those specializing in climate science — that have been marginalized from the debate.
• 
These would include MIT climate scientist Dr.  Richard Lindzen, who claims believing that CO2 controls the climate "is pretty close to believing in magic."
• 
None of those participating in the proposed conference should be academics or scientists who receive federal grants or have other connections to government.  This might give them a conflict of interest and reduce their credibility.
• 
Let's have a high-level debate on this issue and settle it once and for all.
      Did Russia interfere with our election?  Yes.  Did it elect Trump, absolutely not  (Fox 05/30/2017)
• 
Did the Russians try to interfere with last November's Presidential election?  Without a doubt.
• 
Were there conversations between Russian representatives and members of the Trump campaign team?  Very likely.
• 
Did the Russians succeed in altering the outcome of the election in any way, or was the Trump campaign complicit in their attempts?  Absolutely not.
• 
What do I base this conclusion on?  Having an actual understanding of how campaigns are run and won, what's possible, and what's impossible. 
• 
But let's be honest, there are some who are so disappointed and stunned by the choice Americans made, so disbelieving of the results, they are remarkably susceptible to believing almost anything.
• 
The Democrats, along with too many in the news media, keep obsessing on creating a nexus between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
• 
The truth is that no one has given a credible explanation of what the Russians actually did, or even could do, to change or affect the outcome.
• 
... I asked the host what he thought the Russians did to help Trump.  He mentioned that they ran very negative stories about Hillary on Russian TV.
• 
I'm going out on a limb on this one, but I'm guessing for most Americans the main source of their political news is not broadcast in Moscow. 
• 
... if these problematic revelations really did hurt the Clinton campaign, there are two parties that are responsible: The Russians for hacking and leaking, and the Clinton campaign for colluding with the DNC in the first place.
• 
But not the Trump campaign.
• 
... there seems to be little empirical evidence that exposing the DNC/Clinton exchanges had any real impact on the race.
• 
Let's be clear, the "witch hunt" now underway has absolutely nothing to do with getting to the bottom of the facts, and everything to do with the 2018 elections.
• 
And until someone comes up with a single piece of evidence that proves the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign resulting in the change of a single vote, how about we start worrying about real issues.
      Judge Jeannine Pirro: Heroin dealers deserve prison, not sympathy  (Fox 05/27/2017)
• 
Imagine this for a moment – your child is dead.  This person that you have raised from birth and have focused every important thought of your life for over two decades is gone from the world forever.
• 
Because despite your efforts, your attention, and your devotion, you could not stop the fateful call of the heroin that ended your child's life.  And destroyed yours.
• 
The deadly poison that is heroin made its way to your small town from Mexico, where it was grown and processed, later to be trafficked to your neighborhood where its target customers were someone's children, parents, brothers and sisters.
• 
... the last presidential administration decided that it would treat these so-called "non-violent, low-level drug offenders" with leniency to help them avoid potentially long prison sentences required by law.
• 
Everywhere you look on the subject, you see another editorial, documentary, or pundit talking about the tragedy of the convicted "non-violent, low-level drug offender" who has been separated by his family because he is serving a long sentence in prison.
• 
You wonder why the drug trafficker arrested and convicted for dealing over 20,000 doses of black heroin is considered a non-violent, low-level drug offender.
• 
And the heroin that your child used violently ripped the very life of your child away, then, with equal violence, utterly destroyed the entire purpose of your own life, turning it into a nightmare from which you can never wake up. 
• 
Under President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, the Department of Justice is going to charge major drug traffickers based on the exceedingly large amounts of deadly poison they are peddling in our neighborhoods.
• 
These drug traffickers will no longer be treated with kid gloves – they will be treated like the merchants of death that they are.
• 
Of course, that is not to say you are without sympathy for the parents who, through no fault of their own, has to see their child in prison for ten years.
• 
... despite their child's disastrously wrong choices, they will be able to welcome him home one day.
• 
You will never have the same opportunity.
      Manchester attack: Nations around the world must stop appeasing the Islamists  (Fox 05/23/2017)
• 
"Dozens of innocent people, beautiful young children savagely murdered in this heinous attack upon humanity."
• 
An untold number of children and their parents were massacred by Islamic radicals - killed in the name of the religion of peace. 
• 
In response – there have been candlelight vigils and calls for peace and understanding – but the Muslim jihadists do not want peace.  They want death. 
• 
The time has come to eliminate this evil from the face of the planet.  The time has come for nations around the world to stop appeasing the Islamists.
• 
"We must drive out the terrorists and extremists from our midst, obliterate this evil ideology, and protect and defend our citizens and people of the world."
• 
"All civilized nations must be united in this effort."
• 
And we must do our part in the United States.  We must secure our borders, we must investigate those who come here from the birthplace of this radical ideology and we must do whatever is necessary to prevent American blood from being shed on American soil.
• 
Yet, there are still apologists for the radical Islamists - from Hollywood to the halls of Congress.
• 
They seem to think we can win over the hearts and minds of the jihadists with bouquets of flowers and gentle hugs. 
• 
The Presbyterians and the Lutherans are not the ones strapping on backpacks filled with nails and blowing themselves up.  The Methodists and Baptists aren't beheading people.  The Catholics are not flying jetliners into buildings.
• 
How many more children must die at the hands of radical Muslims - slain in the name of the religion of peace?
• 
See related Let's Hug It out! (Glenn McCoy, 06/22/2016) cartoon from Terror picture album
• 
See related Hillary Solution (Sean Delonas, 09/19/2016) cartoon from Terror picture album
      'F*** Trump' chant led by California Democratic Party Leader: What's next?  (Fox 05/22/2017)
• 
Outgoing California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton performed the only action left to an impotent, leftist, cadre head in a lawful society.  He shouted.
• 
He likely would've preferred some kind of violent action, but instead he simply advocated for one.
• 
... as they were flashing their hands in applause for his service to the party, he put his middle finger in the air and lead a chant, "F** Donald Trump!"
• 
Perhaps more remarkable was the eager willingness of the crowd to join in with him, chanting, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Obama's Former Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis looked on, laughing it up in the background.
• 
Why should this astonish anyone?  This is the party recently all-in for a woman who unapologetically called half the country "deplorables."
• 
Since the government removed the Bible and prayer from our schools, our nation has been educating young people to believe that life happens purely by accident and that evolution dictates that survival of the fittest is the supreme law of the land (contradicting the foundational values of our representative republic). 
• 
Therefore, when Democrats are so easily convinced that some people just don't have the same value as other people, and that they can be written off as "irredeemable," which literally means they are worthless...
• 
Democrats view Trump as deplorable, irredeemable, and therefore no insult is too great ... no threat is too bold ... and, of course, no commentary too lewd or crass for general consumption.
• 
It is this egregious disdain for the humanity of others that comprises the basis for today's Democratic party. 
• 
Unfortunately, great damage is already accomplished.  Thanks to government schooling, our youth believe that socialism is just like grandpa with candy (witness the popularity of Bernie Sanders), never having been taught the truth: that socialists are responsible for about one hundred million deaths last century.
• 
After all, if I have a right to health care, then I'm entitled to take it by force, if necessary.
• 
And if I'm angry, survival of the fittest dictates I can loot and set fire.
• 
The famous quote from Ronald Reagan,"The trouble with our liberal friends isn't that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't true," has become The trouble with leftists is they don't respect human life.
• 
And when they lose respect for human life, as the Democrat's Party has finally done, not only are they anti-American, because our constitution preserves everyone's rights to life and liberty, but they become downright dangerous.
• 
First and foremost, we need to be teaching our children that they have value and purpose, and that no life is truly deplorable.
• 
What is more evil than the systemic devaluation of human life, such as we see with international terrorism (and, also, from within the Democrat party)?
      Dems are gunning for Trump — here's how he can survive  (NYP 05/21/2017)
• 
... Trump, having twice called the special-counsel investigation a "witch hunt," must now discipline himself to avoid getting burned at the stake.
• 
He pulled off one of the great political upsets in history to get to the White House, but may need ­another miracle to finish what he started.
• 
The most important ­development is that Democrats have been rewarded for their wild accusations that Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the election.
• 
... despite the lack of known evidence, the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel raises the ante in dramatic fashion.
• 
The case is now considered a criminal probe and the White House has no control over where it goes.
• 
Even the GOP advantage in Congress will be neutered because criminal investigations take precedence over hearings.
• 
Having demanded a special counsel, they will use the existence of one as proof that Trump must be guilty of something and noisily drown out any discussion of his America First agenda.
• 
They aim to make the Washington circus the main focus and block Trump from making good on his promises to expand economic opportunity for middle- and working-class Americans.
• 
And most of the media will keep throwing their forces into the battle to destroy the president they loathe.
• 
The history of special counsels is that they always manage to find something, thanks to having no restrictions on time or money and how far afield they can go.
• 
Keeping the ball rolling, even if nothing major turns up against Trump, would allow Dems to paint every day as Watergate.
• 
Because his problems are more political than legal, politics is also the solution.  It starts with presidential discipline, both in word and deed.
• 
The bottom line is that some pieces of a successful presidency are in place, but the progress is fragile and could be swamped by the Washington circus.
• 
Trump's goal must be to avoid any more hint of scandal and ­instability so he can earn enough support to finish the revolution he started.
• 
If he can do that, everything is still possible.
      American Revolution II  (Fox 05/21/2017)
• 
The American Revolution – American Revolution I – was fought to secure independence from British colonialists.
• 
American Revolution II is being fought today to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump and return to a corporate structure the Left finds desirable. 
• 
The call for revolution is heard in the political precincts of the Democratic Party where the prevailing sentiment is "Resistance."
• 
No matter the issue – even when Trumpians try to appease Dems with their modified version of ObamaCare – the response is rejection.
• 
One might assume that on matters such as national security, the revolutionary guard might be willing to compromise at least temporarily, but you would be wrong.  The fight is relentless.
• 
For the Revolutionaries, the 2016 election was illegitimate despite Trump's Electoral College victory.
• 
The radical agenda that worries about where grown men should urinate has taken its battle to every corner of the culture.
• 
Trump made a point of challenging political correctness which the Left translates as racist, but for average Americans, Trump's position resonates as common sense.
• 
Even gestures designed to forestall attacks within the United States – like the immigration ban from eight war-torn nations where documentation of new arrivals doesn't exist – were interpreted as a blanket ban against Muslims, and yet another illustration of the President's bigotry.
• 
In the febrile mindset of the Revolutionaries, Trump is a danger – presumably a danger to the Republic itself – though they are the ones promoting violence on American campuses when voices are invited that challenge left-wing suppositions about the nation.
• 
Of course, most of the self-described Robespierres could not possibly define the evil that drips so naturally from their lips.  Trump is the embodiment of the evil and every act, however benign, is further evidence of fascistic leanings.
• 
In the case of American Revolution I the umbilical cord was cut, but America grew strong; in the case of American Revolution II the nation's institutions are being tested and it is hard to see a positive outcome over the horizon.
      More indications Intel assessment of Russian interference in election was rigged  (Fox 05/12/2017)
• 
... there is a far more important story that surfaced this week that no one is talking about: a mysterious hand-picked group of analysts chosen to write a damning intelligence assessment that found Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win.
• 
... there are compelling reasons to believe this ISA was actually a politicized analysis that violated normal rules for crafting intelligence assessments to ensure this one reached the bottom line conclusion that the Obama administration was looking for.
• 
... the ISA reflected the views of only three intelligence agencies — CIA, NSA and FBI – not all 17.
• 
Clapper did not explain why the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department's intelligence bureau did not participate. 
• 
... ISA was suspicious because it reached unusually clear judgments on a politically explosive issue with no dissenting views. 
• 
... two dozen or so "seasoned experts" were "handpicked" from the contributing agencies" and drafted the ISA "under the aegis of his former office"...
• 
... their conclusions "were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me."
• 
Hand-picking a handful of analysts from just three intelligence agencies to write such a controversial assessment went against standing rules to vet such analyses throughout the Intelligence Community within its existing structure.
• 
The idea of using hand-picked intelligence analysts selected through some unknown process to write an assessment on such a politically sensitive topic carries a strong stench of politicization. 
• 
FBI Director James Comey said in testimony to the House Intelligence Committee the conclusion that Russia tried to affect the outcome of the election to help Trump win was based on logic, not evidence.
• 
So we now know this was a subjective judgment made by a hand-picked group of intelligence analysts.
• 
One has to ask how these hand-picked analysts were picked.  Who picked them?  Who was excluded?
• 
... the conclusions of these hand-picked intelligence analysts were later vetted and approved by Clapper and three other intelligence agency heads.
• 
A major problem with this process is that it gave John Brennan, CIA's hyper-partisan former director, enormous influence over the drafting of the ICA.
• 
Given Brennan's scathing criticism of Mr.  Trump before and after the election, he should have had no role whatsoever in the drafting of this assessment.
• 
Instead, Brennan probably selected the CIA analysts who worked on the ICA and reviewed and approved their conclusions.
• 
While I believe Russian cyber warfare operations are a serious threat to our security and democratic system including our elections, I find it difficult to believe Russia meddled in the election as part of a scheme to help Trump win because this assumes the Putin government believed Trump had a reasonable chance of winning when the entire mainstream media and almost all U.S.  political prognosticators thought otherwise.
• 
But I find it ever harder to believe the Intelligence Community's "logical" conclusion that Russia meddled in the election to help Trump win since this conclusion was the result of intelligence officials breaking the rules on producing Intelligence Community assessments.
• 
An assessment purporting to be an objective and authoritative analysis of such an extremely controversial subject should have went to extra mile to consider points of view from all intelligence agencies and intelligence experts and not be limited to a small group of analysts hand-picked through some unknown process.
• 
There also should have been dissenting views and an annex with evaluations of this assessment by outside reviewers.
      Trump can win the cyber war  (by following Churchill's approach) (Fox 05/11/2017)
• 
As reported by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, North Korea recently sent out a "new combination of mysterious random numbers" thought to be coded orders to its spies in South Korea.  The random encrypted numbers were sent out over a radio broadcast.
• 
Further, the U.S.-Korea Institute's "38 North" program now tells us that North Korean scientists have actually developed a quantum encryption device. 
• 
What Kim Jong Un's regime is now doing from a cyber standpoint should be a "red flag" to America's entire national security structure.
• 
Whoever is first to master the science of quantum computing and random number generation will likely have a "leg up" in winning the cyber war, as these random numbers are the roots of every encryption algorithm.
• 
It could be the great equalizer and enable a small country with less advanced technology in other areas, and with bad economic conditions, to gain a real strategic advantage.
• 
Combine it with ballistic missile and nuclear technology, and you've got a big problem on your hands.
• 
While the North Korean "working system" is still most probably in a lab, the fact that they have this technology and are working with random number generated codes should be a real wake-up call for the United States.
• 
Today there is strong evidence that the science of quantum computing can provide for the generation of truly random numbers.
• 
From a U.S.  national security standpoint, having this technology would make it almost impossible for our enemies to hack us.
• 
If, on the other hand, a country such as North Korea were to get this technology first, it would make it much more difficult for us to disrupt them from attacking us.
• 
Cyber warfare is the most complicated national security threat that the U.S.  has ever faced because technology is changing so quickly.
• 
Cyber attacks are killing us both economically and from a national security standpoint.
• 
"Secure encrypted communications have always been a cornerstone of preserving freedom and this is becoming more true in this emerging interconnected world of ours."
• 
At the beginning of World War II, Nazi Germany's "Enigma Code" appeared unbreakable.
• 
... the British brought together the best cryptographers and mathematicians and in the end, under the genius of Alan Turing, built a machine to crack the Nazi's Enigma machine.
• 
While a number of the British codebreakers were already assembled at Bletchley Park when he became Prime Minister in May of 1940, it was Churchill's personal involvement and leadership that made a big difference.
• 
Churchill made sure they had whatever resources they needed and that the best minds were recruited to the effort.
• 
Further, he engaged directly with the cryptanalysts and would even visit personally to boost their morale.  Sir Winston knew the stakes and that his personal leadership was required.
• 
Ike called the effort of "priceless value" and said it "saved countless British and American lives and, in no small way, contributed to the speed with which the enemy was routed and eventually forced to surrender."
• 
President Trump to bring together America's best minds in the science of quantum computing and random number generation.  Let's get our very best cryptologists, mathematicians and physicists together at one location like the Brits did at Bletchley Park.
• 
Make sure they have the resources they need.  They should continue to work there until the job is done.
• 
Today, whoever wins the "Cyber War" will have the upper hand in current and future conflicts.
• 
And whoever masters the science of quantum computing and random number generation will likely win the "Cyber War." Losing this war is not an option.
      Bill Bennett: Trump, DeVos get it right — Feds' role in your child's education is shrinking.  Finally!  (Fox 05/11/2017)
• 
Students of history know that governments rarely give up power without a fight.  To paraphrase Edmund Burke, those who have been intoxicated with power never willingly abandon it.
• 
Yet, last year, the federal government passed a new education law which returns a significant amount of power and decision-making authority to states, districts and schools.
• 
The law explicitly bars the Department of Education from dictating or influencing standards or curricula at the federal level, and states and districts have a wide range of new liberties when it comes to developing accountability systems, testing and content.
• 
But with this newfound freedom from Washington comes a newfound responsibility for excellence at the state and district level.  We cannot confuse local control with laissez faire.
• 
State and local leaders must embrace this opportunity and lift expectations, not relax them.
• 
For years, states have been in compliance mode – overly focused on meeting detailed federal criteria – and that mindset has lulled some states into complacency.
• 
Authority over American education has undergone a seismic shift.  Now the states and locales have both the power and the accompanying responsibility to improve our nation's performance.
• 
In addition, states now have a genuine partner at the federal level in the Trump administration who will not overreach federal authority and seek to exert influence through federal funds or Title IX bathroom threats.
• 
In fact, the administration went so far as to issue an executive order to study previous overreach into our schools by Washington in the hopes of reversing the federal power grab.
• 
When was the last time that happened in federal education policy?
• 
The focus of the administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is in the right place: empowering states to better employ market forces and create choices for the benefit of students.
• 
And while school choice and local control are important, they are only two of the elements necessary for serious education reform.
• 
We can't take our eyes off the importance of high-quality content and curricula as well as rigorous accountability systems.
• 
We know what works in education, but for years, states, districts, superintendents and teachers have had their focus distracted and hands tied by burdensome federal regulations.
• 
For years, they have been asking for relief.  Now they have it.  We cannot squander this opportunity. 
      Veteran suicide: A personal story of our great national disgrace  (Fox 05/10/2017)
• 
Vets died on fake waiting lists.  Fraud was committed because there wasn't the money to treat our heroes.  So, government employees committed criminal acts to make them go away.  Vets died.  Obama chose to fire or punish none of the VA employees involved. 
• 
The media said nothing. 
• 
President Trump signed a powerful Executive Order last week that received very little fanfare in the media.  Trump created a new office to reform the VA and root out bad employees.
• 
... patriotic vets being mistreated and dying because of government incompetence, indifference or criminal negligence, just doesn't interest liberal journalists or media executives.
• 
Liberals are right when they complain "we have two Americas." We do.  This country is badly divided.
• 
On one side, we have salt of the earth patriots, with generations of family members willing to sacrifice their lives and limbs for a country they love and greatly appreciate. 
• 
And on the other side we have the media elite - spoiled brat liberal intellectuals who would never even consider dying for their country; spend all of their time and energy complaining about their country; don't find America exceptional; and have no one in their entire family who has ever served in the military.
• 
... President Trump is on the right track.  "Draining the swamp" starts with the VA.  Because hero vets dying in battle is a tragedy.  But allowing our heroes to die at the hands of the VA is a national disgrace.
      Trump stirs pot with talk of blowing up Senate rules  (Fox 05/03/2017)
• 
As a gridlocked Congress threatens to stall the legislative promises that catapulted him to office, President Trump has raised hackles on the Hill by suggesting longstanding Senate rules simply be scrapped to cripple Democratic opposition.
• 
... seeming to suggest the legislative filibuster be ended to take advantage of Republicans' control of Congress. 
• 
"And maybe at some point we're going to have to take those rules on, because, for the good of the nation, things are going to have to be different."
• 
"You can't go through a process like this.  It's not fair.  It forces you to make bad decisions.  I mean, you're really forced into doing things that you would normally not do except for these archaic rules."
• 
Trump attributed the flaws in a spending bill panned by many conservatives to Democratic influence.
• 
Currently, Senate rules allow the minority party — Democrats, at present – to subject a bill to a 60-vote test.
• 
In modern terms, the minority party can "filibuster" by rallying more than 40 votes against a bill during this phase.
• 
There are currently 46 Democrats in the Senate, and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.
• 
Trump's solution: "Either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%."
• 
The idea of lowering the vote threshold for controversial legislation to 51 senators is groundshaking in the Senate, as it would sap power from the minority party; Republicans and Democrats typically trade that status every few cycles.
• 
It was only in 2013 that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid triggered the so-called "nuclear option" to eliminate filibusters on most federal judicial nominees.
• 
That elimination of Senate precedent paved the way for McConnell to do the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017, when Democrats threatened to hold up the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch.
• 
Whether or not the minority should have the ability to obstruct and delay votes has been a topic of debate from the earliest days of America, dating back to colonial assemblies and the Constitutional Convention.
• 
The Senate in 1789 adopted a centuries-old British parliamentary rule allowing a member to make a motion "to move the previous question" – in other words, end debate and take a vote on the actual measure.
• 
But the rule was done away with in 1806, a year after Vice President Aaron Burr urged its removal based on infrequent use.
• 
"Of the two rights (of debating and voting) that of voting is the higher and more important."
• 
"We ought to have both, and debate certainly in ample measure; but, if we are forced to choose between them, the right of action must prevail over the right of discussion.  To vote without debating is perilous, but to debate and never vote is imbecile."
• 
The cloture rule – Rule 22 – was introduced in 1917, requiring a two-thirds majority to end debate; however, that standard often proved difficult to attain.
• 
The threshold was altered in 1975 to its modern incarnation, requiring three-fifths of the Senate – or 60 members.
• 
"No, if you believe in limited government and extended debate, the 60-vote requirement is your friend more than it's your foe.  We won't always be in this position – you've got to take the long view."
      Just fracking wrong: How much freedom is too much?  (Fox 05/01/2017)
• 
Free speech and hate speech are becoming alarmingly close neighbors in these Divided States of America.  That's not good for anyone.
• 
"If the oil and gas industry puts fracking wells in our neighborhoods, threatening our lives and our children's lives, then don't we have a moral responsibility to blow up wells and eliminate fracking and workers?"
• 
... changed the quotation to "don't we have a moral responsibility to take action to dissuade frackers from operating here?"
• 
"I wouldn't have a problem with a sniper shooting one of the workers" at a drilling site.
• 
"For a newspaper to publish an outright call to violence, no matter what the issue, is just plain irresponsible and crosses a very bright line.  And the journalistic felony is compounded if the same paper then changes a quote in an effort to soften it.  Altering someone's quotes is absolutely forbidden in the news business."
• 
"On college campuses, and now here in Colorado, so-called resistance protesters think that having a different opinion [is akin] to an actual act of violence."
• 
"They say it is unsafe for you to voice an opinion that is different from mine.  Yet those who are claiming that your opinion is violence have actually engaged in violence or are claiming that violence is justified against someone who disagrees with them."
      Trump's first 100 days: Our next Supreme Court pick will be the kicker  (Fox 04/25/2017)
• 
Those who want to preserve our constitutional republic spent a lot of time and energy getting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.
• 
... the public should realize that it is President Trump's next pick that will provide the opportunity to finally solidify a conservative majority that will protect the Bill of Rights and enforce the Constitution's limits on the power of the federal government.
• 
... getting a proven constitutionalist such as Gorsuch to replace Scalia was vital.
• 
But we must not forget that one of the other generally conservative justices, Anthony Kennedy, is often more mercurial when it comes to such issues.
• 
It was Kennedy's fifth vote that extended habeas corpus rights to foreign alien terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay...
• 
It was Kennedy that created a nonexistent right to gay marriage ... on an issue that heretofore was a matter entirely within the province of the states.
• 
... Kennedy joined the liberal justices to rewrite the eminent domain provision of the Fifth Amendment to allow private property to be seized by government for transfer to another private owner, instead of for a public purpose as the plain text of the amendment says.
• 
... Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in a 4-to-3 decision that allowed the University of Texas-Austin to continue to discriminate on the basis of race in its admissions process in blatant violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• 
As Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissent, the decision "rests on pernicious assumptions about race." It will perpetuate racial discrimination for years to come.
• 
The same could be said of Chief Justice John Roberts. 
• 
... it was Roberts who provided the disappointing fifth vote ... to uphold the constitutionality of the individual mandate in Obamacare forcing Americans to purchase health insurance.
• 
If it is a liberal justice who leaves the Court, then replacing that justice with a conservative who believes in applying the Constitution as written would, obviously, provide an extra vote that could make the difference in cases where Anthony Kennedy (or perhaps Chief Justice John Roberts) sides with the remaining three liberal justices.
• 
Whoever the next departing justice is, President Trump must make sure the next Supreme Court justice is someone who believes in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights 100 percent of the time, not just when it is convenient to achieve the particular policy goal the justice wants.
• 
And President Trump will need someone who doesn't care what the New York Times, MSNBC, or the Washington cocktail circuit says about him or her.
• 
He needs a rock-solid, principled lawyer who understands that the U.S.  Supreme Court is the last defense against an increasingly powerful, oversized, busybody government that seems to believe it has the right to dictate every aspect of our lives.
      A physicist's take on the March for Science  (Fox 04/21/2017)
• 
As a theoretical physicist, I was excited to hear about Saturday's nationwide March for Science.
• 
But after learning who is leading it and why, I am disappointed to report it is but a brazen attempt by political activists to hijack science.
• 
I can't bear seeing the organizers and partners of the so-called March for Science trying to politicize it.
• 
Bill Nye, the march's highly visible co-chairperson, is barely even a scientist. 
• 
... and hosted a PBS kids show, in which he cleverly branded himself "The Science Guy."
• 
In science-related debates, Nye consistently defends a strident, liberal position.  (I'd also call him out if he were a strident conservative.)
• 
The march's flagrant political bias is also plain in its choice of partners – for instance, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group of fiercely anti-nuke, anti-Trump lobbyists.
• 
... defends the march by deliberately confusing attacks on his political agenda with attacks on the scientific method: "Nowhere is the attack more ferocious than on the issue of global warming, where the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the modest but important policies put in place by President Obama."
• 
The march's official website isn't reassuring either.  ... "Political decision-making that impacts the lives of Americans and the world at large should make use of peer-reviewed evidence and scientific consensus, not personal whims and decrees."
• 
Like wizards uttering a magical incantation, lobbyists routinely invoke the existence of a "scientific consensus" to lend an aura of infallibility to their political stands.
• 
Science is never settled.  As Albert Einstein once observed, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
• 
Einstein knew whereof he spoke.  As a young physicist in Switzerland, he confronted a stubborn scientific consensus – supported by a mountain of peer-reviewed evidence – that decreed Newtonian physics was settled science.
• 
In 1905, when Einstein dared to challenge it – to publish the special theory of relativity – the scientific establishment promptly reared up against him.
• 
Prominent Nazi physicists even accused him of promulgating disreputable "Jewish science."
• 
There is enormous room for improving science education in our nation's public schools, colleges, grad schools, media, and – yes – political institutions.
• 
But the March for Science – lobbyists claiming that supporting the scientific method is equivalent to supporting their political agendas – is a very big, very public step in the wrong direction.
      Hey, Facebook, it's time to put our safety before your algorithms  (Fox 04/20/2017)
• 
The murder of an innocent man in Cleveland shown on Facebook by the perpetrator is but the latest distressing outrage exposing the horrific flipside of social media.
• 
... major international companies pulled millions of advertising dollars from Google/YouTube after they discovered that their brands' logos were appearing alongside terrorist and bigoted videos broadcast by the video behemoth.
• 
And they left unanswered one critical question: Why does the Social Media giant allow such content to be posted in the first place?
• 
... YouTube still carries an expanding library of how-to-use readily available materials to build a bomb, a remote cellphone detonator, homemade flamethrower, or make napalm...
• 
Along with Twitter's spotty record, YouTube's failure to tackle hateful postings in a consistent and serious way, have helped our domestic bigots to have an out-sized impact during the contentious and divisive Presidential campaign last year.
• 
Social Media companies did not invent hate, but they have yet to take seriously their responsibilities to help degrade the online bigots from further infecting the mainstream of our culture.
• 
... Messaging Apps.  These apps have emerged as critical tools for terrorists when they want to evade authorities.  By using off the shelf encryption, terrorists in France and Belgium went dark in before they unleashed their carnage.
• 
... What's App has refused to cooperate with British authorities who discovered that the House of Commons terrorist, Khalid Massoud used their encrypted app for his last communications before launching the murderous outrage.
• 
It is past due for the social media service providers to take their responsibilities seriously.  Algorithms are no substitute for ethics.
• 
If they fail to take more effective action look for Washington to begin to consider the dreaded R word — regulation.
      Donald Trump is right about NATO, alliance burden sharing  (Fox 04/15/2016)
• 
As a former Pentagon spokesman who's been stationed in both Europe and Asia over a 20-year military career, I believe Donald Trump is 100 percent correct to insist that our allies share the burden of collective defense.
• 
While Americans should be proud of our historical role to advance global freedom — defeating Nazism and imperialism during World War II, communism during the Cold War, and battling jihadist terror networks today, we can't be the world's policeman forever.
• 
We can't afford it. 
• 
Nope, we're $19 trillion in debt and our own national infrastructure is crumbling.  Literally. 
• 
Anybody remember the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis?  On a bright, sunny August day in 2007, it collapsed into the Mississippi River during rush hour, killing 13 and injuring 145. 
• 
Anybody seen current pictures of once mighty and prosperous industrial cities like Detroit; Gary, Indiana; or Akron, Ohio? 
• 
Or urban decay in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee, Oakland, Los Angeles and Ferguson? 
• 
Isn't it time to do some nation-building at home?
• 
Meanwhile, aside from natural disasters, our top allies don't worry about physically crumbling cities.
• 
And that's thanks to the American taxpayer underwriting their massive security bills since the 1940s.
• 
NATO is an alliance of 28 nations with a population of more than 910 million.
• 
America makes up over 1/3 the population, yet pays nearly three quarters of the defense expenditures.
• 
Even getting past the massive trade deficits with allies like Japan, we're funding a system that makes our allies nicer places to live than here.
• 
They're modernizing while we're struggling to keep ours on-line. 
• 
But beyond the lopsided financial burden, our allies aren't pulling their weight on the battlefield either.
• 
A running joke during my Pentagon days was that "International Security Assistance Force" (ISAF) in Afghanistan, actually stood for "I Saw Americans Fighting."
• 
In the Middle East, it's even worse.  While we spend billions to defend Saudi Arabia and other Gulf State allies, we get practically nothing.
• 
Though they've signed up to fight ISIS, the vast majority of airstrikes are American.
• 
The Saudis ought to pay the bills, especially considering the role their hardline clerics play in creating jihadist networks in the first place.
• 
Let's recall that 15 of 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.
• 
While the Soviet Union was the biggest threat during the Cold War, it no longer exists.
• 
Today's greatest long-term threats to Europe and America are radical Islam-inspired terrorism and unchecked immigration, which by the way, go hand in hand.
• 
Next is nuclear proliferation and rogue nations like Iran and North Korea.
• 
Then the rise of China, busily hacking and cheating its way to superpower status.
• 
They don't have to conquer us if we internally collapse. 
• 
Bottom line, our allies must get serious about defense.
• 
If they can't pull their own weight, why should we go broke carrying them on our backs?
      Think United Airlines scandal is bad?  Try the IRS scandal  (Fox 04/12/2017)
• 
"A picture is worth a thousand words" as the old saying goes.  And a picture in the media is worth a million words...and billions of dollars!
• 
The media decides what makes the headlines.  The media just turned the United Airlines scandal into the biggest news story of the year.
• 
One customer being beaten and dragged off a plane went viral and destroyed a billion dollar brand. 
• 
This scandal was so powerful because it could have been anyone of us.
• 
What if that poor beaten and bleeding man being dragged from the plane was you?
• 
Your husband?  Your son?  Your dad?
• 
But I have a much worse story than this.  A similar story, except far more widespread.
• 
The difference is the media never made it a headline.  They barely covered it at all.
• 
It's also a story of a CEO and terrible abuse of his own customers.  The CEO is former President Barack Obama.
• 
The customers in this case were conservative taxpayers.  The company that committed the terrible crimes against thousands of our fellow citizens was the IRS. 
• 
That's why the media never cared.  That's why the media never covered it.  Obama was (and still is) their hero.
• 
They don't want the wrongdoing, abuse and corruption of government to make headlines all over the world.
• 
Now President Donald Trump has the opportunity to expose the most widespread criminal conspiracy in U.S.  political history.
• 
I have stumbled upon this "political scandal of a lifetime" because I'm a witness.  I was one of the victims.
• 
Now I'm asking President Trump to get involved in seeing that justice is served.
• 
The IRS scandal is not about one man being abused by a cold, ruthless bureaucracy.
• 
The victims of IRS abuse suffered for years.  And there are no lawsuits possible — because government employees are protected by law from lawsuits.
• 
The media never covered the new developments in the IRS scandal involving thousands of abused customers.
• 
This was a massive criminal conspiracy to persecute, punish, intimidate and bankrupt GOP donors, activists and critics of Obama.
• 
It was meant to weaken and starve Obama's political opposition.  It was meant to scare anyone away from writing a check to conservative candidates or causes.
• 
And it worked. 
• 
Lower-level IRS employees didn't do this by themselves.  They were just following orders.
• 
Orders given by the Obama White House to destroy conservatives.
      Greg Gutfeld: How to explain Trump to your liberal friends [not that they'll listen]  (Fox 04/11/2017)
• 
He's been compared to every madman, every destructive movement, every consequential thing that's happened in this universe since the Big Bang.
• 
People who never raised an eyebrow or their voice about Ebola or Isis or MS-13 are now concerned about this guy.
• 
Logic tells you this reaction can only be wrong.  In the realm of emotional debate, nothing is ever as evil, or as great, as you want it to be.
• 
The truth is almost always situated in some realistic middle that's upsetting to a few and boring to many.
• 
The idea that a businessman, an eager reality show host moving into his eighth decade, might actually be a madman ... Maybe that's plausible to a liberal, but only if you ignore some obvious facts. 
• 
This is a man who was born and bred in New York City, where even the conservatives are liberal.
• 
For President Trump to fulfill your nightmares, you have to ignore an entire fabric of politically benign living.
• 
The right didn't trust Obama because he lived a unexamined life of romanced, unchallenged progressivism.  He was a card-carrying Leftist.
• 
Trump lived a public life of transparent opinion while navigating the most liberal, cosmopolitan city on earth — ever.
• 
So here I offer some soothing reasons why you don't have to worry ... much. 
• 
1.  The Syrian strike reveals that Trump's response, even to ghastly attacks, is a firm "just enough."
• 
I compare it to smacking a dog's nose with a newspaper, or spanking an unruly child in aisle 3 of Walmart.  It's not an act of war.  It's an act of "Yo, we're back."
• 
You can damn Trump for changing his mind, but you would have damned him for doing the opposite.
• 
... you can explain what it means: "This strike is exactly the perfunctory minimum we will perform to maintain a persona of resolute toughness without igniting an actual conflict with people we're perhaps on the same side with when fighting ISIS."
• 
That's all it is — the comfortable middle ground between the impotence of doing nothing and the hysteria of escalation.  Yes, America, you elected a centrist.
• 
2.  Pragmatism prevails, as was predicted by many who refuse to give in to apocalyptic notions about Trump.
• 
The guy is a non-ideological technocrat who is willing to shift gears to clobber the conspiratorial, transient opinions of his sweatiest ideological henchmen when hard facts enter the room.
• 
3.  Economic nationalism will also show itself out, as global deals and coalitions call for cooperation.
• 
The world's top dog, like it or not, should say "me first." But "me" means the whole thirsty world gets a drink, because sooner or later, all bad things make their way to us, as all our good things make their way to them.
• 
4.  Even perceptions of force are enough.
• 
Illegal crossings into our country have dropped dramatically, to a nearly two-decade low.  Why is that?  Perception.  Trump is a metaphorical wall.
• 
5.  Trump's white nationalist fanboys are deeply wounded.
• 
Yes, it's finally dawning on these geeks that daddy used them the way the Dems often used their radical minions
• 
6.  Trump made it safer for honest people.
• 
Trump, to his credit, redefined the literality of language and the context of public conversation.  This is both off-putting and freeing.
• 
For years, the left (the comedian's default political stance) inevitably devoured their own when it came to violations of sensitive speech.
• 
If you crossed the ever-changing line — as defined by humorless scolds running campus groups — you were damaged goods.
• 
By turning the debates into a comedy roast, Trump's ripe ripostes, which would sink most politicians, elevated him.
• 
He revived the First Amendment.  You could hate the stuff he said, but he reminded you that saying it and hating it are compatible.
• 
In American life, and in this ridiculously enduring republic, no one is as great or as bad as you wish them to be.
• 
And demonizing them only clouds your ability to reason.
• 
Ultimately, you fail to engage in an argument when it matters.
• 
Lighten up.  Give it time.  He's more you than me.
      United Airlines is innocent  (Fox 04/11/2017)
• 
United is taking the vast brunt of the public outrage but the blame is totally misdirected. 
• 
The fact that a passenger was removed from a flight was not disturbing.  This happens all the time on overbooked flights, including 3,765 cases where United involuntary denied boarding to passengers in 2016.
• 
However, the manner in which the 69-year-old passenger was forcibly removed was deeply disturbing but the manner was not United's responsibility.
• 
It was a Chicago Aviation Department security officer that physically removed the passenger, not United Airline officials.
• 
Cell phone footage shows the man kicking and screaming as he is violently removed from the aircraft.
• 
An airport cop responsible for the excessive force has already been suspended.
• 
But the mob rage continues to foment with proverbial twitter pitchforks aimed squarely at the airline. 
• 
United could have certainly been more sympathetic instead of coldly apologizing for having to "re-accommodate" customers, with no mention of the brutalized passenger.
• 
But businesses are understandably cautious to issue public relations statements that could lead to legal liability, especially before all the facts are out.
• 
The deeper problem here is also that social media mobs rush to judgment and quickly express anger.
• 
... we are more willing to share anger with strangers, whereas happiness is more likely shared with close friends.  Outrage is also often generously rewarded with re-tweets, likes, supportive comments, sympathy and feelings of vindication.
      Gorsuch confirmed: Why our new justice may be even better than Scalia  (Fox 04/07/2017)
• 
Gorsuch's nomination was one of the most significant actions of the Trump presidency so far, and his confirmation will now have profound implications for our nation over the next several decades.
• 
1.  He as a proven record defending religious liberty.
• 
The First Amendment to the U.  S.  Constitution declares, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
• 
This amendment is deeply significant because it declares that every citizen is free to hold his or her own convictions about ultimate reality, align his or her life with those convictions, and do so openly and without fear.
• 
2.  He will interpret the law rather than arbitrate morality.
• 
In a 2009 speech entitled, "Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters," the late Justice Scalia lamented that many Americans have placed their faith in Supreme Court justices to give our nation moral guidance.
• 
Yet, the Constitution of the United States specifically guards against giving the justices such mullah-like power; it gives the "We the People" the right to decide questions of moral profundity.
• 
This progressive view contends that judges have the right to reinterpret the Constitution in light of "the times."
• 
We are not saying that the Constitution might never need to be revised or updated again in light of "the times."
• 
Instead, we are saying that our Founding Fathers made clear amendment to the Constitution must reflect the will of the people; an amendment requires an overwhelming Congressional majority and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
• 
3.  He may be willing to reject unconstitutional precedents.
• 
The most contentious debate, however, concerns the legal principle of stare decisis.
• 
A Latin phrase, stare decisis means that judges should respect legal precedents by letting them stand instead of overturning them.
• 
It is important to note, however, that stare decisis is not found in the Constitution or the Bill or Rights; it is not the law of the land, but a "rule of thumb."
• 
4.  No Need for Mullahs on the Supreme Court
• 
He will defend religious liberty.
• 
He will confine himself to interpreting the law rather than setting himself up as a moral arbiter.
• 
And he may be willing to overturn bad legal precedents in which former jurists set themselves up as moral arbiters.
• 
In so doing, he will send a message to the political community that we have no need for mullahs at 1 First Street in Washington. 
      Trump, Gorsuch and you — Democrats push an opposition agenda based on hate not what's best  (Fox 04/04/2017)
• 
It is really all about hating Trump, not partisan politics.
• 
There's no doubt that Judge Neil Gorsuch is qualified so sit on the Supreme Court and he will.
• 
Republicans in the Senate must prevail on the judge or the entire Party and the president will be greatly damaged.  And that's exactly what the Democratic Party wants.
• 
The strategy is simple, oppose every change the president wants to make.  Everything he wants to do.
• 
Create as much mayhem as possible and then tell the American people Mr.  Trump doesn't know how to govern.
• 
Meanwhile, the American people get hammered because worthy persons like Judge Neil Gorsuch are disparaged and innovative policies are sabotaged.
• 
I mean, did you watch any of the Gorsuch hearings?  I don't want to compare the judge to Jesus but it was exactly the same thing.
• 
Democratic senators acting like pharisees — trying to trap the judge into saying something controversial.  Trying to paint the man as someone not worthy of being on the court.
• 
So, we now have an opposition agenda primarily based on hatred not what's best for the country.  Just listen to the rhetoric on the left.  It is vitriolic in the extreme.
• 
The Trump haters justify their behavior by saying the president is destroying the country, the issues of illegal immigration, global warming, national security have created fury on the left.
• 
Finally, many Republicans opposed President Obama's agenda.  There was little common ground there but five GOP senators voted to confirm the very liberal Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
• 
President Obama got his trade authority.  And debt limits were raised.
• 
The system was strained under Mr.  Obama but it functioned.
• 
Now political hatred is directly threatening our Republic and we the people will pay a huge price if things don't change.
      Gregg Jarrett: Sanctuary cities won't find refuge in law  (Fox 03/28/2017)
• 
For now, it is worth cutting through the posturing and considering how we got here - and what the law actually says.
• 
What Is A "Sanctuary City"?
• 
More than 300 cities and counties have sanctuary policies.  For some, it is simply a political statement.  They have taken no real action to give sanctuary to people who are there illegally.
• 
But other cities like San Francisco actively protect illegal immigrants.  They refuse to turn over people who committed low-level crimes to federal agents for deportation.  And when ICE asks for a "hold" on a prisoner, the city ignores it.  Often they walk free.
• 
That is what led to the tragic shooting death of Kate Steinle in July of last year.  Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez of Mexico was in the U.S.  illegally.  He had 7 felony convictions and was deported 5 times.  He kept slipping back through our border, seeking refuge in the safe haven of San Francisco.
• 
Sanchez was in the custody of the San Francisco Sheriff on drug charges when ICE issued a detainer for him requesting that he be held until the feds could pick him up.  Instead of handing him over, the Sheriff followed the city's sanctuary policy by ignoring immigration authorities.  He opened the jail doors setting the prisoner free.  Sanchez then shot Steinle to death as she was walking with her father on a San Francisco pier.
• 
President Obama refused to take action against cities like San Francisco that shield illegal immigrants even after arrests or criminal convictions.  He deliberately ignored existing federal law.
• 
The Illegal Immigration Reform Act of 1996 requires states and municipalities to cooperate with federal authorities on immigration requests:
• 
"A state or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict... sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual."
• 
That same law allowed President Obama to withhold federal financial support from those cities that continue to thwart the law.  Yet, he took no action.  If he had, perhaps Kate Steinle would be alive today. 
• 
The Supremacy Clause of the U.S.  Constitution gives primacy to federal law over contrary state or local laws.
• 
Did any of that matter to President Obama?  Obviously not. 
• 
President Trump, even before Sessions' explicit warning, had promised to take a different course than his predecessor, vowing to withhold federal dollars from cities that protect people who are here illegally.
• 
What would that mean?  For a large metropolitan area such as San Francisco, it could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money upon which it relies.
• 
Politicians love to take public stands on their idealistic principles, however misguided they may be.  Until, of course, you hit them in the wallet.
• 
When faced with budgetary catastrophes like the loss of millions of dollars, they often exhibit a sudden change of heart.  Funny how that works. 
• 
If the carrot and stick approach fails to force city officials to abide by the law, perhaps President Trump should begin charging people with crimes.
• 
He can do so under another federal statute which makes it a felony to shield someone who is here illegally:
• 
"Any person who, knowing that an alien has come to the U.S.  in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection such alien in any place, including any building... shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years."
• 
Five years behind bars might give city officials pause to rethink their sanctuary philosophy.
• 
But there's an added punishment written in the law: if someone dies because a city official decided not to comply with federal law, as in the Steinle case, the maximum penalty is life behind bars.
• 
I'm pretty sure that'll get the attention of some sheriffs, police chiefs and mayors.
• 
Whether President Trump and his Department of Justice will decide to criminally prosecute city officials who thumb their noses at federal law is unknown.
• 
How many innocent victims like Kate Steinle have to die before people realize that most laws exist for a reason –to protect citizens. 
• 
I have a feeling that Ronald Reagan might have done it.  Maybe President Trump will channel his inner-Reagan and make the right decision.
• 
If he doesn't, how can he call himself the "law and order" president?
• 
See related Murder (Michael Ramirez, 07/08/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Religious freedom, not money, should drive West in dealing with Saudi Arabia  (Fox 03/28/2017)
• 
During the past 20 years, eight British universities — among them Oxford and Cambridge — have taken more than $292 million from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic governments.
• 
These contributions represent "the largest source of external funding to UK universities."
• 
This phenomenon is also not isolated to the United Kingdom: Harvard alone has received more than $30 million from the Saudi government.
• 
Stop and think about this.
• 
Money used to fund professorships, scholarships and centers of study is coming from regimes with long histories of violating religious freedoms.
• 
As well-intentioned as the contributors might be, it is clear these contributions are not arriving without strings attached.
• 
A cynic might say that they are buying off professors and universities in order to advance their own agenda, even while forbidding similar activities within their own countries.
• 
They are happy to exploit Western freedoms in order to strengthen their own theocracies.
• 
Saudi Arabia also plays a significant role in the establishment of mosques — the centerpieces of Muslim communities — across the world.
• 
According to a hearing conducted before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security in 2003, the vast majority of mosques in the United States were then under Saudi influence.
• 
In all, it is estimated that Saudi Arabia has spent more than $100 billion to spread the country's worldview. 
• 
Saudis want and enjoy freedoms around the world, but we must ask ourselves: Where is the equal religious freedom offered by the Saudi government toward people of Buddhist, Hindu or Christian faith, or even atheists, in their own country?
• 
Rather, Saudi Arabia remains one of the most oppressive regimes in the world when it comes to freedom of conscience. 
• 
... Saudi Arabia "continues to prosecute, imprison and flog individuals for dissent, apostasy, blasphemy and sorcery."
• 
... right now an extremist religious preacher wanted by the Indian government — who has received massive funding from the U.K.  and Saudi Arabia — enjoys safe haven in Saudi Arabia.
• 
And while cases like these freely happen in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom is allowed to funnel billions of dollars to countries to promote their brand of Islam — that exportation certainly contributed to the 9/11 attack on New York.
• 
This hypocrisy must end.  The free exportation of extremist ideologies — religious or atheistic — is what drives people to violence and the curtailment of freedoms.
• 
The international community must adopt a reciprocal approach to religious tolerance in response to those nations that abuse our freedoms while forbidding freedom among their own.
• 
It is high time that the West, with its evolved understanding of freedom of conscience and liberty, begins to ask for this kind of reciprocity in bilateral relations with nations.
• 
The act would forbid a national of any country that limits the free exercise of religion from spending money in the United States to promote a religion.
• 
Religious tolerance and the freedom of conscience and belief are cornerstones of human rights affecting all other rights.
• 
We must hold nations accountable for the safeguarding of these freedoms, and those who restrict them ought not to be able to freely promote their ideology — in any form — abroad.
• 
America needs to act and not be focused on economic considerations only.
      Freedom Caucus drives dagger into heart of young Trump presidency  (Fox 03/24/2017)
• 
It is hard to overestimate the damage the Freedom Caucus has done to the fledgling presidency of Donald Trump, and to the country.
• 
By blocking the American Health Care Act of 2017, the conservative group has guaranteed that Americans will struggle forward under the burden of Obamacare.
• 
In the next few months insurers will announce their premium hikes for the coming year; chances are, given the continuing withdrawal of major companies from the marketplaces and the ongoing failure of the bill to attract enough young and healthy participants, the new rates will not be pretty.
• 
Last year premiums went up 25%; it's likely the increases will be higher this year.
• 
Republicans will own those higher rates.
• 
Their failure to repeal the financial underpinnings of Obamacare and start replacing that failing program with an approach that encourages competition and that embodies numerous other common sense reforms will mean that families hit by ever-higher costs will blame the GOP.
• 
Voters elected Donald Trump and a GOP Congress to get this job done – the number one promise of every Republican campaign since 2010.
• 
Now the Republican Party inherits the Sisyphean task of managing Obamacare's inevitable decline.  They are no longer critics; they are now the producers of the show.
• 
Of course, the damage is not limited to healthcare reform.  The undermining of the House leadership is profound and clouds prospects of tax reform, infrastructure spending and other important jobs to be done.
• 
It is the young Trump presidency, however, that takes the biggest hit here.
• 
Trump was elected because people across the political spectrum thought he could fix some of our problems.
• 
He was the businessman who could import common sense to Washington, and the deal maker who could bring people together.
• 
He made big promises; a country tired of stalemate and disappointment believed that he could bring back jobs, reduce our debt, build the wall, find a better healthcare solution.
• 
His credibility and credentials now lie in tatters.
• 
Who is to blame?  House Speaker Paul Ryan will be dragged through the mud for failing to win enough votes.
• 
Nancy Pelosi mocked Trump for bringing the bill to the floor before he had the votes; that won't sit well with a president who likes winning.
• 
So far, he is blaming Democrats, but he will doubtless find others – including perhaps the Speaker – to chastise for the loss.
• 
As an outsider, President Trump has to rely on some seasoned hands to move bills through Congress; notwithstanding this recent defeat, Vice President Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan are an excellent and necessary team.
• 
Relying on executive orders, as Obama did, produces unsustainable measures easily overturned by the courts.
• 
Outraged Republicans should save most of their ire for the Freedom Caucus.
• 
The group of 30-odd conservatives are patting themselves on the backs this evening; joining their celebration are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
• 
The Trump White House is apparently going to move on to the other items on the agenda.
• 
The country will watch to see if the administration can bring tax reform about.
• 
With Democrats obstructing every move, nothing will be easy.  But with Democrats and the Freedom Caucus standing in the way of the Trump agenda, nearly everything becomes impossible.
• 
      Cal Thomas: What the heck's the matter with Maryland?  (Fox 03/24/2017)
• 
The police report of the incident is so graphic that it cannot be printed in full, but the facts are these: Henry Sanchez, 18, a Guatemala native who has a pending "alien removal" case against him, and 17-year-old Jose Montano, who came to America from El Salvador eight months ago, have been charged with first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree sexual offenses.
• 
The two are alleged to have dragged the 14-year-old girl into a boy's restroom where they raped and sodomized her after she repeatedly screamed "no."
• 
Compounding the physical and possible long-term psychological damage to the girl is the response of school authorities and state legislators.
• 
"Ensuring a safe, secure and welcoming learning environment for all of our students is a top priority.  Our staff remains vigilant in the monitoring of our school each and every day."
• 
Apparently not.
• 
Among the many questions that should be asked is why Sanchez and Montano — both old enough to be seniors — were placed in a freshman class in the first place?
• 
Equally "stupid" is a bill in the legislature that would declare Maryland a "sanctuary state."
• 
One of the things the left claims to always be concerned about are the rights of minorities and the disenfranchised.
• 
One hears that argument invoked often in debates over transgender individuals and which bathroom they can use.
• 
If that works for liberals in this case, what about the right of a teenage girl to be protected against a violation of her person by illegal immigrants?
• 
A corollary argument is that most illegal immigrants are not violent criminals.
• 
We hear the same argument when it comes to Muslims, that not all members of the religion should be judged by the acts of a violent few.
• 
Ask the victims or relatives of people who have died or been injured by radical Islamists how they feel about that argument.
• 
In the case of the young Rockville High School girl, ask her and her parents, siblings and other relatives if they are OK with allowing people like Sanchez and Montano into their child's school.
• 
If convicted of the rape charges, they should be punished and then deported.
• 
School officials and legislators who have helped create the environment that has allowed such a horrible incident to occur must be held accountable by the citizens of Montgomery County, Maryland, and voters statewide.
      Erick Erickson: The freakout over Gorsuch is beyond the bounds of reason [GOP, I'm talking to you]  (Fox 03/23/2017)
• 
Yes, Neil Gorsuch said he would walk out of Trump's office if Trump had asked him to overrule Roe v.  Wade.
• 
The man is supposed to defend the independence of the third branch of government and you want him to agree to that?
• 
But Gorsuch has a history of rejecting stare decisis when he thinks the courts have gotten it wrong.  Stare decisis is the concept that judges must give due deference to precedent
• 
Gorsuch also has a paper trail and track record of not giving deference to bureaucrats.  In fact, Gorsuch is to the right of Scalia on that issue and believes unelected bureaucrats are not allowed to make law.
• 
Likewise, Gorsuch takes a more restrictionist view of Presidential power than Scalia, which both sides should like.
• 
Then there is the issue of Gorsuch's true feelings.  We know what he thinks.  Long before Gorsuch was nominated for a spot in the federal judiciary he advocated for the position that when a private person takes the life of another person, regardless of that person's form or condition, it is murder.
• 
Every person who has ever been nominated for the Supreme Court has been intentionally nebulous and intentionally deferential.
• 
Calm down, Republicans.  Gorsuch has a paper trail.  It is conservative, it is pro-life, and it is not deferential to the prior Supreme Court cases that got it wrong.
      Newt Gingrich: Like Andrew Jackson, Donald Trump is an intensely American president  (Fox 03/23/2017)
• 
President Trump gave a historic speech last week honoring President Andrew Jackson.
• 
True to current form, the media largely either missed or maligned it.
• 
He was the first president to do so since Ronald Reagan in 1982. 
• 
... Presidents Trump and Jackson have a tremendous amount in common.
• 
First, President Trump earned the respect of the Americans who elected him largely by being an outsider and a disruptive force chosen to break up existing Washington power structures.
• 
"It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite.  Does that sound familiar to you?," President Trump said.
• 
Second, both men are intensely American figures who focus nearly all their energy on wresting power away from the ruling class and returning it to normal Americans.  This is expressed in both men's populist messages and actions.
• 
Finally, President Trump, like President Jackson, is heavily criticized by the elites of the day.
• 
"Andrew Jackson rejected authority that looked down on the common people.  First as a boy, when he bravely served the Revolutionary cause.  Next, as the heroic victor at New Orleans where his ragtag – and it was ragtag – militia ... drove the British imperial forces from America in a triumphant end to the War of 1812.  He was a real general, that one."
• 
"And, finally, as President – when he reclaimed the people's government from an emerging aristocracy."
• 
"Jackson's victory shook the establishment like an earthquake.  Henry Clay, Secretary of State for the defeated President John Quincy Adams, called Jackson's victory ‘mortifying and sickening'."
• 
"Oh, boy, does this sound familiar.  Have we heard this?  This is terrible.  He said there had been ‘no greater calamity' in the nation's history."
• 
President Trump's speech placed the movement that elected him into the context of American history.
• 
Over the nearly 250 years that our Republic has grown and changed, the American people have periodically rejected what they sensed as "an emerging aristocracy" and felt the need to elect someone like Trump or Jackson who can shake "the establishment like an earthquake."
• 
In the context of Jackson, President Trump's America First budget makes perfect sense.  His budget supports the priorities and interests of the American people – not those of unelected bureaucrats.
• 
... Trump pledged a "new economic model" for manufacturers that calls for fewer regulations and lower taxes, so more Americans can find jobs to support their families.
• 
Finally, channeling Jackson is perfect for repealing and replacing Obamacare — which will return health care decisions back to the people, doctors and states.
• 
"His opponents regarded his presidency as unimaginable, until he beat them."
• 
As his administration continues to grow and change, I suspect President Trump will continue to be a disruptive force in Washington on behalf of normal Americans.
• 
And his presidency will be every bit as historic as President Jackson's.
      Gregg Jarrett: Sorry Dems, Judge Gorsuch is un-Borkable  (Fox 03/21/2017)
• 
Gorsuch's credentials are too impeccable, his intellect too keen and his temperament too even to fall victim to the kind of debasement that felled Judge Robert Bork and coined an infamous phrase. 
• 
If the Gorsuch confirmation hearings have proven anything, it's that his opponents have no powder in their guns.
• 
His rulings have been fair, his legal mind agile, and his fidelity to the law unimpeachable.
• 
It has been 30 years since the shameful treatment of Bork, a brilliant, albeit conservative U.S.  Court of Appeals judge whom President Ronald Reagan nominated to the Supreme Court.
• 
The ensuing Senate approval process in 1987 devolved into a detestable campaign of lies and vilification, which diminished the stature of the Senate and forever altered the discourse in judicial confirmation hearings.
• 
"Originalism" is the belief that judges should attempt to interpret the original words of those who authored the Constitution, as they were understood at the time they were written.
• 
It eschews the growing practice among liberal judges to make law by "legislating from the bench" and interpreting the founding fathers' words through the lense of modern mores.
• 
Bork was an early advocate of originalism and became the first Supreme Court nominee to openly support what was then a new brand of judicial conservatism during a confirmation hearing. 
• 
A bitter and divisive ideological war was waged against Bork in the Senate, as Democrats grossly misrepresented the nominee's views and smeared his good name with unconscionable deceit.
• 
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution," Kennedy bellowed, spinning a fantastic fable that bore no resemblance to the truth behind Bork's judicial philosophy.
• 
The stunned jurist remarked, "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate."
• 
While Bork possessed a sterling legal mind, his personality and demeanor were ill-suited for the battle.
• 
... Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have tried their level best to oppose Gorsuch with exaggerated or unfounded claims.
• 
During questioning, they have all but accused the nominee of pledging allegiance to President Trump, favoring wealthy corporations over the "little guy," authoring policy on torture, promising to overturn Roe v.  Wade, and even uttering a sexist question while teaching a law school class on ethics.
• 
There is no evidence any of it is true, and repeatedly Gorsuch refused to take the bait or otherwise respond with enmity, as Bork did.
• 
"American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private school education," Gorsuch wrote.
• 
"This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary."
• 
"The great project of Justice Scalia's career was to remind us of the differences between judges and legislators," Gorsuch said at a memorial lecture in honor of the late justice.
• 
Judges must apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, he said.  They should not decide cases based on their own moral convictions.
• 
In an opinion last year, he offered a more concise guiding principle, "Judges judge best when they judge least."
• 
In his opening statement, he described Scalia as a mentor who "reminded us that words matter –that the judge's job is to follow the words that are in the law– not replace them with words that aren't."
• 
In answers to Senators' questions, Gorsuch consistently pledged strict devotion to the law as written and originally intended, not as others may hope or imagine.
• 
In so doing, he adhered to his convictions in a way that is rarely seen among leading jurists. 
• 
An expected contest of judicial philosophies, like the fight, becomes a farce.
• 
Any hope of honesty and transparency in the confirmation hearing is lost to the trick of an evasive technique.
• 
And everyone departs the arena none the wiser.  Least of all, the American public.
• 
Inevitably, some in the Senate chamber will vote against Gorsuch.
• 
They will do it because it is politically prudent or electorally expedient. 
• 
But when Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court, he will bring with him the potential to become one of its giants.
• 
He appears beholden to no one and cares only about following the law, wherever it may take him, as he made plain in response to one Senator's question:
• 
"A good judge doesn't give a wit about politics or the political implication of his decision."
• 
"My job is not to write the laws, but to apply and interpret those laws.  Whether mighty or meek, rich or poor...everyone is protected by our laws equally."
      Neil Gorsuch and the Senate's convoluted Supreme Court confirmation dance  (Fox 03/20/2017)
• 
There is no question that Judge Gorsuch is exceptionally qualified.  His background and character are unimpeachable.
• 
The non-partisan American Bar Association has given him its highest possible rating.
• 
Like Justice Scalia, Judge Gorsuch believes in the rule of law, not judge-made law.
• 
He believes that the judiciary is vested only with the power to interpret statues, not create them.
• 
As Justice Scalia wrote, this distinction is critical because it determines who governs: an unelected committee of judges with life tenure or the people's representatives.
• 
The Democrats are still smarting over their unforeseen loss of the presidency and over Judge Merrick Garland's failed nomination.
• 
They've already worked publically to discredit Judge Gorsuch and have even previewed their attack on the nominee.
• 
The American people can and should be concerned about Judge Gorsuch's judicial philosophy.  The way a judge thinks about judging matters.
• 
Is he or she someone who feels constrained by the words Congress has written?
• 
What about the Constitution?  Is he or she a believer in original meaning of someone who believes that the Constitution is living, evolving even?
• 
... the so-called "Ginsburg Rule." This rule preserves judicial impartiality by preventing judicial nominees from commenting on potential issues.
• 
... a nominee must not comment about "any specific case that may come before her."
• 
Justice Ginsburg also clearly indicated that she would not comment on potential matters in her introductory statement:
• 
"A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecast, no hints for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process."
• 
Justice Ginsburg made good on that promise.  She deflected well over thirty questions from senators on both sides of the aisle...
• 
She reminded the senators that asking for a signal on a potential case "is something you must never ask a judge to do."
• 
Every nominee to follow has invoked the "Ginsburg Rule" and refrained from answering questions that implicate issues that might come before the Supreme Court.
• 
When the senators doggedly insist upon more fulsome answers to questions — and they will — keep in mind that their questions may violate the Ginsburg Rule.
• 
... Supreme Court nomination hearings should be the epitome of civility.  They should be a learning opportunity for the American people.
• 
Given the full-court press by Democrats, we're likely to see politics as usual on full display Monday.
      How North Korea could kill 90 percent of Americans  (03/29/2017)
• 
The mainstream media, and some officials who should know better, continue to allege North Korea does not yet have capability to deliver on its repeated threats to strike the U.S.  with nuclear weapons.
• 
False reassurance is given to the American people that North Korea has not "demonstrated" that it can miniaturize a nuclear warhead small enough for missile delivery, or build a reentry vehicle for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of penetrating the atmosphere to blast a U.S.  city.
• 
Yet any nation that has built nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, as North Korea has done, can easily overcome the relatively much simpler technological challenge of warhead miniaturization and reentry vehicle design.
• 
Even if it were true that North Korea does not yet have nuclear missiles, their "Dear Leader" could deliver an atomic bomb hidden on a freighter sailing under a false flag into a U.S.  port, or hire their terrorist allies to fly a nuclear 9/11 suicide mission across the unprotected border with Mexico.
• 
The notion that North Korea is testing A-Bombs and H-Bomb components, but does not yet have the sophistication to miniaturize warheads and make reentry vehicles for missile delivery is absurd.
• 
On April 7, 2015, at a Pentagon press conference, Admiral William Gortney, then Commander of North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD), responsible for protecting the U.S.  from long-range missiles, warned that the intelligence community assesses North Korea's KN-08 mobile ICBM could strike the U.S.  with a nuclear warhead.
• 
In February and March of 2015, former senior national security officials of the Reagan and Clinton administrations warned that North Korea should be regarded as capable of delivering by satellite a small nuclear warhead, specially designed to make a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States.
• 
According to the Congressional EMP Commission, a single warhead delivered by North Korean satellite could blackout the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for over a year — killing 9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse.
• 
Two North Korean satellites, the KMS-3 and KMS-4, presently orbit over the U.S.  on trajectories consistent with surprise EMP attack.
• 
The U.S.  must be prepared to preempt North Korea by any means necessary — including nuclear weapons.
• 
Launch a crash program to harden against EMP attack the U.S.  electric grid to preserve American civilization and hundreds of millions of lives. 
• 
Revive President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the unfairly derided "Star Wars."
• 
Space-based missile defenses could still render nuclear missiles obsolete and offer a permanent, peaceful, solution to problems like North Korea.
      Republicans and entitlements  (JWR 03/17/2017)
• 
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but for governments it's not that easy.
• 
Once something is given — say, health insurance coverage to 20 million Americans — you take it away at your peril.
• 
This is true for any government benefit, but especially for health care.
• 
The genius of the left is to keep enlarging the entitlement state by creating new giveaways that are politically impossible to repeal.
• 
People hated Obamacare for its highhandedness, incompetence and cost.  At the same time, its crafters took great care to create new beneficiaries and new expectations.  Which makes repeal very complicated.
• 
Moreover, the idea that you can eradicate Obamacare root and branch is fanciful.  For all its catastrophic flaws, Obamacare changed expectations.
• 
Does any Republican propose returning to a time when you can be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition?
• 
It's not just Donald Trump who ran on retaining this new, yes, entitlement.  Everyone did.  But it's very problematic.
• 
If people know that they can sign up for insurance after they get sick, the very idea of insurance is undermined.  People won't sign up when healthy and the insurance companies will go broke.
• 
So what do you do?  Obamacare imposed a monetary fine if you didn't sign up, for which the Ryan bill substitutes another mechanism, less heavy-handed but still government-mandated.
• 
The purists who insist upon entirely escaping the heavy hand of government are dreaming.  The best you can hope for is to make it less intrusive and more rational, as in the Ryan plan's block-granting Medicaid.
• 
Or instituting a more realistic age-rating system.  Sixty-year-olds use six times as much health care as 20-year-olds.
• 
Premiums better reflecting risk constitute a major restoration of rationality.  (It's how life insurance works.)
• 
Under Obamacare, the young were unwilling to be swindled and refused to sign up.  Without their support, the whole system is thus headed into a death spiral of looming insolvency.
• 
Rationality, however, has a price.  The CBO has already predicted a massive increase in premiums for 60-year-olds.  That's the headline.
• 
There is no free lunch.  GOP hard-liners must accept that Americans have become accustomed to some new health care benefits, just as moderates have to brace themselves for stories about the inevitable losers in any reform.
• 
Unless, of course, you go the full Machiavelli and throw it all back on the Democrats.
• 
Upside: You reap the backlash.  Downside: You have to live with your conscience.
      Will we be adults or children?  The ugly truth about America's spending  (Fox 03/17/2017)
• 
You can already hear the howling. 
• 
Oh the humanity, Trump is killing Big Bird.
• 
The world is in danger of climate destruction, Trump is ending payments to the Green Climate Fund that pays off foreign governments to support radical environmental proposals under the false flag of global warming.
• 
The world is on the brink of chaos as the United States contribution to the United Nations is cut to the same level as every other Security Council member pays.
• 
Here is the ugly truth.
• 
We are twenty trillion dollars in debt.  We have hit the debt ceiling and the federal government is taking what is called "extraordinary measures" to keep us solvent until Congress either balances the budget at current levels or raises the ceiling again.
• 
The Congressional Budget Office reports that overall federal government spending has increased by approximately $1.13 Trillion over the past decade, while tax revenues have increased by $699 Billion with the result being a more than doubling of our national debt during the previous ten years.
• 
The most alarming part of our nation's interest costs, is that they are completely dependent upon demand for our government debt on the open market.
• 
... the only rational choice is to aggressively cut the discretionary budget now.
• 
And that is what President Trump is proposing, difficult, but doable budget cuts beginning the process of reflecting the needs of the nation, not just the wants.
• 
One of the big differences between and adult and a child is that a child cannot distinguish the difference between a want and a need.  But America can no longer afford to be fiscal children.
• 
America simply can no longer afford to pretend that we can continue on the current path, President Trump's budget is a good starting point on our national decision of whether we are going to be adults addressing our nation's true needs or children disconnected to the looming debt crisis.
      Deterrence and human nature  (JWR 03/16/2017)
• 
Deterrence is the strategy of persuading someone in advance not to do something, often by raising the likelihood of punishment.
• 
The alternative view insists that innately nice people respond better to discussion and outreach.
• 
History is largely the story of the tensions between, and the combination of, these two very different views of human nature — one tragic and one therapeutic.
• 
Take illegal immigration.  The Trump administration believed the answer was to persuade people not to come illegally into the United States, and to convince those who are already residing here illegally and who have broken American laws to go home.
• 
So his proposed wall on the border with Mexico and beefed-up patrols are a sort of insurance policy in case immigrants do not heed appeals to follow the law.
• 
The early result of that proposed deterrent policy is that in just two months, attempted illegal entries into the U.S.  have fallen dramatically.
• 
Past approaches to illegal immigration were largely therapeutic.  Bilateral talks with Mexico, sanctuary cities, de facto amnesties and non-enforcement of immigration laws supposedly would ensure that immigration was orderly and a positive experience for both hosts and guests.
• 
Instead, the border effectively became wide open and chaos ensued.
• 
Currently, there are no real repercussions on campus for students who disrupt public discourse or prevent invited speakers from presenting lectures.
• 
If the intent of universities was to persuade students to respect free speech, then their therapeutic policies seem an utter failure.
• 
University laxity is seen by protestors as weakness to be held in contempt rather than magnanimity to be appreciated.
• 
The tragic view would hold that had the University of California expelled students for recently disrupting free speech — and had it encouraged law enforcement to arrest miscreants for destroying property and using violence against others — such deterrence would have prevented such unrest in the future.
• 
Did the Obama administration's euphemistic effort to eradicate the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" — along with Obama's apology tour and therapeutic Cairo speech — win hearts and minds in the Middle East?
• 
Or did such outreach convince radicals that the U.S.  was hardly to be feared, thus encouraging anti-American sentiment?
• 
In the past eight years, the U.S.  has backed off the red lines and deadlines it issued to Syria, Russia and Iran.
• 
Did such equivocation earn America appreciation and respect for circumspection — or contempt for empty rhetoric?
• 
There is no clear-cut divide between deterrence and therapy.  Each at times has its place in warning or wooing people and nations.
• 
But in general, anytime a government errs on the side of therapy and communicates to individuals and foreign powers that laws are flexible, that punishment is iffy and that consequences are negotiable, it gets less of what it wants.
• 
It is unfortunate but true that North Korea is deterred more by U.S.  military strength than by United Nations resolutions.
• 
In much the same way, radical campus lawbreakers probably respect (and fear) the local district attorney a lot more than the college president.
• 
In other words, the more we feel we have entered a 21st-century therapeutic utopia, the more tragic that human nature seems not to have changed all that much from the Stone Age.
      Make no mistake, disclosing Trump's tax returns [and anyone else's] is a felony  (Fox 03/17/2017)
• 
One can argue about whether public officials should be expected to release their tax returns.
• 
Frankly, as a former public official at the Federal Election Commission, I believe we've gone way too far in denying officials any semblance of a private life.
• 
I don't care what President Donald Trump's tax returns show, and I don't think they are any of my (or anyone else's) business.
• 
I am interested in the principles and policies that candidates and elected officials stand for, not how much income they earned or taxes they paid.
• 
Others feel differently, of course.  But there is no question that the White House is right about what it said ... "It is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns."
• 
Section (a)(3) makes it unlawful for any person who receives an illegally disclosed tax return or return information from printing or publishing that return or that information.  That is also a felony.
• 
American citizens are forced by law to file tax returns and to provide the federal government with highly sensitive, highly confidential financial information.
• 
The First Amendment doesn't immunize government employees from prosecution for disclosing confidential tax information.
• 
... under U.S.  v.  Williams (2008), "calls to commit a specific crime are generally not constitutionally protected."
• 
The key issue was balancing privacy concerns against the interest in publishing matters of public importance.
• 
It would be up to a court to determine whether the interests of both the government and citizens in maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of tax returns outweighed the public's interest in obtaining financial information on elected officials.
• 
... "the government seeks to restrict disclosure of private tax information to the press ... given the compelling governmental interests in maintaining a workable tax system, it is difficult to say that this regulation is unreasonable."
• 
The rule of law is a vital principle that is a fundamental part of who we are as a nation.  Part of that principle is the concept that no one is above the law.
• 
All of us – from the lowliest citizen to the president – are entitled to expect that the financial information we are forced to provide to the government will be kept confidential.
• 
When that expectation is broken, the government has an obligation, at a minimum, to go after those in government who violated the law.
      Andrew Napolitano: Did Obama spy on Trump?  (Fox 03/16/2017)
• 
Obama would not have needed a warrant to authorize surveillance on Trump.
• 
Obama was the president and as such enjoyed authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to order surveillance on any person in America, without suspicion, probable cause or a warrant.
• 
FISA contemplates that the surveillance it authorizes will be for national security purposes, but this is an amorphous phrase and an ambiguous standard that has been the favorite excuse of most modern presidents for extraconstitutional behavior.
• 
FISA was enacted in the late 1970s to force the federal government to focus its surveillance activities — its domestic national security-based spying — on only those people who were more likely than not agents of a foreign government. 
• 
The mass spying that these judges have ruled FISA authorizes is directly counter to the wording, meaning and purpose of FISA itself, which was enacted to prevent just what it has in fact now unleashed.
• 
We now know indisputably that this secret FISA court — whose judges cannot keep records of their own work and have their pockets and briefcases checked by guards as they enter and leave the courthouse — has permitted all spying on everyone all the time.
• 
When FISA was written, telephone surveillance was a matter of wiretapping — installing a wire onto the target's telephone line, either inside or outside the home or business, and listening to or recording in real time the conversations that were audible on the tapped line.
• 
Today the National Security Agency has 24/7 access to the mainframe computers of all telecom providers and all computer service providers and to all digital traffic carried by fiber optics in the U.S.
• 
Thus, in 2016, when Trump says the surveillance of him took place, Obama needed only to ask the NSA for a transcript of Trump's telephone conversations to be prepared from the digital versions that the NSA already possessed.
• 
... if President Obama last year wanted transcripts of Trump's calls made at any time, the NSA would have been duty-bound to provide them, just as it would be required to provide transcripts of Obama's calls today if President Trump wanted them.
• 
But if Obama did order the NSA to prepare transcripts of Trump's conversations last fall under the pretext of national security — to find out whether Trump was communicating with the Russians would have been a good excuse — there would exist somewhere a record of such an order.
• 
For that reason, if Obama did this, he no doubt used a source on which he'd leave no fingerprints.
• 
Enter James Bond.
• 
Sources have told me that the British foreign surveillance service, the Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, most likely provided Obama with transcripts of Trump's calls.
• 
So by bypassing all American intelligence services, Obama would have had access to what he wanted with no Obama administration fingerprints.
• 
Thus, when senior American intelligence officials denied that their agencies knew about this, they were probably being truthful.
• 
Adding to this ominous scenario is the fact that three days after Trump's inauguration, the head of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, abruptly resigned, stating that he wished to spend more time with his family.
• 
I hope the investigations of Trump's allegation discover and reveal the truth — whatever it is.  But the lesson here is terribly serious.
• 
We face the gravest threat to personal liberty since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 proscribed criticism of the government.
• 
We have an unelected, unnamed, unaccountable elite group in the intelligence community manipulating the president at will and possessing intimate, detailed knowledge about all of us that it can reveal.
• 
We have statutes that have given the president unconstitutional powers that have apparently been used.
• 
And we have judges on secret courts facilitating all this as if the Constitution didn't exist.
• 
For how much longer will we have freedom?
      Gregg Jarrett: 4 things you need to know about the rulings against Trump's latest travel ban  (Fox 03/16/2017)
• 
1.) Legally, what did the 2 judges find wrong with the revised travel ban?
• 
The judges relied not on the detailed language of the executive order, but on several of the remarks President Trump made as a candidate on the campaign trail.
• 
The judges largely ignored the President's justification stated specifically in the ban that he was acting in the interest of national security to protect American citizens from potential terrorists because the 6 banned nations are state sponsors of terrorism (as identified by Congress and President Obama in an anti-terrorism law) and those governments do not assist the U.S.  in vetting applicants with background checks.
• 
2.) How unusual is it for a judge to rely so heavily on campaign rhetoric?
• 
After first claiming he would institute a Muslim ban, he later changed his stance to say that he would ban entry from countries that pose a terrorist threat.
• 
But these two judges ignored his revised position and accused the President if using national security as a pre-text for banning Muslims.
• 
In doing so, the judges were pretending to read President Trump's mind.  It smacks of judicial activism and appears contrary to established law on judicial review.
• 
This was also unusual.  In an unsolicited filing, five Republican-appointed judges on the 9th Circuit (the same court which last month ruled against President Trump's first travel ban) wrote this in a published opinion:
• 
"Whatever we as individuals may feel about the President or the executive order, the President's decision was well within the powers of the presidency."
• 
These five judges all but accused their colleagues of judicial activism and overreach because they don't like President Trump or his policies.  The five judges recognized that the President has both constitutional (Article 1, Section 8) and statutory authority (the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act) to dictate immigration as it applies to national security threats. 
• 
4.) So, what happens next?
• 
The ruling by the judge in Hawaii can be appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  The Maryland ruling would be appealed to the 4th Circuit.  They could be reversed on appeal.  Or not.
• 
But all of this may turn out to be moot.  The main part of the travel ban will expire after 90 days.
      John Stossel: Our ignorant mainstream media — four incredible examples  (Fox 03/15/2017)
• 
Every day I see things that are wrong or that so miss the point I want to scream.
• 
1.  Storm Coverage
• 
... the media reverted to breathless hype: "monster storm ... very dangerous." Here I blame my beloved free market: Predicting scary weather works.  Viewers tune in.
• 
What galls me more is the reporters' government-centric thinking.  "Everything is closed," they say.  "Employees can't get to work."
• 
But the corner grocery stayed open.  So did many gas stations and restaurants.
• 
Why is it that when government buildings close, so many private businesses stay open?  Because their own money is at stake.
• 
2.  The Deep State
• 
Monday, The New York Times ran the headline "What Happens When You Fight a 'Deep State' that Doesn't Exist?"
• 
The article explained that unlike Egypt or Pakistan, America doesn't really have a powerful deep state, and to claim that it does "presents apolitical civil servants as partisan agents."
• 
Give me a break.  "Apolitical civil servants"?
• 
A deep state absolutely exists.  Some call it "administrative state" or "regulatory state."
• 
These are the people who crush innovation and freedom by issuing hundreds of new rules.
• 
Regulators, if they don't pass new rules, think they're not doing their job.
• 
The Times calls these 20 million people "apolitical".  Please.  Most are just as partisan as you or I.
• 
Maybe more so, as leaks and signs of bureaucratic resistance to presidential edicts demonstrate.
• 
People who choose to work for, say, the EPA, tend to be environment zealots.
• 
This should surprise no one.  Somehow, New York Times reporters don't see it.
• 
3.  "Chief of EPA Bucks Studies"
• 
... front page claimed President Donald Trump appointee Scott Pruitt is "at odds with the established scientific consensus."
• 
That makes Pruitt sound like an anti-science idiot.  But the headline is bunk.
• 
Pruitt only said that he does not agree that man is "the primary contributor to global warming."
• 
That's "at odds" with Times reporters and government flunkies on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but many scientists say there is so much uncertainty to climate measurements that no one can know if man's greenhouse gases are the "primary" cause of warming.
• 
4.  John Oliver
• 
... expecting Oliver to at least mention Venezuela's caps on corporate profits, abolition of property rights, media censorship, regulation of car production "from the factory door to the place of sale," etc.  In other words: socialism.
• 
But no, Oliver didn't mention any of that.
• 
He mocked President Maduro's speeches but said Venezuela was in trouble because its economy depends on oil and oil prices dropped.  What?
• 
Kuwait, Nigeria, Angola and other countries exported more oil than Venezuela.  But they survived the price drop without experiencing the misery that Venezuela suffers.  The suffering was created by socialism.
• 
America's leftists cannot see the horrors of socialism even when they are right in front of them.
      Parents, quit caring more about the White House than your own house  (Fox 03/11/2017)
• 
The opinions of our nation's new commander in chief are as varied as DNA.
• 
Somewhere between the celebratory blowing of horns and warning sirens, it is easy to get caught up in what's happening at the White House instead of in our own home.
• 
Right now in America our greatest strength and weakness is the family unit.
• 
What happens in the American cornerstone, our house, will be the foremost factor that determines our nation's ascent or decline.
• 
Divorce rates hover around 50 percent.  The United States pornography industry brings in more money than the NFL, NBA and MLB combined and has infiltrated the institution of marriage, morality and adolescent minds.
• 
Children raised in single-parent homes are on the rise.  Many of our inner cities are becoming the dens of crime due to lack of discipline and leadership from parents.  Absentee fathers are the norm.
• 
Disregard for law and public servants is not only commonplace but also celebrated.
• 
Racism, on both sides of the fence, has become rampant.
• 
The murder of churchgoers, police officers, law-abiding civilians, people of color and children at school is so common it is no longer shocking.
• 
Further, vitriolic rhetoric toward others because their opinion or convictions stemming from a different faith, culture, orientation or religion fills our vocabulary and false characterizations such as labeling rioters as protesters, terrorists as militants, looters as activists or all Christians as bigots and all Muslims as extremists misconstrue truth.
• 
The taproots of these destructive mores are the breakdown of the family, and their cure lies not in the White House but in our own house.
• 
Looking outward is always easier than looking inward and assessing blame is always easier than accepting it.
• 
Does Washington need an overhaul and should we work to facilitate it?  Yes.
• 
However, we have the ability and first responsibility to start that change in our own four walls.
• 
It is time to take the first, long hard look at the man in the mirror.
• 
Start with respect. We need to re-learn the art of honoring others' opinions when they don't align with our own.
• 
If we taught this lost art in our homes, we could do away with the majority of racial, gender, political and social injustice we want the government to cure.
• 
Reinforce the concept of listening. Listening is much more than hearing.  It is to give attention, to act upon and to intently make a positive effort to take notice of someone's words.
• 
For too long we as Americans have been so busy thinking of a response or rebuttal that we fail to hear the legitimacy of others' thoughts.
• 
Demonstrate the skill of communication. As Americans we are good at talking but not communicating.  Communication requires respect, empathy and humility. 
• 
When our homes are filled with respectful dialogue, we are then ready to be heard in the public square.
• 
Be a place of love. Love is the greatest gift one can receive or give.  It is not based on performance, commonality or reciprocity.
• 
In a time when our televisions and social media accounts are filled with anger, violence and hate, we must ensure that the prevailing characteristic of our home – the only component that makes life worth living – is love.
• 
I will continue to vote; I will not be silent.
• 
I will strive for reform, and I will pray for whoever is president regardless of whether or not he or she received my vote.
• 
But, I will spend less time pontificating about leaders that are far away and spend more time developing the leaders who sit at my own table.
• 
And above all, I will not forget the greatest ability I posses to influence this great nation lies not in the White House but my own house.
      The war against Trump  (03/08/2017)
• 
... the Democrats and their media accomplices have declared all-out war on the Trump White House.
• 
Under the guise of "resistance" – as though the Trump was the head of an occupying army rather than an elected president — they have set out to destroy his administration.
• 
They are not "sore losers," as many had surmised when their hysterical attacks on Trump as an American Hitler began, they are an army of saboteurs bent on destroying the government the voters preferred.
• 
Their general, Barack Obama, is an unrepentant radical who abused the office of the presidency when he was in power, and as ex-president is now leading a war to overthrow his successor.
• 
Abetted by a corrupt media, funded by the anti-American billionaire George Soros, egged on by Obama's corrupt attorney general, Loretta Lynch, and a collusive press, the left has launched vile and violent demonstrations in the streets, rancid witch-hunts in the halls of Congress posing as "confirmation hearings," and treasonous intelligence leaks.
• 
... none of this would have been possible without the active collusion of the Washington Post, the New York Times and the media networks who have promoted the false narrative of an alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to fix with the election.
• 
There is zero evidence of such collusion but plenty of evidence that Obama and his cohorts have disregarded the Constitution and the law to spy on reporters they don't like, to use the IRS and other government agencies to take down their opponents and undermine the democratic system.
• 
... the source of this civil war mentality is a profound rejection of the American idea.
• 
This is the idea that we are equal citizens regardless of our origins, and that we are accountable as individuals for what we do.
• 
The left's creed – identity politics – is an anti-American, racially charged determination to reject individual accountability and individual freedom, and to establish in their place group privileges, and racial/gender hierarchies.
• 
This collectivist, racial creed is the heart and soul of today's Democratic Party and its allies in the mainstream media.
• 
It is the inspiration for the war Democrats have declared on the newly elected government of Donald Trump.
• 
"Through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other....  When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice....  Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag."
• 
This is the American creed, and it is the voice of the American people who elected Trump in November 2016.
      'A Day Without Women': Who are the women who won't be marching?  (Fox 03/08/2017)
• 
Like millions of other American women, A Day Without Women will be a day like any other.
• 
I would no more participate in a protest than I would stick needles in my eye.  Why?  Because I'm not a joiner.
• 
As author William Powers notes, "When a crowd adopts a point of view en masse, all critical thinking stops."
• 
But don't you understand the plight of American women, you ask?  Actually, no.
• 
I don't think women have a plight.  I think individual women, and individual men, have their own respective plights.
• 
But do I think American women, as a whole, are oppressed?  Of course not.
• 
When it comes to women in America, progress is the operative word.  ... But it's a relative term — how to improve something is entirely subjective.
• 
Yet when we talk about women in America, progress is never defined, debated or qualified.  The topic is misleading right out of the gate.
• 
That's because women on the left have the power, and they have a specific message to sell.  They want people to believe that women in America get the short end of the stick.
• 
Americans who don't share this negative view of women represent the silent majority.
• 
They know our country isn't perfect, but they know something else, too.  They know American women are the most fortunate human beings on the planet.
• 
If that sounds wrong to the naked ear it's because Americans have been conditioned to believe otherwise.
• 
Just last year, in an ironic twist of fate, Hillary Clinton said, "I do think if you tell people something long enough, with great passion, they get perhaps inclined to believe it."
• 
Indeed they do, and that's exactly what feminists like Clinton have done.
• 
They've defined progress for us by calling it liberation — from men, from children, from society's constructs, from just about anything that makes women feel morally obligated to someone or something other than themselves.
• 
But most women don't agree with that definition of progress.  Feminists do.
• 
They've spent decades trying to convince women that America needs to rearrange itself so women can be unshackled, free and presumably happy.
• 
But it didn't work.  ... "As women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy."
• 
That's because most women don't want what feminists want.  So rather than participate in A Day Without Women, this silent majority will continue forth with their lives and watch the spectacle from the sidelines.
• 
And marvel at the irony of women who want to be heard while wearing a ‘pussy hat.'
      Bill O'Reilly: Wiretaps, collusion and chaos — Can we tamp down the madness?  (Fox 03/07/2017)
• 
... there are only two facts in this whole swamp of accusations.  Only two!
• 
First, the calls between General Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador were tapped by somebody.
• 
So, who tapped the call?  We don't know.
• 
Second fact.  President Obama allowed Attorney General Loretta Lynch to change the way U.S.  intelligence agencies share unconfirmed data.  That happened in January, just a few days before President Obama left office.
• 
So, why did President Obama change the intel standards?  We don't know.
• 
But Donald Trump apparently believes it was to sabotage his incoming administration.
• 
That's it.  That's the only factual information we can give you.
• 
All the rest is blather, opinion, propaganda, speculation.
• 
So, any fair-minded person has to acknowledge that there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, at least at this point.  Correct?
• 
Now, onto the tapping.  In order for that to legally happen, a judge would have to issue a FISA warrant.
• 
President Trump has asked for an investigation into the alleged tapping.  We assume that will happen but this whole thing is terrible for the country.
• 
America's credibility is being damaged all over the world.  And the federal government's ability to even operate is being impeded.
• 
So, for the good of the country, perhaps we should tamp down the madness a bit.
• 
Let Congress do its job and investigate.  Okay?
      Sean Hannity: Americans deserve to know if Obama had Trump spied on  (Fox 03/07/2017)
• 
The alt-left propaganda media is colluding with these leakers and deep state bureaucrats with the sole purpose of stopping President Trump's agenda, to try and delegitimize the president with the hopes of eventually removing him from power.
• 
This is no paranoid conspiracy theory.  There's a disturbing pattern going on here.
• 
There are countless reports of various federal agencies under President Obama looking into activities of or intercepting communications with people associated with the Trump campaign.
• 
... "in its final days, the Obama administration expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government's 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections."
• 
Why would President Obama wait seven years and 11 months to issue that order?
• 
Because he wanted as much information – true or not - to be available to his appointed deep state shadow government officials so they could leak it to the press with maximum cover.
• 
So if the surveillance was ordered, steps were also taken to help ensure that whatever was revealed would get to the alt-left propaganda media. 
• 
"This is the difference between being correct and being right."
• 
"I think the president was not correct, certainly, in saying that President Obama ordered a tap on a server in Trump Tower.  However, I think he's right in that there was surveillance and that it was conducted at the behest of the attorney — of the Justice Department through the FISA court."
• 
... what happened to Flynn and what we are now seeing with all these other intelligence leaks represents the tip of the iceberg.
• 
This accusation that President Trump made is serious.  We need to get to the bottom of it.
• 
We need to know where the information came from and who leaked it.
• 
And we need to know what role, if any, former President Obama played in this sordid affair. 
      The truth about Trump's new travel restrictions  (Fox 03/07/2017)
• 
One would think everyone in America, citizens and legal residents alike, would be clapping for the redrafted and narrowly tailored executive order President Trump signed on Monday.
• 
It plainly aims to protect all of us from radical Islamic terrorism.
• 
Watch what happens next.  The first outcry, despite public exhaustion with Democratic outrage over everything, will be that the president has no intent to protect America, that he is trying to single out Muslims for exclusion.
• 
Then watch the outrage pivot.  Next will come filings of frivolous lawsuits, all aimed at undermining the EO as poorly crafted, probing probity and fairness of extensive vetting for foreign nationals, implying that the EO presents previously unmentioned due process and equal protection concerns.
• 
The real aim of these attacks will be to drag the issue back into federal district court — any court, but preferably an activist one — to block the EO again.
• 
And why, you may fairly ask, would anyone do this and place our national security at risk again?
• 
Answer: To keep the issue alive, to further undermine and embarrass an outspoken president with whom those on the Left viscerally disagree.
• 
They disagree with his enforcing national sovereignty, elevating border security, identifying foreign terrorist groups by name, religious and national affiliation, bluntly talking about patriotism or putting America "first," subjecting foreigners to "extreme" vetting, raising respect for law enforcement, restoring defense budgets and respecting tradition.
• 
Mostly, they want to keep litigating — long sigh — their election loss.
• 
The real irony is this: Whether Trump's detractors, hoping for another temporary restraining order and possible redraft, choose to litigate the language or intent behind this EO or just keep fussing, fuming and staging more outrageous outrage, the Left loses.
• 
Why?  Because this EO is becoming symbolic.  It now represents something more than protection from six bastions of exportable terrorism.
• 
It represents America's desire to protect herself, a desire to preserve America's innate sovereignty, enduring identity and future.
• 
Behind this embattled EO is a broadening consensus that President Trump, if uncharacteristically vocal, fast-paced and emotionally reflexive, is right.
• 
It is time for America to protect America, and this EO says it all.  We are not going to back off that priority.
• 
We know the price: In a world where every human foible triggers new outrage and another demand for resignation, where politics prevents members of Congress from standing for a brave patriot's devastated widow and where no good deed goes unpunished — standing for truth is getting harder.
• 
This EO reminds us that we need to keep standing. 
      An angry doctor's plea: Stop bickering and fix the ObamaCare mess  (Fox 03/06/2017)
• 
One of the biggest issues of the 2016 election was the state of health care in the U.S. 
• 
Republicans ran on a platform of repealing and replacing a failing ObamaCare system. 
• 
Democrats touted ObamaCare as an overwhelming success.
• 
Neither party has really addressed the issues surrounding the law — patients are experiencing higher costs, diminished access and poorer quality care.
• 
I have seen my patients go without medicines, miss important preventative care milestones and struggle to find access to high quality care.
• 
Copayments continue to increase — deductibles are rising (more than $12,000 in some cases) to the point where an average family simply cannot utilize insurance except in catastrophic circumstances.
• 
Lawmakers on both sides are putting their OWN interests ahead of the health of the American people. 
• 
Money, special interest groups and concerns over re-election (as well as power moves within Congress) dominate the thinking in Washington. 
• 
We have seen press conferences and heard promises.  Instead of acting quickly, lawmakers took a week long vacation.
• 
Currently, we see each party circling the wagons and digging in without any interest in compromise — leaving millions of Americans without any type of legitimate health care.
• 
As a physician, I am fed up and angry.  My job is to heal and to PREVENT disease.
• 
I can no longer do my job with the government sticking its large (and quite ignorant) nose into my exam room or operating suite.
• 
Most of our current health care regulations were crafted by non-physicians — by those who have the financial resources to obtain health care anywhere and anytime they want it.
• 
Interestingly, while the ACA was touted by Democrats as a great success, Congress voted to exempt themselves from purchasing ObamaCare.
• 
It's now time to act.  Congress would be wise to listen to both doctors and patients as they move to fix our broken system.
• 
... government intrusion has increased paperwork, increased cost, diminished efficiency and limited quality.
• 
Insurers have pulled out in many counties across the country leaving many areas with only ONE choice for a health care plan.
• 
Back in the 1920s, this was called a monopoly.
• 
When the ACA was initially crafted and passed in Congress, it was done without a single Republican voice.  In fact, Republicans were unable to even see the thousands of pages of legislation until 30 days before the vote.
• 
Congressional leaders such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would not allow debate or discussion.
• 
Ultimately the law was passed and signed by the president and thus began the destruction of modern medicine.
• 
... Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi continue to believe that ObamaCare actually works — which demonstrates the profound disconnect between the Washington elite and the average American.
• 
Patients are caught in the middle of the ObamaCare debate.  Many are losing insurance due to high costs and others are finding little continuity of care as more physicians are no longer found "in network."
• 
Patients are not getting the time and attention that they need when they do come to the office for a visit.
• 
... only 27 percent of an office visit is spent actually talking to a patient ... the rest of the time is consumed with government mandated electronic paperwork.
• 
Health care systems now put an emphasis on billing and charge capture rather than on the health of their patients.
• 
While physician numbers are static, the rise of hospital and practice administrators has risen nearly 3,000 percent.
• 
The long-term bond between doctor and patient has been shown to improve health outcomes but is no longer the centerpiece of care.
• 
We must demand action in Washington.  It is no longer acceptable to allow lawmakers to behave like toddlers fighting over a toy when it comes to our health care.
• 
It's time to end political positioning and inter (as well as intra) party squabbling and PUT PATIENTS FIRST.
• 
... it is critical that Congress involve physicians ... as well as actual patients in the development of a new health care law that will provide effective care for all Americans.
• 
WE must change the focus of American medicine to PREVENTION of disease on the front end rather than spend trillions of dollars on the TREATMENT of disease on the back end.
      Peter Schweizer: Trump vs.  Clintons' Russia ties  (guess who always got a free pass) (Fox 03/03/2017)
• 
Many of those sounding the loudest alarm bells over Russian influence in U.S.  politics were curiously silent when far greater concerns were raised about the Clintons. 
• 
Investigating the business ties between Russia and those in President Donald Trump's orbit is a legitimate exercise.
• 
Examining these relationships is worth doing.
• 
Still, those pushing the narrative of troubling ties to Russia lose all credibility by wholly ignoring the far deeper and more troubling relationships the Clintons and their closest aides have maintained with Russian government officials for years, including while they were in public office.
• 
Unlike the revelations so far concerning Russian ties in the Trump camp, the Clinton deals involved hundreds of millions of dollars and enormous favors that benefitted Russian interests.
• 
Bill and Hillary Clinton received large sums of money directly and indirectly from Russian officials while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.
• 
Bill Clinton was paid a cool $500,000 (well above his normal fee) for a speech in Moscow in 2010.
• 
Who footed the bill?  An investment firm in Moscow called Renaissance Capital, which boasts deep ties to Russian intelligence.
• 
Then there is the glaring fact that the Clinton Foundation also scored $145 million in donations from nine shareholders in a Canadian uranium company called Uranium One that was sold to the Russian government in 2010.
• 
The deal required the approval of several federal government agencies, including Hillary Clinton's State Department.
• 
The deal allowed Rosatom, the Russian State Nuclear Agency, to buy assets that amounted to 20 percent of American uranium.
• 
Rosatom, by the way controls the Russian nuclear arsenal.
• 
Equally troubling: some of those donations were hidden and not disclosed by the Clintons.
• 
The only reason the hidden donations ever came to light is because we uncovered them by combing through Canadian tax records.
• 
Everyone got what they wanted in this deal: the uranium investors made a nice profit; the Russians acquired a strategic asset; and the Clinton Foundation bagged a lot of money.
• 
It seems strange that while some in Congress are eager to investigate the activities of General Mike Flynn and his contacts with Russia, they have no interest in looking into a transaction in which the Clinton Foundation received a staggering $145 million.
• 
It's that kind of inconsistency that saps all credibility from those raising these issues.
• 
Beyond the Clintons themselves, there is also the troubling case of one of their closest aides, John Podesta.  He served as Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman.
• 
Podesta didn't just have conversations with Russian officials.  He went into business with the Russian government while he was advising Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
• 
In short, John Podesta was business partners with the Russian government and Vladimir Putin.
• 
When John Podesta went to the White House in January 2014 to serve as counselor to President Obama, he failed to disclose his board membership in one of the Joule entities on his financial disclosure form. 
• 
None of the individuals in Trump's orbit who have Russian ties — Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and General Mike Flynn — are serving in the Trump White House.
• 
Had Hillary Clinton won the presidency, John Podesta would certainly have played a central role.
• 
Would the same people who are currently sounding the alarm bells about Russian influence in American politics have cared?  I doubt it.
      Keith Ablow: Donald Trump and the incredible power of psychological truth  (Fox 03/03/2017)
• 
As a healer, I help people accept stark truths about their lives and the lives of others.
• 
These truths and insights may call upon them to act boldly, often in spite of their own anxiety and despite the fact that others will experience pain.
• 
In some ways, seeing one's life clearly requires an almost arithmetic assessment of it.
• 
President Trump is practicing the political version of this arithmetic: psychological truth and healing.
• 
When Trump tells the citizens of the United States that people who are in our country illegally and commit crimes must leave, he is the same as the therapist who tells a patient, "If your boyfriend is hitting you, you need to make him leave your apartment."
• 
The breakup might result in sadness and anger, but that is no reason not to act.
• 
When Trump says trade deals with the United States can't be to the detriment of the U.S.  economy, he is the corporate psychologist who tells a pair of business partners, "If one of you is trying to steal from the other, this isn't a partnership, it's a scam.  That would make one of you a thief and the other a chump.  And you both had better aspire to being more than that."
• 
When Trump tells our citizens that the borders of the United States need to be enforced vigorously, with a wall to defend the more porous of them, he is no different from the therapist who tells the owners of a house that is repeatedly robbed that they not only need to get an alarm system, but they also need to wonder why they don't already have one.
• 
Because if they don't value themselves enough to defend their property, that's a much bigger problem than the robberies themselves.
• 
It all adds up to what people do to prevent being victimized.  It's all arithmetic.
• 
When Trump tells our citizens that companies that leave our country and American workers behind — and then sell their goods back into the United States — need to pay a price for their bad faith, he is no different from the sports psychologist who tells a team that its departing quarterback, who takes the team's playbook with him mid-season, shouldn't be able to walk back onto the field in another uniform, to a hero's welcome.
• 
There's got to be a price to pay for that betrayal, whether they once liked the guy or not.
• 
Otherwise, the team can start feeling like losers who deserve to be abandoned.
• 
When Trump tells our citizens that states can't choose to ignore federal drug and immigration laws and expect to receive financial support from the federal government, he is no different from the psychologist who tells the board of directors of a parent company that they need to stop funding subsidiaries that show utter contempt for corporate policies and procedures.
• 
Yes, it might be a tough stance that causes conflict, but what is the alternative?  Anarchy that ends up eroding the credibility of the board and the very foundation of the corporation?
• 
It all adds up to what a company is willing to do for cohesion and survival.  It's all arithmetic.
• 
Healing or governing via psychological truth is not always pretty.
• 
President Trump knows this truth, governs with it and, despite all the tough emotions it is bound to bring up along the way, can ultimately heal America with it.
      Gregg Jarrett: No, Ms.  Pelosi, Attorney General Sessions did not commit perjury  (Fox 03/02/2017)
• 
Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."
• 
There is nothing sublime about Nancy Pelosi.  Ridiculous, however, is an apt description.
• 
... the former Speaker of the House denounced Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a liar, pronounced him guilty of perjury, and demanded his resignation.
• 
What did Sessions do to deserve her condemnation?  By his account, he told the truth.
• 
When asked by Senator Al Franken during his confirmation hearing about "a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government," Sessions responded as follows:
• 
"I'm not aware of any of those activities.  I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."
• 
In a subsequent questionnaire issued by Senator Patrick Leahy, Sessions answered "no" when asked the following:
• 
"Several of the President-elect's nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties.  Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after Election Day?"
• 
As posed, the questions specifically ask Sessions about any exchange of information with the Russians pertaining to the presidential campaign and any discussion of the election itself.
• 
The attorney general insists he responded honestly.  That is, he never spoke with a Russian official about either subject.
• 
"I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.  I have no idea what this allegation is about.  It is false."
• 
Sessions says he had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors in 2016 as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.  Twice he spoke with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kisylak.
• 
Sessions insists he talked with Kishlak only in his capacity as a Senator and never about the campaign or election. 
• 
Someone might want to tell Pelosi that speaking with the Russian ambassador to the United States is neither exceptional nor incriminating
• 
After all, Kisylak is stationed here.  His job is to communicate with U.S.  officials.  Senators take meetings with foreign diplomats all the time.
• 
Case in point: Democratic Senator Claire McCaskell.  After criticizing Sessions for meeting with the Russian ambassador and claiming she had never done so in her 10 years on the Armed Services Committee, it turns out that her own tweets betrayed her
• 
The record shows she bragged on social media about two of her meetings with him.
• 
Don't be ashamed, Claire.  It is not a crime to speak to a Russian.
• 
Importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that the attorney general has been untruthful.
• 
The only dishonesty comes from Pelosi who has deliberately misrepresented the known facts and defamed Sessions by branding him a liar. 
• 
Pelosi is in desperate need of a primer on perjury.  As a non-lawyer, she might want to take careful notes. 
• 
Under federal law, 18 USC 1621, perjury is knowingly and willfully making a false statement under oath.  It is as simple as that.
• 
You don't need to be a great thinker to comprehend the plain meaning of the statute.
• 
If Sessions was acting in his capacity as a United State Senator and did not discuss the election campaign, then he did not commit perjury.
• 
In other words, his statements to the Judiciary Committee were truthful, not lies as Pelosi claims.
• 
Yet, armed with no evidence whatsoever, she has convicted Sessions without the benefit of a trial.
• 
Her accusations are not just baseless, given the known facts, but contemptible. 
• 
Perhaps Nancy Pelosi is the one who should resign.  For being irresponsible.  For leveling reckless recriminations and slurs.
• 
Her only defense may be incompetence.  It is the oft-used excuse of the Fool. 
      Andrew Napolitano: The truth  (and nothing but the truth) about leaks (Fox 03/02/2017)
      Trump just delivered the best speech of his political career  (NYP 02/28/2017)
• 
Donald Trump gave the best speech of his short political life last night, and it had nothing to do with grand oratory.
• 
He was thoroughly presidential, speaking plainly and yet masterfully in projecting an optimistic vision of the America he aims to build.
• 
His speech was well written, and well delivered, chock full of initiatives and full of changes in mood.
• 
Trump was aggressive when he wondered how Democrats opposed to border control would feel if they talked to an American who lost his job and maybe a loved one because of an illegal immigrant.
• 
The president's goals are huge, but this was no mere laundry list of government spending and imposition.
• 
Instead, Trump infused his core principles — fixing immigration and trade, broad tax cuts, repealing ObamaCare and rebuilding the military — with unifying themes that would make America more fair, more just, more prosperous and, yes, great again.
• 
"I am asking everyone watching tonight to seize this moment and — believe in yourselves.  Believe in your future.  And believe, once more, in America."
• 
It was a not-so-subtle request that citizens keep the pressure on Congress to deliver Trump's agenda.
• 
It is one of the virtues of single-party rule — the same voters put Trump and GOP congressional leaders there, and they have the right to demand action, not talk.
• 
Trump, as he did in the campaign, again displayed an ability to rise to the occasion and seize the momentum from his critics and opponents.
• 
Democrats underestimate him at their peril.  Then again, maybe they are trying to destroy him because they don't underestimate him — they fear him.
• 
Put it this way: If the Trump of last night is the Trump who shows up to the Oval Office every day, he will be an extraordinary force with the potential to reshape the political landscape of both parties.
• 
Not boxed in by ideology or doctrinal straitjackets, he wants to get big things done for all Americans.
• 
Unions allied with Dems are already drifting in his direction because of his commitment to good-paying jobs.
• 
Sure, he can be his own worst enemy, but there will be no stopping him if he can bottle last night's approach.  "The time for trivial things is over," he said at one point in an appeal to Democrats.
• 
Some of them grumbled, but most Americans would agree with him that it's time to get on with doing big things for the country.  He's ready to lead the way.
      Trump has masterfully raised the stakes for Debbie Downer Democrats  (Fox 03/01/2017)
      Trump-Reagan parallels are scary, but not for the reasons critics think  (Fox 02/24/2017)
• 
The extraordinary assaults by media, celebrities and jealous politicians against Trump have been unending.
• 
Their attacks include questioning his mental health, repeatedly comparing him to Hitler, declaring him a fascist, insisting he's a modern-day Manchurian candidate, that he's a traitor (because Russians!), and on and on.
• 
The striking thing about the nature of the attacks is that they're all personal.  They are accusations meant to instill in the listener a sense of danger, provoking an existential fear of the president of the United States.
• 
Reagan withstood similar vitriol by the same and usual suspects.
• 
Democratic Rep.  William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.
• 
... wrote in Esquire that the voters who supported Reagan were like the "good Germans" in "Hitler's Germany."
• 
After being attacked relentlessly by fellow Republicans during the campaign, Hollywood making their condemnation known, and the media working overtime to demonize Reagan, it shouldn't be surprising that, within 90 days of his taking the oath of office, the president was shot by a lunatic.
• 
The now-freed John Hinckley believed murdering Reagan would impress actress Jodie Foster.
• 
"I will admit to you that the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you."
• 
"I've got to do something now to make you understand in no uncertain terms that I am doing all of this for your sake ....  Jodie, I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love," concluded the letter, written just hours before he went to the Washington Hilton, shooting the president and several others.
• 
There's nothing in Foster's history indicating she expressed a loathing for Reagan.  At the time of the shooting, she was a 19-year-old student at Yale.
• 
But it's arguable that the overall media environment had become so toxic, a man with an already tenuous relationship with reality thought shooting the president would be a good idea and appreciated.
• 
After all, the critics all agreed that Reagan was a doltish, unhinged fascist who would start World War III simply because he was dumb.  And evil, of course.
• 
So far, the drumbeat against Trump is virtually identical.
• 
In the middle of the campaign, The Washington Post delivered an editorial titled, "Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy."
• 
The usual Hitler-fascist accusations are a daily narrative.
• 
"A growing number of Democrats are openly questioning President Trump's mental health..."
• 
NPR also decided to get into the act just a few days ago with an article that mused, "At 70, Trump is the oldest American president to ever take office.  Couple his age with a family history of dementia.  ..." Yeah, subtle.
• 
The New Republic, a leftist rag, chimed in with its obscene suggestion that the president is possibly suffering from an undiagnosed case of syphilis.  Because ... why not?
• 
"President Trump reaches 32 days, won't be shortest U.S.  president." So, they were expecting (hoping?) for him to not be president at this point in time?
• 
As media rhetoric boils, last week a middle-schooler was arrested for throwing a 2x4 piece of wood at the presidential motorcade in Florida.
• 
Now with the benefit of history, where are the responsible journalists and statesmen calling for the daily vitriolic personal attacks to stop?
• 
The media should complain all they want about Trump's policies, but focusing on demonizing the president personally isn't politics, it's a danger to us all.
      Andrew Napolitano: The chickens have come home to roost  (Fox 02/23/2017)
• 
... members of the intelligence community — part of the deep state, the unseen government within the government that does not change with elections — now have acquired so much data on everyone in America that they can selectively reveal it to reward their friends and harm their foes.
• 
Their principal foe today is the president of the United States.
• 
Liberty is rarely lost overnight.  The wall of tyranny often begins with benign building blocks of safety — each one lying on top of a predecessor — eventually collectively constituting an impediment to the exercise of free choices by free people, often not even recognized until it is too late.
• 
In the pre-Revolutionary era, British courts in London secretly issued general warrants to British government agents in America.  ... They authorized agents to search where they wished and seize what they found.
• 
The use of general warrants was so offensive to our Colonial ancestors that it whipped up more serious opposition to British rule and support for the revolutionaries than the "no taxation without representation" argument did.
• 
And when it came time for Americans to write the Constitution, they prohibited general warrants in the Fourth Amendment, the whole purpose of which was to guarantee the right to be left alone by forcing the government to focus on bad guys and prohibit it from engaging in fishing expeditions.
• 
FISA established a secret court and permitted it to issue warrants authorizing spying on agents of foreign governments when physically present in the United States.
• 
Never mind, the argument went, that FISA has no requirement of showing any probable cause of crime or even articulable suspicion on the part of the foreign target; this will keep us safe.
• 
Besides, the government insisted, it can't be used against Americans.
• 
That argument was bought by presidents, members of Congress and nearly all federal courts that examined it.
• 
We don't know whether the authors of this scheme really wanted federal spies to be able to spy on anyone at will, but that is where we are today.
• 
... FISA has morphed so as to authorize spying down a slippery slope of targets, from foreign agents to all foreigners to anyone who communicates with foreigners to anyone capable of communicating with them.
• 
The targets today are not just ordinary Americans; they are justices on the Supreme Court, military brass in the Pentagon, agents in the FBI, local police in cities and towns, and the man in the Oval Office.
• 
The British system that arguably impelled our secession in 1776 is now here on steroids.
• 
Enter the outsider as president.  Donald Trump has condemned the spying and leaking, as he is a victim of it.
• 
Trump's former national security adviser, retired Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn, himself a former military spy, spoke to the Russian ambassador to the United States in December via telephone in Trump Tower.
• 
It was a benign conversation.  He knew it was being monitored, as he is a former monitor of such communications.
• 
But he mistakenly thought that those who were monitoring him were patriots as he is.  They were not.
• 
They violated federal law by revealing in part what Flynn had said, and they did so in a manner to embarrass and infuriate Trump.
• 
Why would they do this?
• 
Perhaps because they feared Flynn's being in the White House, since he knows the power and depth of the deep state.
• 
Perhaps to send a message to Trump because he once compared American spies to Nazis.
• 
Perhaps because they believe that their judgment of the foreign dangers America faces is superior to the president's.
• 
Perhaps because they hate and fear the outsider in the White House.
• 
The chickens have come home to roost.  In our misguided efforts to keep the country safe, we have neglected to keep it free.
• 
We have enabled a deep state to become powerful enough to control a powerful president.
• 
We have placed so much data and so much power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable, opaque spies that they can use it as they see fit — even to the point of committing federal felonies.
• 
Now some have boasted that they can manipulate and thus control the president of the United States by selectively revealing and concealing what they know about anyone, including the president himself.
• 
This is a perilous state of affairs, brought about by the maniacal passion for surveillance ... all with utter indifference to the widespread constitutional violations and permanent destruction of personal liberties.
• 
This is not the government the Framers gave us.  But it is one far more dangerous to human freedom than the one from which they seceded in 1776.
      Christians are genocide victims and should get priority in refugee order  (Fox 02/21/2017)
• 
This weekend, ISIS released a video calling for the full elimination of Christianity in Egypt. 
• 
ISIS warned us three years ago, "[we will] break your crosses, and enslave your women .  .  .  If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market."
• 
Now, the Christian population in Syria stands at less than 500,000, significantly less than the 2 million it was just five years ago.
• 
Iraq's ancient churches and monasteries are in rubble across the Nineveh Plain, and countless people have been displaced and lives have been lost.
• 
In Egypt, terrorists must feel especially emboldened: The parliament even passed a law governing the building or renovation of churches in the country.
• 
While politicians, pundits and judges spar over whether religious minorities ought to still be prioritized in the latest iteration of President Trump's executive order on refugees, Islamic extremists continue to follow through on genocidal threats against Christians.
• 
It is a settled fact that Christians from Syria to Nigeria continue to face an existential threat from varying kinds of Islamic extremists, and this is why both houses of Congress voted unanimously in 2016 to support a genocide resolution against ISIS for the atrocities the terrorist organization has committed against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East.
• 
Similar resolutions were passed by the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the UK House of Commons, the Australian Parliament, the Canadian Parliament, and the French National Assembly.
• 
Even Secretary of State John Kerry broke with President Barack Obama to make his own official declaration of genocide against ISIS, noting that Christians had been subject to atrocities "for their faith alone."
• 
Yet, despite this widespread acknowledgement of the genocidal threat faced by Christians, only 77 Syrian Christians were admitted into the United States between January and November 2016, compared to 13,210 Muslims.
• 
Of course, no one is suggesting that the Islamic community is not deserving of assistance as well.
• 
It's just that the Christian, Yazidi and other minority communities have faced the threat of genocide in the Middle East — of total eradication.
• 
... "unlike some others, Middle East Christians have nowhere else to go ... present policy does not take into account the uniquely precarious situation of displaced Christians ... Christians are profoundly disadvantaged."
• 
In a less apoplectic time, the prioritization of threatened, religious minorities in President Trump's executive order would have been applauded by Republicans and Democrats alike. 
• 
It still should be.
• 
After all, federal law, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, advises that religious persecution ought to be taken into account when it comes to questions of asylum.
• 
It is ethical and legal for the United States government to provide special assistance to those religious minorities who have been displaced, whose children have been sold into slavery, whose places of worship have been destroyed, and whose countless family members have been thrown into mass graves.
• 
In an attempt to engage in a political fight with the president, some of our leaders threaten their own moral authority.
• 
While trying not to discriminate, they would inadvertently choose to discriminate against some of the most vulnerable people in the world, those who have faced the threat of genocide.
• 
She told told me, "I lived in America.  You are wonderful people.  You care for your pets so well.  Can you please care for your Christian brothers and sisters who are suffering?  Why are you so silent in the face of our genocide?"
• 
As our leaders debate, I hear her words in my head, "Please help us.  Raise your voice for us.  Our children are dying."
• 
See related Iraqi Christians (Glenn McCoy, 08/08/2014) cartoon from World picture album
      Presidents' Day: The secret Trump could learn from George Washington  (Fox 02/20/2017)
• 
On this Presidents' Day, one of many American traditions we owe to George Washington, let's reflect on another tradition he established – the farewell address.
• 
Today, "Washington" has morphed from a towering person of character into a tumultuous seat of political power, where Donald Trump has replaced Barack Obama in the White House.
• 
More than 6,000 words long, it warns against excessive partisanship, foreign entanglements and regional differences.
• 
In a text that has been essentially forgotten by Americans, despite a recent book and news stories about it, one omission from the national memory is particularly glaring. 
• 
Washington believed that Judeo-Christian values formed the foundation for America's future success.
• 
Washington had previously written that America could never hope to be a "happy nation" unless it humbly imitated the "Divine Author" of Christianity.
• 
In his Farewell Address, he restated this theme, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."
• 
These spiritual values were not evident in Obama's Farewell Address.
• 
But they were accented in the inauguration of America's 45th president.
• 
In his Inaugural Address, the newly sworn in president spoke of "righteousness" and declared America would be "protected by God," echoing themes of virtue and providential care extolled by Washington in his First Inaugural Address.
• 
The Trump era commenced with a record number of Inaugural prayers — three more than the official number of Inaugural Balls.
• 
For many from Judeo-Christian faith traditions, this likely came as a welcome change.
• 
Obama's Farewell Address ended an era.  An epoch began with Trump's unexpected electoral victory.
• 
If Washington's spiritual legacy from his last words to the nation is heeded, according to our Founding Father, we may be well on the way to "political prosperity" as a "happy nation."
• 
So here's my prayer for the new president: When he finally bids farewell to the nation, may he have been as successful in emulating the spiritual values of Washington as he has been in the art of the deal.
      The media doesn’t call the shots — Trump does  (NYP 02/19/2017)
• 
The media smart set fixates on creating a narrative that explains the big picture of events and offers gripping examples.
• 
In that spirit, then, here's a narrative to help them understand President Trump's recent burst of activity:
• 
He's serving notice that he, and not the media, sets the nation's agenda.
• 
And that when journalists behave like opponents, he will treat them like opponents, punching back harder than they punch him.
• 
The emerging media narrative was that the White House was in chaos, riven by infighting, leaks, an unhappy president and an unhappier first lady.
• 
Trump knows better than most that perception, even if it's wrong, can quickly harden into accepted fact.
• 
He sensed danger and decided to take matters into his own hands.
• 
Nobody speaks for Trump better than Trump, which is not always a virtue.  But Thursday, he made a wise game-day decision to do his solo version of a reset.
• 
The president was deliberate in making his points, talking for more than 20 minutes about what he's done to keep his campaign promises and how he's unfairly depicted.
• 
His impressive litany of action includes canceling the Asian-Pacific trade deal, green-lighting two pipeline projects and jawboning firms like General Motors and Walmart to spend and hire.
• 
He talked about rebuilding the military, hosting leaders from Japan, Israel, Canada and Great Britain, strengthening borders and immigrant vetting, targeting the Islamic State and nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch for the ­Supreme Court, calling him a "true defender of our laws and our Constitution."
• 
That was Trump the agenda setter.  Then came Trump the media basher.
• 
He contrasted public optimism with relentless press criticism, saying big outlets on both coasts don't speak "for the people, but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very ­obviously broken system.  The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about [it], we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people."
• 
That was the start of a sustained media attack like nothing America has ever seen.
• 
He called much coverage "dishonest" and "fake news." He accused some of "hate" and "venom" and singled out individual reporters, anchors and outlets.
• 
It was an extraordinary use of the bully pulpit, yet accounts calling it a nonstop rant don't do it justice.
• 
Many journalists clearly enjoyed the raucous informality, which included back-and-forth exchanges where some freely talked over the president.
• 
Contrast that with the previous eight years of news conferences, where President Barack Obama generally delivered long lectures to an amen chorus.
• 
There was contrast, too, in Trump spending 50 minutes taking more than 40 questions, all spontaneous and none arranged in advance.  It was a scrum to be called on, and no topic was off-topic — he answered them all.
• 
He also made errors, repeated himself frequently and some answers raised more questions.  But the overall performance was incredibly effective at creating a very different narrative about his tenure for the TV audience — the people he cares about most.
• 
Expect those two themes — he is putting America First and much of the media is dishonest — to be the pillars of his presidency, as they were the pillars of his campaign.
• 
That's why he's taking his show on the road, and likely will do so regularly.
• 
As legendary New Yorker Ed Koch often said about his own criticisms of the press and judges, he didn't lose his First Amendment rights when he became mayor.
• 
So it is with Trump.  He's free, like all Americans, to speak his mind.
• 
His words carry more weight as president, but attempts to silence him are truly un-American.  The White House is not a coddled college safe space.
• 
Something else Koch said also is relevant.  He once called a journalist who was a partisan critic a "politician with a press pass."
• 
That's how Trump sees much of the media, and he's more right than wrong.
• 
Many tried to block his election, and now are trying to destroy his presidency.
      Erick Erickson: The intelligence community vs.  Trump.  We're watching a low level coup, America  (Fox 02/16/2017)
• 
A lot of people who think Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning are American heroes are under the impression Donald Trump and members of his administration are traitors.
• 
Hollywood celebrities are openly calling for a military coup.
• 
Political commentators are comparing Donald Trump's election to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor because, allegedly and with no evidence, Russia stole the election.
• 
The president grows more suspicious of the intel community by the way and he has good reason to do so.
• 
The left is in a nonstop state of agitation calling for mass resistance.
• 
Trump supporters are looking to settle scores.
• 
Democrats have every incentive to play up unproven allegations that the Russians tampered with the election.
• 
Republicans have every reason to play up the theory that the intelligence community is out to get the President.
• 
The wisest course of action is for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to name an independent counsel to examine two questions and for both sides to stand down on the matter while the investigation is ongoing.
• 
First, did the Trump campaign collaborate with the Russians to affect the election?
• 
Second, are some members of the intelligence community leaking to undermine the President?
• 
We need answers to both.  The first to satisfy the left and the second to satisfy the right.
• 
What seems most plausible to me is that the Trump team individuals with known ties to Russia probably were in communication with the Russians about their other business dealings, not Trump.
• 
As the New York Times is reporting and everyone is ignoring, there is plenty of evidence of communications, but no evidence at all of coordination.
• 
If both sides will not cooperate on defusing this situation, we are in for some seriously rocky times.
• 
Concurrently to all of this, Mitch McConnell needs to hurry the hell up and get the rest of the cabinet and Neil Gorsuch confirmed.
• 
The executive departments need stability and we need someone on the Supreme Court who can break 4-4 decisions on controversial matters. 
• 
The left is going to have to get over their phony "stolen seat" talking point.
• 
The right is going to have to concede the left has legitimate concerns about the Russian mess.
• 
The constant inflaming of grievances by political organizations is going to do us all in.
• 
I have to wonder, though, why every story still has to note that THERE IS NO EVIDENCE AT ALL of Trump-Russian collaboration.
• 
Given the open hostility for the president that the intelligence community has, one would think they would have produced some actual proof of something other than innuendo by now, if there was something to produce.
• 
But they have not.
      Relax, Trump is stone cold sane  (Fox 02/15/2017)
• 
Let me issue the standard disclaimer of psychiatrists who discuss the mental health of public figures: I have not personally examined President Trump.
• 
Now, let me put to rest the concerns of Sen.  Al Franken and political commentators ... and anyone else who publicly or privately has questioned the president's sanity:
• 
Donald Trump is stone cold sane.
• 
When a man acquires billions of dollars through complex real estate transactions, invests in many countries, goes on to phenomenal success in television and turns his name into a worldwide brand, it is very unlikely that he is mentally unstable.
• 
When the same man obviously enjoys the love and respect of his children and his wife, who seem to rely on him for support and guidance, it is extraordinarily unlikely that he is mentally unstable.
• 
When the same man walks into the political arena and deftly defeats 16 Republican opponents and then the Democratic heir-apparent to a two-term president's administration, the odds of that man being mentally unstable become vanishingly thin.
• 
And when that very same man attracts to his team the kind of intellect and gravitas represented (to name just a few) by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr.  Ben Carson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis ... he cannot be mentally deranged.  Period.  It is a statistical impossibility.
• 
Those who assert otherwise are political opportunists, or fools, or both (and I am thinking here, in particular, of Sen.  Franken).
• 
President Trump is the first human being to win this nation's highest office without having been elected to any other office or serving as a general.
• 
Most political pundits thought his quest was pure folly.  Most journalists assessed his chances as zero.  So who was laboring under quasi-delusional thinking?  Answer: Not Donald J.  Trump.
• 
A mentally unstable man would be unlikely to deliver superior products across multiple industries, don't you think?
• 
The stock market has hit record high after record high since Trump's election, and if you think that's an accident, or that investors have all been fooled, it's time to start wondering about your own capacity for rational thought.
      America's spies anonymously took down Michael Flynn.  That is deeply worrying  (02/14/2017)
• 
The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser.  But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down.
• 
The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency.
• 
Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats.
• 
The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.
• 
Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around.
• 
Far too many Trump critics appear not to care that these intelligence agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because Trump critics are pleased with the result. 
• 
Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously.
• 
These leaks are an enormous problem.  And in a less polarized context, they would be recognized immediately for what they clearly are: an effort to manipulate public opinion for the sake of achieving a desired political outcome.
• 
It's weaponized spin.
• 
... no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely.
• 
It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials.
• 
What if Congress won't act?  What if both the Senate and the House of Representatives are held by the same party as the president and members of both chambers are reluctant to cross a newly elected head of the executive branch who enjoys overwhelming approval of his party's voters?
• 
In such a situation — our situation — shouldn't we hope the deep state will rise up to act responsibly to take down a member of the administration who may have broken the law?
• 
The answer is an unequivocal no.
• 
In a liberal democracy, how things happen is often as important as what happens.
• 
Procedures matter.  So do rules and public accountability. 
• 
"Normally intercepts of U.S.  officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets.  This is for good reason.  Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity.  This is what police states do."
• 
Those cheering the deep state torpedoing of Flynn are saying, in effect, that a police state is perfectly fine so long as it helps to bring down Trump.
• 
It is the role of Congress to investigate the president and those who work for him.
• 
If Congress resists doing its duty, out of a mixture of self-interest and cowardice, the American people have no choice but to try and hold the government's feet to the fire, demanding action with phone calls, protests, and, ultimately, votes.
• 
That is a democratic response to the failure of democracy.
• 
Sitting back and letting shadowy, unaccountable agents of espionage do the job for us simply isn't an acceptable alternative.
• 
Down that path lies the end of democracy in America.
      Bill O'Reilly: A stunning display of dishonesty from the national press and radical left  (Fox 02/14/2017)
• 
Last week, about 680 undocumented aliens were arrested by ICE officials countrywide.
• 
Many of them have already been deported.  The coordinated raids targeted aliens who had committed crimes in the USA — mostly felonies.
• 
Seventy five percent of those taken into custody had convictions, including homicide and rape. 
• 
Many of the arrested non-felons were associating with the criminals.
• 
But those facts have largely gone unreported by the American press.  And by the radical left, which is actively misleading you.  Here are a just a few examples:
• 
Here are a just a few examples:
• 
"What took place yesterday with raids and personal homes is part of the cog of the Trump deportation machine."
• 
"... how inhumane this is to be breaking down people's doors and separating parents from their children."
• 
"This is Donald Trump really executing his campaign plan.  He is trying to be a tough guy, so, he will go after, you know, the maids, the moms, the people that are working in the shops instead of going after the hard-core criminals."
• 
Now, the false news reporting, actually reached the level of hysteria.
• 
There were newspaper headlines screaming things like "The Trump deportation regime has begun," "Immigrant community on high alert fearing Trump's deportation force."
• 
That bannered the fact that raids were targeted at illegal aliens who had committed serious crimes.
• 
Committed them.
• 
That is not press bias.  That is blatant dishonesty.
• 
In the year 2013, the Obama administration removed from this country more than 434,000 illegal aliens, the highest number in history, which goes all the way back to 1892.
• 
Did you see any anti-Obama demonstrations?  Did you see any screaming headlines in the national media?
• 
No, you did not.  Even after President Obama said this:
• 
"What we should be doing is setting up a smart, legal immigration system, that doesn't separate families but does focus on making sure that people who are dangerous, you know, people who are gang bangers, are criminals, that we are deporting them as quickly as possible."
• 
And that is exactly what President Trump is doing.  Exactly.
• 
But the illegal immigration issue has been set up by the media to demonize Mr.  Trump, as a racist and a brutalizer of the poor.
• 
That is what is really going on here.  A set up.  It is flat out disgraceful.
• 
If the federal government cannot remove aliens who commit serious crimes in this country, then, we don't have an effective federal government.
• 
Yet, the far left and the press, knowing full well that the ICE raids last week were directed at dangerous people, chose not to report that.
• 
Instead, [they were busy] smearing President Trump.
• 
We have now reached a low point in American journalism.
• 
As for the far left, they are people who do not want any immigration enforcement.  They want open borders.  They want alien criminals protected.  They want anarchy.
• 
Why?  Because they don't like America as it stands now.
      Sean Hannity: President Trump's immigration raids just another promise kept  (Fox 02/14/2017)
• 
Once again, there is collective hysteria from the alt-radical left over the fact that over the last week, federal immigration officials arrested 680 mostly dangerous individuals in a series of raids.
• 
From press accounts, you would think they were all virtuous, wonderful people just trying to make a better life for their children.
• 
In fact, the vast majority of these people were, in addition to being here illegally, convicted of serious crimes.
• 
"Of those arrested, approximately 75 percent were criminal aliens convicted of crimes including, but not limited to, homicide, aggravated sexual abuse, sexual assault of a minor, lewd and lascivious acts with a child, indecent liberties with a minor, drug trafficking, battery, assault, DUI and weapons charges."
• 
Amid all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, President Trump reminded us that he was just doing what he said he would do.
• 
"We have really done a great job.  We're actually taking people that are criminals, very, very hardened criminals in some cases, with a tremendous track record of abuse and problems, and we're getting them out," Trump said.
• 
"And that's what I said I would do.  I'm just doing what I said I would do."
• 
Of course, these facts didn't matter to the abusively biased alt-left media, which went into breathless hysteria.
• 
"We begin tonight with the growing battle over immigration in this country.  Hundreds of undocumented immigrants were arrested this week across the nation in what authorities insist are routine law enforcement operations."
• 
On top of that, the media is now actively working to help and protect illegal alien law breakers.
• 
USA Today has put out an article with the headline, "What to do if immigration officers come knocking at your door?"
• 
Imagine if the tables were turned and a conservative outlet had encouraged law-breaking?
• 
President Trump made it very clear he was going to deport criminal illegal immigrants, and it was one of his key campaign promises.  But he was not the first president to make such a pledge. 
• 
"It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it," Clinton said in 1995.
• 
Ten years later, then-Sen.  Obama had this to say:
• 
"We all agree on the need to better secure the border and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants," the future president said.  "You know, we are generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law."
• 
Just two years ago, Obama as president elaborated.
• 
"Today, our immigration system is broken, and everybody knows it," Obama said.  "Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we're also a nation of laws.  Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable.  If you're a criminal, you'll be deported."
• 
Where was the outrage over those statements?
• 
The left wants to play the race card while the president wants to stop drugs and criminals from pouring across the border.
• 
... an estimated 820,000 of the projected or estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in America are convicted criminals.
• 
In fiscal 2015, 36.6 percent of the over 70,000 federal sentences meted out were for crimes committed by illegal aliens.
• 
This is beyond a serious problem.  It is impacting every single American.
      Press confronts the reality of a messy Trump presidency that breaks the rules  (Fox 02/13/2017)
• 
The media are finally coming out of denial.
• 
This is Donald J.  Trump, and he ain't going to change.
• 
All the talk about how he would change his style once he got to the White House (which Trump himself encouraged now and then) was misguided.
• 
His bombastic, combative and sometimes frenetic approach to life is what got him elected, so of course he's going to stick with it.
• 
And when aides tell him he needs to change, he'll obviously think that he heard that advice throughout the campaign he was expected to lose.
• 
Now it's true that actually becoming president is the ultimate reality check.  And that's true for any new White House occupant.
• 
Harry Truman famously said of Dwight Eisenhower, "He'll sit here, and he'll say, ‘Do this!  Do that!' And nothing will happen.  Poor Ike — it won't be a bit like the Army."
• 
And that was inevitable for a real estate mogul who ran his company with an iron hand.
• 
A president has to deal with all these checks and balances — Congress, the courts, the opposition party, the media and special interests, as well as other world leaders.
• 
And things move far more slowly than in the corporate world.
• 
But anyone who thought Trump would adopt a measured, stately approach doesn't understand the man.
• 
To be sure, he'll have to adapt to the unique challenges of the presidency.
• 
But his bam-bam-bam approach, including the tweeting at all hours, revs up his supporters.
• 
And his detractors aren't likely to warm to him even if he starts reading boring speeches.
• 
"Being president is harder than Donald Trump thought, according to aides and allies who say that he's growing increasingly frustrated with the challenges of running the massive federal bureaucracy."
• 
But wouldn't any new president face an attitude adjustment when confronting the magnitude of domestic and world problems?
• 
Every new president makes mistakes — you could look it up — and tries to grapple with only a fraction of his team in place.
• 
Obviously there have been a number of unforced errors, including the rushed travel ban, and policy zig-zags.
• 
But Trump's voters didn't elect him to preside over a tidy organizational chart.
• 
They want results, and unlike the process-obsessed press, they don't particularly care how he gets there.
      Dr.  Keith Ablow: Should Trump stop robots from stealing jobs?  (Fox 02/13/2017)
• 
Why does our culture seem to applaud every technological advance uncritically, without considering its impact on the employment of human beings?
• 
I have the same nagging question about self-driving vehicles, which everyone seems to be waiting for with bated breath.  How many jobs will remain for taxi drivers and Uber drivers and traffic cops?
• 
There now are "dark factories" that manufacture products without needing people to put them together or package them.  The factories can run without lights, because no human being is inside.
• 
Sure, people are employed to create the technology and build the machines and factories that operate automatically to churn out product.
• 
And there are lots of folks in America who aren't trained or can't be trained to participate in designing and implementing new technologies of that order.
• 
Millions are tradesmen and craftsmen and service people.
• 
They are among President Trump's "forgotten people."
• 
Silicon Valley inventors and entrepreneurs are very quick not only to defend their version of human rights, but also to make a buck without regard to whether their products erode human self-worth, autonomy and the ability to make a living.
• 
It would seem wise for companies ... to consider the impact of mechanization on their workers, not just their bottom lines.
• 
And because companies may be too self-serving in that regard, it might be wise for consumers to mount some opposition to the ones that decide machines are better at doing jobs than people are. 
• 
There are lots of folks who won't buy meat because they decry the slaughter of animals.
• 
There are lots of folks who won't buy from companies because their politics aren't aligned.
• 
Why aren't more people unwilling to buy from companies that are racing to deploy machines that put them out of work?
• 
I think it's because technology is inherently fascinating.  It has the pull of an addictive drug on the psyches of human beings.
• 
We want more and more and more of it, without thinking very much about whether we are improved by it.
• 
We humans don't want to turn out to have been "too clever by half," inventing things that ultimately dispirit and defeat us.
      Clinton reminds us why we’re lucky she lost the election  (NYP 02/12/2017)
• 
Thank you, Hillary Clinton.  Thank you for reminding America about the importance of Donald Trump's victory and of the awful consequences if you had won.
• 
Her support for the ruling isn't surprising — Clinton said she was for open borders at one point — but the gutter sniping was telling.
• 
The activist judges who based their ruling on their liberal politics instead of the Constitution are the same kind she would appoint to the Supreme Court and all other federal courts if she were in the Oval Office.
• 
... Clinton's taunt, the court ruling, nonstop demonstrations and congressional hijinks combining to illustrate why Trump's election was crucial.
• 
It was a necessary course correction and a dramatic rejection of an arrogant government that both overreaches and underperforms.
• 
... the hysterical, hateful reaction in many quarters to everything Trump says and does is absolute proof that the ruling elite deserved a comeuppance.
• 
The establishment was drunk on power, political and cultural, and never yielded an inch voluntarily or had the decency to admit error.
• 
Its rage reflects its sense of entitlement.
• 
A black conservative and Republican, Scott read aloud on the Senate floor messages he received after supporting Jeff Sessions for attorney general.
• 
He was called a "house Negro," "a disgrace to the black race" and an "Uncle Tom," among other vile epithets that included the N-word, Scott said.
• 
He added, "I just wish that my friends who call themselves liberals would want tolerance for all Americans, including conservative Americans."
• 
Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, also got a taste of liberal hate when Black Lives Matter protesters and teachers union members blocked her entry into a Washington, DC, public school.
• 
This unhinged rage is the new America — only it's not new.
• 
It was hiding in plain sight, hinted at by the contempt that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, tenured radicals, college snowflakes and the Democratic media openly held for those who don't share their worldview.
• 
Modern liberals' contempt for others is essential to their sense of superiority and justifies violence in the streets, threats and simple rudeness.
• 
Contempt for others lets mayors think they can disobey immigration laws and judges think there is no law but theirs.
• 
Still, there are reasons why the Court of Appeals ruling could be a blessing in disguise for Trump.
• 
First, the jubilation among Democrats and their media handmaidens reveals how their hatred for Trump and his supporters overshadows any concern for national security. 
• 
The Constitution and laws give the president wide authority to ­decide whether the entry of "any class of alien" would harm the United States.
• 
Effectively claiming that authority for itself, the court grossly oversteps and obliterates the separation of powers.
• 
It also opens itself to public fury if the ruling opens the door to terrorists.
• 
The second benefit is that the ruling offers Trump a sobering lesson about the difficult road ahead.
• 
Nothing can be taken for granted and every inch of progress will require intense preparation and a willingness to battle on multiple fronts.
• 
The executive order, though sensible in its goals, was especially vulnerable because it was rushed before Trump's team was in place.
• 
As a candidate and president, Trump has endured slings and arrows unprecedented in modern times.
• 
The onslaught is also harming America, but the madness will be bearable if he finishes the revolution he started.
      The Ninth Circuit’s Putsch – America watches as activist judges issue rambling, misguided opinion  (Fox 02/10/2017)
• 
The U.S.  Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, has issued one of the most ill-conceived, poorly reasoned opinions in memory, even for that notoriously activist Circuit.
• 
It will not sit well with most Americans, for good reason.
• 
Whether motivated by antipathy for the president, love of limelight, or just fundamentally misconceiving their role, the Court stumbles into embarrassing contradictions, makes baseless assumptions, shows indifference to law and history.
• 
The job was simple: Decide whether, given the President's Article II prerogatives and authority as "Commander in Chief," a single federal judge – one of 3,294 – can issue a sweeping, conclusory, nationwide "temporary restraining order" (TRO) halting implementation of a national security Executive Order (EO).
• 
They played to the street, and tried a legalistic putsch.  ... the appellate court seemed intent on a political smack down of the President, making headlines, even if that required twisting the law.
• 
Did the States show any permanent harm, likelihood of winning on constitutional issues, balance public interest?  The States could not do this, and the court never asked. 
• 
... the appellate court put the burden on the United States, not on the States that had snatched a blank TRO, nobbling the president.
• 
If President's objective was to stop accidentally importing terrorism from countries where it is plentiful, what about the "hardship" of future terrorist attacks?
• 
Did the court pause to track terror events in Europe from those countries?  No.
• 
Did they note the public striving by ISIS to get into America?  No.
• 
Did they consider "hardship" suffered by victims of foreign-inspired terrorism in Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando, Texas, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, even Seattle – where the district judge sits?  No.
• 
So, where was all this permanent, "irreparable damage" to the States?  Their "economy" and "public universities."
• 
Why, because students and professors were delayed in return?  How many were really from Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, or Yemen?
• 
Finally, the court says: Universities "suffered the loss of visa application costs."
• 
Exactly 160 dollars per visa.  And ... for this we risk national security?
• 
The court says: The EO "purports to prioritize refugee claims of certain religious minorities."
• 
Stop.  The court inserted that word "certain" – that word is not in the EO.
• 
This actually matters.  The EO does not give priority to "certain" groups, but to all religiously persecuted minorities.
• 
Moreover, "prioritizing" foreign entrants and "religious minorities" violates nothing.  Those with a "well-founded fear" of religious persecution often get priority.
• 
Prioritizing national origin and religious persecution as a basis for entry is NOT new. 
• 
... the district court did not play it straight.  Appellate court asserted review, but did not call out the lower court.  Why not?
• 
Then on to "standing." States have none, but the Ninth Circuit gave it anyway.
• 
States asserted the necessary "personal stake," only states possess no "personal" rights under the Constitution.  Oops.
• 
... did the President reach the necessary "significant risk" determination, not whether he was right on national security?  That is not their job.  Another error.
• 
The court defaults to conclusory statements and "declines to modify the TRO," already admitted not to be a TRO.  The court adds they are doing this to protect "those in the United States unlawfully." Wow!
• 
So the counter-veiling interest, which outweighs the President's national security determination, is partially for those here "unlawfully?" Convoluted in the extreme.
• 
They did not help America forestall terrorism, help Americans understand larger issues.
• 
They lofted legal platitudes, with embarrassing contradictions, calculated for headlines, more controversy, and placing the president in the wrong.
• 
Meantime, we can all pray that we do not encounter another terrorist event in the near term – of the kind thwarted this week in Turkey, planned by un-vetted terrorists from Syria, one of those seven countries about which we need not worry.
      Gregg Jarrett: It’s no surprise that bad judges got it wrong on Trump's executive order  (Fox 02/10/2017)
• 
The best you can say about the 9th Circuit Court's decision upholding the temporary halt to President Trump's immigration ban... is that the court is consistent.  Consistently wrong. 
• 
The Plaintiffs have "Standing" to Sue
• 
This is such a Gumby-type stretch it is almost laughable. 
• 
The 3 judge panel hypothesizes that one of Washington state's public universities would suffer irreparable harm because a couple of visiting scholars may be denied entry to the U.S.  and that some researchers might have trouble traveling to and from the 7 countries targeted by Trump's ban.
• 
"Due Process" Extends to Aliens
• 
Equally astonishing is how the 9th Circuit seems to imply that U.S.  constitutional protections attach not only to citizens and non-citizen residents, but aliens who are not even here in the U.S.  Well, that is a new and novel concept.
• 
If the 9th Circuit had its way, the whole world could invoke our constitutional protections. 
• 
"No Evidence" of Terrorism
• 
This is the most offensive part of the judges' decision.  The court claims, incorrectly, there is "no evidence" that anyone from the 7 nations has committed a terrorist act. 
• 
First, that is demonstrably wrong.  More than 2 dozen plots have been stopped.
• 
Either the court is uninformed or the judges seem to think foiled plots are not good enough.
• 
Does an attack have to be successful to constitute a viable threat?  Of course not.
• 
The president is authorized and duty-bound to take preemptive action to protect the lives of Americans.  ... If the president fails to take action, he is in dereliction of his sworn oath.
• 
Second, these judges are not even entitled to see most of the "evidence" of a threat.
• 
They do not have security clearance for the classified intelligence information upon which the president bases his order. 
• 
The 1952 Statute Ignored
• 
That is, the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act which gives the president the power to decide who can and cannot enter the U.S.
• 
The fundamental job of these judges is to decide whether President Trump has authority under that law to exclude "any class of aliens" considered to be "detrimental to the interests of the United States".
• 
The judges do not address it, probably because they could conjure no way around it.
• 
Instead, they seem obsessed over whether the president is exercising his authority wisely.
• 
It is not their constitutional role to make policy judgments.  ... Clearly, these judges are politicizing what is supposed to be purely legal. 
• 
Campaign Speeches as Evidence of Intent
• 
The court asserts that Trump's campaign speeches can be considered as evidence of the intent to discriminate against Muslims.  Which is absurd.
• 
Discrimination should be determined from the language of executive order itself. 
• 
What happens next
• 
The case goes back down to the lower district court for a full hearing on all these matters.
• 
Will Trump appeal the 9th Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court?
• 
He could, but I doubt the high court would even take the case.  SCOTUS rarely accepts petitions to review temporary, interim orders.
• 
Trump can always accelerate the implementation of his new stricter vetting program.  ... There would no longer be a controversy for a court to resolve. 
• 
There's an old saying attributed to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr: "hard cases make bad law."
• 
So do bad judges. 
      Four reasons why Betsy DeVos will be a welcome remedy for our nation's education woes  (Fox 02/10/2017)
• 
This week, Democrats made history by forcing Vice President Mike Pence to cast the deciding vote for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
• 
Why did Democrats decide to engage in all-out war against an education secretary?
• 
Some Democrats and mainstream media outlets have focused their opposition on claims that Mrs.  DeVos having "radical" views.
• 
Other Democrats and media outlets have opposed Mrs.  DeVos because she lacks experience as a government bureaucrat or school administrator. 
• 
But are these the real reasons Democratic opposition heightened to a fever pitch?  No.
• 
... the overheated Democratic opposition is motivated by:
• 
Some of their party's most deep-pocketed and powerful interest groups — teachers' unions — who realize that they will no longer have a near-monopoly on education.
• 
Their party's upper-middle-class suburbanite constituency, who understand that DeVos' charters and vouchers will be attractive to families with financial disadvantages, ethnic minority heritage, or ideological and religious convictions that differ from the mainstream.
• 
In other words, private schooling will be accessible to children who are very different than the Democratic Party's upper-middle-class suburbanites.
• 
In response to the Democratic Party's powerful interest groups and upper-middle-class suburbanite constituency, here are four reasons why DeVos may turn out to be a welcome remedy to our nation's educational ills.
• 
1.  Liberation from Bureaucracy.
• 
DeVos' educational philosophy could enable her to liberate American education from encroachment by federal bureaucracy. 
• 
Her stated educational philosophy suggests that she will not turn Democratic encroachment into Republican encroachment; instead, she will reduce federal encroachment in order to empower families, local communities, and states.
• 
2.  Freedom of Thought
• 
Much ado has been made about Secretary DeVos' Dutch Calvinism.  But that's misguided.
• 
... it places an especially high value on education, but emphasizes that a pluralistic society should be tolerant enough to allow diverse families and communities to build their own educational institutions and choose which institution(s) their children can attend.
• 
3.  Empowerment for the Financially-Disadvantaged
• 
DeVos' educational philosophy would allow financially-disadvantaged children to choose the education that fits their unique needs and abilities.  In the current system, the government taxes citizens in order to provide education, but then dictates and determines how the tax money can be used. 
• 
Under DeVos' potential system of vouchers and charters, however, citizens will be able to exercise more influence over their own child's education.
• 
4.  Facilitation by a Philanthropist
• 
... Secretary DeVos has devoted her life energies and financial resources to the cause of education and has interacted extensively with politicians and educational policy makers.
• 
Hope for our Children's Education
• 
We already know that DeVos will be an imperfect Secretary of Education — just as all prior secretaries of education have been.  Yet, there are good reasons to believe that she will be successful.
• 
She holds a philosophy of education that can reduce bureaucracy, increase free thinking, and empower the financially disadvantaged.
• 
So let's just step back for a moment, cool our fevered brows, and pull for Betsy DeVos as she tries to reform our nations' education system.
      The Ninth Circuit gets it wrong  (Fox 02/09/2017)
• 
Both the judge in Washington State and the San Francisco-based circuit court have now refused to recognize the authority of Congress and the president to make this national security decision.
• 
Neither the judge in Washington State nor the court has offered anything approaching a detailed discussion of 8 U.SC.  §1182 (f), the law which specifically gives the president authority to suspend the entry of any aliens into the U.S.  if he believes their entry would be "detrimental to the interests of the United States."
• 
Unless this statutory provision is unconstitutional, the president has acted completely within the law.
• 
... it then proceeds to give no deference to the president's policy determination that a temporary suspension is necessary to ensure that adequate vetting procedures are in place.
• 
The court also gives no deference to the decision of Congress to delegate its plenary power over immigration to the president on this issue.
• 
The Ninth Circuit also claims that there is "no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States."
• 
Last year the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest released information showing that at least 60 people born in the seven countries had been convicted — not just arrested, but convicted — of terror-related offenses in the United States since Sept.  11, 2001.
• 
Instead of discussing the relevant statute under which the president acted, the Ninth Circuit instead engages in an extensive discussion of its concern that the executive branch is failing to provide due process to aliens barred from entry into the United States.
• 
The court's apparent opinion that other aliens who don't live in the U.S.  have due process rights if they are refused entry can only be true if they have a constitutional right to enter the U.S.
• 
That is an absurd proposition yet that is the end result of the court's opinion: that a foreign alien can demand a hearing and due process rights if one of our embassies refuses to give the alien a visa.
• 
... the only Federal judge to get it right is Nathaniel Gorton of the District Court of Massachusetts.
• 
He analyzed the relevant statute, 8 U.S.C.  §1182(f), and concluded that the EO is fully within the president's authority: "the decision to prevent aliens from entering the country is a 'fundamental sovereign attribute' realized through the legislative and executive branches that is 'largely immune from judicial control.'"
• 
Contrary to the Ninth Circuit, Gorton says the EO is "facially legitimate and bona fide."
• 
The Ninth Circuit's ruling has as little basis in the law as the original decision by the district court judge.
• 
It is just another example of arrogant federal courts grabbing power from the legislative and executive branches in violation of basic separation-of-powers principles. 
• 
After the decision was announced, President Trump tweeted, "the security of our nation is at stake." He is right.
      Andrew Napolitano: What every American wants to know about federal judges  (Fox 02/09/2017)
• 
Last week, in a public courtroom in the federal courthouse in Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota — after suing President Donald Trump, alleging injury caused by his executive order that suspended the immigration of all people from seven foreign countries — asked a federal judge to compel the president and all those who work for him to cease enforcing the order immediately.
• 
After a brief emergency oral argument, the judge signed a temporary restraining order, which barred the enforcement of the president's order everywhere in the United States.
• 
The president reacted with anger, referring to the judge as a "so-called judge," and immigrant rights groups praised the judicial intervention as a victory for the oppressed.
• 
The president meant, I think, that Judge James L.  Robart had not acted properly as a judge by second-guessing him — that he had acted more like a politician; and the immigrant rights groups felt, I think, that the United States was once again a beacon of hope for refugees.
• 
A 1952 federal statute permits the president to suspend the immigration status of any person or group whose entry into the United States might impair public health or safety or national security.
• 
Trump exercised that authority in accordance with the 1952 law when he signed his Jan.  27 order banning all immigration from the seven named countries.
• 
When the president exercises powers granted to him by the Constitution or federal statues or when Congress passes bills, one cannot simply sue the government in federal court because one does not like what has been done.
• 
That is so because the Constitution has preconditions for a lawsuit in federal court.  One of those preconditions is what lawyers and judges call "standing."
• 
Standing means that the plaintiff has alleged and can most likely show that the defendant has caused the plaintiff an injury in fact, distinct from all others not in the case.
• 
Hence, it is curious that the plaintiffs in the Seattle case were not people whose entry had been barred by Trump's order but rather the governments of two states, each claiming to sue in behalf of people and entities resident or about to be resident in them.
• 
The court should have dismissed the case as soon as it was filed because of long-standing Supreme Court policy that bars federal litigation alleging harm to another and permits it only for the actual injury or immediate likelihood of injury to the litigant.
• 
Nevertheless, the Seattle federal judge heard oral argument on the two states' emergency application for a temporary restraining order against the president.
• 
... the judge asked a lawyer for the Department of Justice how many arrests of foreign nationals from the seven countries singled out by the president for immigration suspension there have been in the United States since 9/11.
• 
When the DOJ lawyer said she did not know, the judge answered his own question by saying, "None."
• 
... the judge asked a lawyer for the Department of Justice how many arrests of foreign nationals from the seven countries singled out by the president for immigration suspension there have been in the United States since 9/11.  When the DOJ lawyer said she did not know, the judge answered his own question by saying, "None."
• 
There have been dozens of people arrested and convicted in the United States for terrorism-related crimes since 9/11 who were born in the seven countries.
• 
Yet even if the judge had been correct, his question was irrelevant — and hence the answer meaningless — because it does not matter to a court what evidence the president relied on in this type of order.
• 
This is the kind of judicial second-guessing — substituting the judicial mind for the presidential mind — that is impermissible in our system.
• 
These rules and policies — the requirement of standing before suing and the primacy of the president in making foreign policy — stem directly from the Constitution.
• 
Were they not in place, then anyone could sue the government for anything and induce a federal judge to second-guess the president.
• 
That would convert the courts into a super-legislature — albeit an unelected, unaccountable, opaque one.
• 
I am not suggesting for a moment that the courts have no place here.  Rather, they have a vital place.
• 
It is to say what the Constitution means, say what the statutes mean and determine whether the government has exercised its powers constitutionally and legally.
• 
It is not the job of judges to decide whether the government has been smart or prudent, though.
• 
One of the arguments made by the state of Washington to explain why it had standing was laughable.
• 
Washington argued that corporations located in Washington would suffer the irreparable loss of available high-tech-qualified foreign employees if the ban were upheld.
• 
When pressed to reveal what entity Washington was trying to protect, it enumerated a few familiar names, among which was Microsoft.
• 
Microsoft?  The government of the state of Washington is suing to protect Microsoft?!
• 
Microsoft could buy the state of Washington if Starbucks were willing to sell it.
• 
The rule of law needs to be upheld.  Carefully paying attention to constitutional procedure protects personal freedom.
• 
In similar environments, the late Justice Antonin Scalia often remarked that much of what the government does is stupid but constitutional and that the courts' only concern is with the latter.
      The emasculated West's death wish  (JWR 02/08/2017)
• 
One of the most important stories related to the September 11 attacks was the one that was deliberately left largely untold.
• 
That story is the response of some Muslims in America to the massacre of nearly 3,000 people by Islamic supremacists in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
• 
According to a Washington Post article published on September 18, 2001, in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the river from the destroyed World Trade Center, "Within hours of the two jetliners plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river."
• 
The New York Post reported on September 15, 2001, that Muslim Americans in Patterson, NJ were also seen celebrating the attacks.
• 
Word-of-mouth reports abounded in the weeks and months following September 11 of spontaneous celebrations carried out that day in Dearborn, Michigan, in Virginia and other Muslim American communities.
• 
The most notable aspect of the published reports of the celebrations was that there were so few of them.
• 
After all, the notion that any Muslim Americans would celebrate the jihadist attack was certainly newsworthy.
• 
The stories were suppressed at the time by political leaders.
• 
Then president George W.  Bush rushed to defend and uphold Islam as a "religion of peace," almost immediately after the attacks
• 
Obama dumped the Bush-era term, "War on Terror," for the even more meaningless phrase, "Overseas Contingency Operations."
• 
The US federal government's actions were far from unique in the Western world.
• 
In Europe, almost every mention of Islamism has been barred.  Those that have criticized it have been subjected to criminal prosecutions and convictions.
• 
On the surface at least, placing a spotlight on the actions of one community, or adherents of one specific religion flies in the face of everything that the nations of the West have come to understand about how racism and bigotry takes root in a society.
• 
The problem with this well-intentioned position was self-evident from the start.  It is not bigoted to point out the bigotry of others and to confront and challenge it.
• 
It is bigoted not to do so.  Even worse, it is dangerous.
• 
It is impossible to solve a problem like Islamic radicalism by ignoring it.  To the contrary, by ignoring it, you ensure that it will grow.
• 
Armed with box cutters and informed by a bigoted, supremacist ideology, 19 Islamic terrorists viewed themselves as heroes as they used crude weapons to commit murder on a scale never seen before on American soil.
• 
And after they did so, far from being condemned across the board in the Islamic world, they were celebrated as heroes by a very large number of Muslims not only in the Middle East but in the US and throughout the Western world.
• 
The one thing that joins them to those directing them from thousands of kilometers away is their shared belief in the supremacy of radical Islam over all other ways of life.
• 
Their common faith in the justice of acts of mass murder against non-believers is so strong that it bridges the gap between the real and virtual worlds.
• 
... so long as the intellectual shackles of political correctness block the US and other Western governments from taking concerted action against the creed of Islamic supremacism and its adherents inside their own borders, the virtual terrorism command ISIS now controls will last until it morphs into an even more deadly threat in the months and years to come.
      The tears seen round the world  (INN 02/06/2017)
• 
He cried.  The poor, broken man stood there, in his signature pose, his glasses sitting on the tip of his nose, his eyes looking out above the frames and his voice choked with emotion.
• 
In a voice packed with emotion the man decried the "mean-spirited, un-American" executive order issued by President Trump temporarily restricting the visas of would-be immigrants from seven Muslim countries...
• 
Who is Charles Schumer kidding?  What exactly was he trying to convey?
• 
Was he really so deeply distressed at the prospect that perhaps one of those temporarily barred, so-called refugees, would be closely vetted and found to harbor ill intentions?
• 
Or, perhaps, his humanity simply could not bear the thought that people from countries seeking to harm the United States will have to answer some serious questions before being allowed to enter and roam free amongst us?
• 
I have a few questions for you, Mr.  Schumer.  I would like you to answer the following questions which bother every normal person who is not a bleeding-heart liberal bent on continuing the destruction of the United States by following the path trampled by President Trump's predecessor.  I hope you don't mind.
• 
Do you lock your windows and doors at night or do you leave them open?  Do you have an intercom in your residence?  Have you installed security cameras so that intruders are seen and caught prior to causing you or members of your family any harm?
• 
Based on your contention that barring harm-intentioned immigrants from our shores is ‘un-American and ill spirited', how can you take precautions to stop illegal intruders from your home?  Can you answer these for me?
• 
Most of the Moslem countries in the world forbid Israelis from entering their countries.  Many of them also forbid any Jew from setting foot in their lands.
• 
I don't remember seeing you shed one tear for those Jews barred from Yemen, Iraq, Syria and the rest.  Why not?
• 
I don't remember seeing you tear-up from the horror stories relating how the Yazidi population is being slaughtered, abused, beaten and sold into slavery by the ISIS murderers.
• 
It is interesting, Mr.  Schumer, that the prior occupant of the White House did as he pleased, including banning refugees from Iraq, yet you didn't spit out a single protest.
• 
Where is your concern for me, for an American citizen who is not comfortable with your ‘let-every-one-in' attitude?
• 
Why are we, the American citizens, obligated to be fearful for our lives and security because people like you, who live under heavy security don't really take our needs into consideration?
• 
And why am I obligated to foot the bill for illegal immigrants of which many have come to our shores with the precise intent of harming or killing me or you?
• 
How could a man of your stature support and vote for a corrupt woman who compromised sensitive national secrets, sacrificed the lives of four innocent Americans in Libya, sold state favors for heavy cash, pocketed millions of dollars designated for a supposed charitable fund?
• 
Save your tears for the brave Ambassador and Marines who were thrown to the wolves by your candidate.
• 
If anything is to be dubbed as ‘un-American', Mr.  Schumer, it is your tearful reaction.
      Gregg Jarrett: Why the law is on Trump's side with his immigration ban  (Fox 02/06/2017)
• 
President Trump may have lost the early legal skirmishes over his executive order on immigration, but in the end he will likely win. 
• 
The overwhelming weight of history and the law is on his side.
• 
The president does have the authority to ban the entry of foreigners, as long as he has what is called a "rational basis" to believe they pose a threat to the nation's security.
• 
He does, and his order is designed to accomplish precisely that.
• 
The seven nations targeted by Trump in his immigration ban were originally identified in an anti-terrorism law signed by President Obama.
• 
Unlike other Muslim-majority nations that have a history of terrorism, these seven countries do not assist the U.S.  in providing background checks and other vetting of immigrant applicants.
• 
Thus, it is not only "rational" to deny entry, it is imperative for the safety of Americans.
• 
The U.S.  does not have the resources to properly vet all these individuals on its own.
• 
The Trump administration lawyers haven't even been given a chance to appear in court to say, "good morning, your honor." All of that may change once both sides are represented in court.
• 
Take a look at judge Robart's decision.  It is largely devoid of any legal reasoning or sound analysis.  Its brevity is exceeded only by its lack of logic as applied to the law.
• 
Absence of Standing to Sue
• 
Washington State does not have "standing" to sue on behalf of its residents because they have suffered no "actual harm" from Trump's order.
• 
In order to sustain a lawsuit, the plaintiffs must demonstrate their alleged injury is direct and real, not merely hypothetical.  The harm must be imminent and irreparable, not speculative. 
• 
So how have Washington residents been harmed?  Lawyers for the state suggest their economy will be adversely impacted because the ban may prevent immigrants from working for Washington-based companies.  Taxes might be reduced and its education system could be affected. 
• 
However, all of that is pure conjecture.  It might happen, but it might not.  Hence, it does not constitute immediate "actual harm." On that basis alone, the lawsuit should be dismissed. 
• 
Foreigners Do Not Enjoy Constitutional Rights
• 
The claim by Washington State that the immigration ban violates the First Amendment (freedom of religion) or the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments (equal protection clause) may seem, at first blush, like a reasonable argument.
• 
Until you consider that our Constitution applies only to citizens and those on American soil. 
• 
A man in Somalia may wish to invoke our Constitution to claim his freedom of religion is being infringed, but until he arrives here he enjoys none of its privileges and protections.  He has no right to assert discrimination, religious or otherwise.
• 
And the state of Washington has no legal right to represent him in court.  It can only represent its own residents.
• 
The President Has Authority to Dictate Immigration
• 
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate immigration.
• 
In 1952, Congress passed a law empowering the president to deny entry into the U.S.  to "any class of aliens" considered to be "detrimental to the interests of the United States."
• 
In other words, a threat to America and in the interests of national security.
• 
... the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that Congress and the president have "plenary power" to regulate immigration.
• 
Past presidents, including Carter and Obama, have issued orders similar to Trump's. 
• 
The president's authority to deny entry to a large class of aliens is a broader power which supersedes individual visa considerations.
• 
Trump's Executive Order Is Temporary
• 
Lost in all the legal tumult is the fact that President Trump's executive order is only temporary: It applies for just 90 days for people in the seven designated countries that are sources of terrorism and 120 days for "refugees." (The Syrian ban is "indefinite," but that could change, too.)
• 
Unwise To Attack a Federal Judge
• 
True to form, President Trump launched a Twitter attack on Judge Robart's decision, calling him a "so-called judge" who issued a "ridiculous" decision.
• 
I agree, the decision is ridiculous to the extent it is based on scant legal analysis and completely contravenes long established law. 
• 
Nevertheless, it is unwise and counterproductive to personally insult or demean a judge by questioning his legitimacy.
• 
Judges tend to be a collegial group.  An attack on one may be viewed as an attack on all. 
• 
A better strategy would be to compliment the Boston judge who affirmed Mr.  Trump's executive order.
• 
In a 21 page decision issued on February 3, Judge Nathaniel M.  Gorton eloquently explains the power of the president embedded in sturdy constitutional principles.
• 
It is a thoughtful and comprehensive treatise on how our laws and the courts have spoken in unison on immigration authority.
• 
If any of these immigration cases ever reach the Supreme Court, Judge Gorton's opinion may be the foundation for their decision.
      Rogue judges undermine our sovereignty.  Here's how Congress can stop them  (02/05/2017)
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... if Congress fails to strip the courts of jurisdiction over immigration, radical judges will give affirmative immigration rights to foreign nationals.
• 
Congress and Trump's Justice Department must fight back against the courts once and for all, or we will no longer remain an independent, sovereign, and safe country.
• 
... over the weekend, a federal district judge issued an injunction against the executive order and reinstated as many as 60,000 visas for foreign nationals that were covered under the order.
• 
This act, along with those of several other judges (in my view, an impeachable offense), is astounding, unprecedented, and create a national emergency for the following six reasons:
• 
1.  Allows ANY and ALL refugees to enter the U.S.
• 
Words cannot describe how radical this opinion is.  It's on par with redefining marriage, and in some ways, even worse.
• 
2.  Stops President Trump from executing the law, which Congress passed
• 
Pursuant to the letter and spirit of existing statute, the entire purpose of the refugee program is to protect religious and ethnic minorities, not individuals caught in Islamic civil wars.
• 
3.  Circumvents Congress' authority.  Invents new constitutional right for non-citizens
• 
... not only overturning Trump's executive order, but they are also saying that even if Congress were to pass a similar law it would be unconstitutional.
• 
4.  Encourages ‘judge shopping' to assert tyrannical authority over congressional and executive branches
• 
That a puny district judge, an institution created by Congress, can overturn national sovereignty and laws passed by Congress defending that sovereignty, represents the final frontier in judicial tyranny...
• 
5.  Ignores American history, law, and tradition
• 
Judge Robart literally shredded our laws, history, and tradition on immigration since our colonial times and replaced it with his personal beliefs on turning America into Eurabia.
• 
He refused to even recognize passed settled law and gave no reason for ignoring it.
• 
6.  Furthers what modern courts have done at chipping away American sovereignty
• 
Even though Judge Robart's order was the most radical decision so far, most other courts have also chipped away at the right of a nation to exclude.
• 
This is very dangerous and demonstrates why Congress must take away this power from the courts (a power courts themselves said for 200 years they never had).
• 
The solution
• 
For all of the above reasons, Congress must use its Article III Sec.  II power and immediately move to strip lower courts of jurisdiction to grant rights to any foreign national to enter or remain in the country against the law unless statute explicitly preempts the president's action.
• 
Alternatively, Congress, which has complete control over the administrative procedures of the courts, could prevent lower courts from issuing nationwide injunctions against immigration enforcement acts outside of their respective districts and circuits.
• 
Finally, the House should bring articles of impeachment against Judge Robart (and others) and finally make an example of these rogue judges.
• 
Reasonable people can disagree about certain constitutional questions, but this judge openly violated the Constitution and made no effort to respect the law.
• 
He threw out the sovereignty of a nation without addressing a single statute, constitutional clause, and 200 years of the most settled case law, permitting Congress and the president to exclude entire classes of immigrants in a much more sweeping policy than what Trump enacted.
• 
We are not debating immigration policy here; we are debating whether we are a nation at all.
      No borders.  No nations.  No clue.  (Fox 01/30/2017)
• 
Do you lock your front door at night?  Hater!
• 
Do you have an alarm system at your house?  Xenophobe!
• 
Do you ask who's ringing your doorbell before letting a visitor in?  Rotten bigot!
• 
That, essentially, is the reaction from the politically charged left to President Trump's executive order about admitting people from certain countries into the United States.
• 
The unhinged outrage from Trump-haters – and there are a lot of them – puts the interests of non-Americans over the security of our citizens.
• 
And the administration's botched roll-out of the new restrictions gave opponents just the excuse they needed to bellow.
• 
Reduce the argument to a personal level.
• 
A homeowner is permitted to refuse entry to anyone he or she doesn't want in, right?
• 
Security systems are intended to keep unwanted visitors out and let the homeowner know who is outside.
• 
Lots of apartment dwellers have an intercom that rings when someone outside wants to visit.
• 
Are those precautions divisive, discriminatory or unconstitutional?
• 
Really?  Let anyone go anywhere without asking who they are, why they want to come here and what their past actions tell us about them?
• 
The notion that America must be open to anyone who decides to visit flies in the face of 21st century reality.
• 
Those who disagree with the president's executive order have taken full advantage of those rights, and rightly so.
• 
But their argument that the United States, alone among all countries, cannot restrict who comes in from beyond its shores is, quite simply, specious.
• 
The protests against anything this president does will continue, and that's fine as long as they're peaceful.
• 
But let's at least admit that they are not about the issues, but the issuer-in-chief.
      Newt Gingrich: The left should be scared to death after Trump's first week  (Fox 01/27/2017)
• 
The elite left and their propagandists in the media are already in hysterics over President Trump's first week in office, but for most Americans there are no surprises here.
• 
The president is doing exactly what he has said he would do for the last two years on the campaign – immediately get to work focusing on jobs, immigration and shrinking government.  And guess what: He's going to continue.
• 
While the media has obsessed over how many people were at the inaugural ceremony, the president has signed orders to shield people, states and businesses from future financial damage wrought by ObamaCare and other pending Obama regulations.
• 
In a time when heroin and opioid abuse is devastating communities across the nation, and a time when people who want to kill us and destroy our society are trying to infiltrate our county, what reasonable person would say hiring up to 10,000 more U.S.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and up to 5,000 more U.S.  Border Patrol agents is a bad idea?
• 
The president is immediately working to end the catch-and-release policies of so-called sanctuary ... where instead of immediately turning criminal aliens who are released from police custody over to immigration officials, the crooks are let back out on the streets.
• 
Leaders in cities granting asylum to such criminals are going to have to explain to their residents why the imagined rights of criminal noncitizens are more important than receiving federal funds to build infrastructure, hospitals, or improve their schools.
• 
And I can't wait to see Mayor Rahm Emanuel explain to the people of Chicago – where 4,000 people were shot last year – why it's important to put more criminals on the streets of the Windy City.
• 
The left is also understandably alarmed by Trump's announced investigation into voter fraud in America.
• 
President Trump wants to make sure that to vote in this country you must be both alive and a legal citizen.
• 
I think those are two reasonable criteria to vote, but they pose real problems for the left.
• 
All of these actions are perfectly in-line with what President Trump campaigned on – and what the American people elected him to do.
• 
So, of course his liberal and establishment critics are shocked, baffled and anxious.
• 
Actually doing the things you said you would do during a campaign is completely outside liberalism and unthinkable to the traditional Washington establishment.
• 
The last time the country witnessed a president come to office and immediately begin working to enact the will of the American people was in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office.
• 
Within weeks of his inauguration, Reagan proposed some of the most aggressive tax and budget reforms Congress had ever seen.
• 
He was reacting directly to the country's concern over a failing economy and a sense of American decline that was felt worldwide.
• 
The left and the establishment were scared in 1981, they were scared in 1994, and they are scared today – for good reason.
      Stop dropping the H*  (Hitler) bomb and other crucial lessons for 2017 on Holocaust Memorial Day (Fox 01/27/2017)
• 
January 27th marks International Holocaust Memorial Day.  It is the anniversary of the liberation of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp, by Soviet forces.
• 
The "liberation" was too late for 1 million Jews who were gassed, experimented on or worked to death along with hundreds of thousands of Russian POWs, Gypsies and Poles, murdered there.
• 
Historians till this day question why US and British bombers which flew over the death camp never dropped their payloads on the gas chambers and crematoria when they were in full use, murdering and incinerating innocents.
• 
January 27th is the day that the United Nations and governments on three continents pause from their overwhelming indifference to the fate of 14 million living Jews to remember 6 million dead Jews.
• 
There are important core lessons about the price humankind can pay when civilized people react only with indifference and apathy in the face of evil.
• 
For one, we should remember that hateful words have consequences.  Hitler's genocidal hatred for Jews did not arise out of a vacuum.
• 
Hitler first openly expressed his ideas of ridding Germany of the Jews in 1919, twenty years before he unleashed WWII.
• 
Secondly, it takes deeds, not mere words to defeat evil.  Hitler could have been stopped in the 1920s before he rose to power.
• 
Academic degrees and social status should never be confused with ethics and morality. 
• 
German lawyers rushed to join the Nazi Party to write a new canon of law legalizing racism, anti-Semitism, theft and ultimately murder.
• 
In 2017, there are crucial lessons about today's evil we should be drawing from the past.
• 
Ask the Yezidis, the ethnically-cleansed Christians of Iraq and the Syrian children choked to death by Assad's chemical weapons.
• 
Ask the Iranian people who took to the streets of Tehran during the Green Revolution and were rewarded with stone-cold silence from then President Obama and other world leaders.
• 
Ask the hundreds of thousands of suffering silent victims in North Korea's Gulag as the leader in Pyongyang escalates his nuclear threats from Seoul and Tokyo, to Los Angeles.
• 
On this Holocaust Memorial Day, I beseech Americans to stop dropping the H*(for Hitler) bomb on America's political divide.
• 
Love him or hate him, President Donald Trump is no Hitler.
• 
Denouncing the democratically elected leader of our country and his cabinet as Nazis denigrates the victims of the past and could cripple our ability to confront and defeat future tyrants and terrorists.
      Andrew Napolitano: Trump has committed the most revolutionary act I've seen in 45 years  (Fox 01/26/2017)
• 
Within four hours of becoming president of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to limit immediately the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) in ways that are revolutionary.
• 
With the stroke of a pen, the president assaulted the heart of the law that was the domestic centerpiece of his predecessor's administration.
• 
How did this happen?  How can a U.S.  president, who took an oath to enforce the laws faithfully, gut one of them merely because he disagrees with it?
• 
When ObamaCare went through Congress in 2010, all Democrats in Congress supported it and all congressional Republicans were opposed.
• 
The crux of their disagreement was the law's command that everyone in the United States obtain and maintain health insurance — a command that has come to be known as "the individual mandate."
• 
Republicans argued that Congress was without the authority to compel people to enter the marketplace by purchasing a product — that such decisions should be freely made by individuals and that that freedom was protected from governmental interference by the Constitution.
• 
To ensure compliance with the individual mandate, the law provided that the IRS would collect the fair market value of a bare-bones insurance policy from those who did not obtain and maintain one.  The government would then take that money and purchase a health insurance policy for that individual who rejected the law's command.
• 
... a 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court characterized the money collected by the IRS from noncompliant individuals as a tax.
• 
This is profoundly significant for constitutional purposes because though Congress cannot regulate anything it wants, Congress can tax anything it wants, as long as the tax falls equally on those in the class of people who are paying it.
• 
This unheard-of characterization of a non-tax as a tax was necessary to salvage ObamaCare before the high court because a different 5-4 majority in the same case ruled that the Republican congressional argument was essentially correct — that the commerce clause does not empower Congress to compel commercial activity.
• 
Trump argued that the government cannot compel commercial activity, even as part of a large regulatory scheme, because the Constitution protects everyone's right to purchase a lawful good or not to purchase one.
• 
The Obama mantra that you could keep your doctor and your health insurance under ObamaCare proved to be patently false, Trump argued.
• 
When Trump promised that as president — on "day one" — he would begin to dismantle ObamaCare, some Republicans, many members of the press and most Democrats laughed at him.
• 
They are laughing no longer because the first executive order he signed on Jan.  20 directed those in the federal government who enforce ObamaCare to do so expecting that it will soon not exist.
• 
He ordered that regulations already in place be enforced with a softer, more beneficent tone, and he ordered that no penalty, fine, setoff or tax be imposed by the IRS on any person or entity who is not complying with the individual mandate.
• 
Then he ordered a truly revolutionary act, the likes of which I have never seen in the 45 years I have studied and monitored the government's laws and its administration of them.
• 
He ordered that when bureaucrats who are administering and enforcing the law have discretion with respect to the time, place, manner and severity of its enforcement, they should exercise that discretion in favor of individuals and against the government.
• 
This is radical coming from any president in the modern era of government-can-do-no-wrong.
• 
It recognizes the primacy and dignity of the individual and the fallibility of the state.
• 
It is utterly without precedent since Jefferson's presidency.
• 
Trump's revolutionary act is a breeze of freedom on a sea of regulation.
• 
It recognizes something modern governments never admit — that they can be and have been wrong.
• 
It is exactly as Trump promised.
      Trump defied the polls, press and pundits to win White House  (NYP 01/22/2017)
• 
We were eyewitnesses to a revolution, a rising up of people who felt shunned, betrayed and left behind.
• 
They called themselves "deplorables and irredeemables," turning Hillary Clinton's slurs into a rallying cry as they threw off the yoke of the old political order and trusted the nation to a true outsider.
• 
Donald John Trump is the most unlikely revolutionary ever to stalk western civilization. 
• 
His life was his brand and it was more grandiloquent than any opera. 
• 
He was a rich celebrity who had it all, but it wasn't enough.
• 
For his daring, he was mocked and made the butt of endless jokes, especially about his hair.
• 
Perhaps their laughter blinded the savants, for they missed the birth of a phenomenon.
• 
From the moment Trump stepped off that escalator in June of 2015 to join the race, producers at television news programs realized that the more they turned their cameras on him, the more viewers they got.
• 
So that's what they did, and in a flash, Trump's rallies were bursting at the seams as thousands showed up when other candidates were lucky to draw hundreds.
• 
The scoffers ... consoled themselves by thinking it was a bread-and-circus act, that people were turning out just to gawk at a rich buffoon.
• 
They reassured each other that when the voting started, the unwashed rabble would come to their senses and Trump would crash and burn like a cheap hot-air balloon.
• 
Then they, the all-knowing elite, would go about their business of anointing a respectable Republican who would dutifully lose the general election to Clinton.  That's the way the world worked.
• 
To this day, most of the professional scoffers still write off Trump's stunning upset as the revenge of an angry white working class stewing in hate.
• 
There was a desperate hunger among millions upon millions of Americans for a bold leader and he aimed to feed it.
• 
He didn't take crap from anyone and said what those voters were thinking about jobs, trade, immigration and so much more.
• 
His slogan, Make America Great Again, was so in-your-face that there was no mistaking its meaning.
• 
It was nationalist and populist, and the fact that those ideas offended the tender sensibilities of the political and media elite was a bonus.
• 
Trump's no-bulls–t approach struck a deep chord in the hearts of Americans who felt abandoned by both political parties and their government.
• 
Their patience and their bank accounts were exhausted.
• 
None of them was fooled by happy-talk statistics about jobs when the economy they lived in still dragged along the bottom.
• 
Throw in the nightmares spawned by the medieval butchery of the Islamic State, including a spate of homeland slaughters, and a huge slice of the electorate was primed to put someone very, very different in the Oval Office.
• 
His fierce determination to succeed now stands to benefit the nation.
• 
... the areas of his signature focus — unchecked illegal immigration, a decline of good-paying manufacturing jobs and a depleted military — are fundamental to a national revival.
• 
Who knows what challenges China, Iran, Russia and the Islamic State will present.
• 
Donald Trump is the new sheriff in town ... Say a prayer for him and the exceptional nation he leads.
      Why Jeff Sessions as our next attorney general should reassure, not alarm, all Americans  (Fox 01/22/2017)
      Cal Thomas: Why the Trump era could be the start of something big [YUGE even]  (Fox 01/19/2017)
      Five lessons for Commander in Chief Donald Trump from the Iraq 'Surge'  (Fox 01/19/2017)
• 
President-elect Trump ... will operate in an environment where Islamic extremists and other anti-U.S.  actors are emboldened by the status quo, and where the roadblocks to victory are disheartening and numerous.
• 
The national interest should always prevail over public opinion and short-term political calculations.
• 
Recognize when your policy is failing and be willing to change it.
• 
There is no viable substitute for American military power in certain crises. 
• 
Military action is a critical component – not the totality – of a successful anti-Islamic extremist campaign.
• 
Securing the peace demands continued effort.
      Thank God for Barack Obama [he cleared the field for Donald Trump]  (Fox 01/19/2017)
      Obama's Chelsea Manning decision: President's dangerous move reveals scary take on...  (Fox 01/18/2017)
      Greg Gutfeld: Stone Age liberals  (Fox 01/17/2017)
      To preview the Trump presidency, look at the confirmation hearings for his cabinet picks  (Fox 01/15/2017)
• 
..., nominees presented a stark contrast to Senate Democrats.
• 
On one side, Americans saw well-prepared, highly dignified appointees appear before elected officials from both parties.
• 
On the other side, hostile questioners from the left grilled the nominees, almost reflexively manufacturing attacks on character and asserting gaps in knowledge...
• 
Realism seemed to permeate, even about Russia, China and the long road back to domestic tranquility and global American leadership.
• 
So, what are we seeing?  And what does it mean?  What does the solid performance of these appointees, against a shaky backdrop, foretell? 
• 
First, these Trump appointees are demonstrating high respect for process and truth, something for which every American should be glad. 
• 
Second, we are learning something intangible about the future of this administration.  Whether Democrats continue their stubborn resistance and inglorious slide, or choose to arrest it, is really secondary. 
• 
Primary is what we are learning about the quality of preparation, patience and temperament of those who will soon lead major departments. 
• 
The unspoken message is heartening.  The nominees are not newbies.  Nor are they misaligned with their assigned missions.  They are seasoned professionals.  And they are acting that way.
• 
They are proving candid and deep, sensible, at times even sage.  They know the ropes, their fields, the challenges that lie ahead of them – and respect Congress.  Or at least that is the distinct impression they leave.
• 
The tables have somehow begun to turn.  Senate Democrats cannot digest reality.
• 
Exhaustive witness preparation and performance tells you what lies ahead. 
• 
... we know how the Trump Aaministration will conduct policy – they will go after — and get — results. 
• 
Extrapolate and you see where the Trump team is going.  They take nothing for granted, do not jump to conclusions or assume knowledge.
• 
They are about outcomes, even before the mission burdens them. 
• 
They are about self-control, self-awareness, self-discipline, and self-effacing presentation – in a word, leadership. 
      Bobby Jindal: Trump's pick for Education Secretary wants everyone to get a great education...  (Fox 01/13/2017)
• 
In politics they say that no good deed goes unpunished.  That is never truer than on the issue of school choice.
• 
President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be the Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, has committed an unpardonable sin.
• 
Yes, she has tried to help millions of disadvantaged families have the ability to send their kids to better schools.  This is of course reprehensible behavior on her part that must not be rewarded.
• 
Oh, and there is one more thing, she has spent millions of dollars of her own money in order to try to help these kids be able to achieve their dreams.  How awful.
• 
In Louisiana we enacted the biggest school choice statewide program in the country.
• 
But let's be clear, this is Holy Grail for the American Left.  They will fight to the last gasp to stop anyone from delivering equal opportunity in education.
• 
They attacked me for it every waking hour after we got our program enacted, in the same irrational and nasty manner they are now attacking Betsy.
• 
Yes, the hard Left and the teachers unions are vilifying Betsy DeVos for exactly the reasons I listed above.
• 
They believe that allowing the money to follow the child is an attempt to destroy public education and ultimately the United States. 
• 
These people are not rational.  They are protecting a one size fits all monopoly that creates winners and losers in our education system.
• 
The winners are kids whose families have money and the losers are those who do not.
• 
If you are born to affluent parents – good news, you will either live in a ZIP code with good performing public schools, or, they will put you in an expensive private school.  You are all set. 
• 
If you are born to middle class parents, they are likely going to either make sure they live in an area with decent public schools, or they may save and scrimp and send you to a private school.
• 
But, if you are born to poor parents, or one parent who is struggling to make ends meet, you may be out of luck.  Your parent or parents don't have the resources to move, and they certainly don't have the money to send you to a better school.
• 
And the chances are pretty strong that your local public schools are failing, and there is a decent chance that you are an ethnic minority.
• 
So, one would logically assume that every bleeding heart liberal in America is rooting for you, and wants you to be able to go to a better school.  Right?
• 
Because they care about people more than money, they certainly want you to have a choice.  Right? 
• 
No, wrong.
• 
The Democratic Party and the American Left opposes equal education opportunity.
• 
These people are illogical and really should not be teaching anyone anything anywhere.
• 
Which brings me back to Betsy Devos.  She has fought tirelessly for decades to give disadvantaged kids the opportunity to receive a great education.
• 
That is the sum total of why these Luddites on the Left are attacking her. 
• 
You really have to hand it to Donald Trump here.  Instead of picking an education bureaucrat, he picked a person who sees the bigger picture and knows that American education must get out of the Stone Age and move into the 21st century. 
• 
... there will be a lot of folks to testify at Betsy's confirmation hearing, and many will be raging liberals who are desperate to protect the Stone Age monopoly that is America's education system. 
• 
Not one of these people, not one, will have done as much in his or her life to improve the lives of kids in need as Betsy has.
• 
And most of them are total hypocrites who do not practice what they preach when it comes to their own children. 
• 
Remember that while they rage.  Also remember that it's not the kids they are fighting for, it's the antiquated government monopoly that they are protecting.
• 
What we have now is a closed government system that is failing.
• 
What we need is an open system that allows for change, choice, and innovation. 
• 
Donald Trump clearly understands what is at stake, and that's why he picked a reformer who cares about helping those kids who are currently being left behind.
      Democrats wage anti-Trump offensive for their own gain  (NYP 01/08/2017)
• 
The Washington mob aims to make sure the election never ends and that Trump can never govern.
• 
There are no modern precedents to the scandalous attempts to smear and undermine the president-elect.
• 
Nearly nine weeks after his victory and less than two weeks before he takes the oath, the voter-nullification plot is growing more vile.
• 
It began when the Clinton campaign and her donors tried to overturn results in key states, then tried to steal the election outright by intimidating electors of the Electoral College.
• 
When all that failed, the establishment forces that opposed Trump all along ... switched their goal to thwarting his presidency.  One example: They aim to deny confirmation to as many as eight Cabinet picks.
• 
This is not mere politics.  This is half the country going rogue in a fit of madness.
• 
Most alarming is the newest recruit to the confederacy.
• 
The intelligence community, including leaders of the FBI and CIA, is pushing the Russian hacking narrative in unscrupulous ways.
• 
"Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."
• 
Is Schumer suggesting CIA analysts would stay silent about a terrorist plot?  Would they feed Trump misinformation to get back at him?
• 
Going public with classified information, which the leakers did, is a crime, but these days it's acceptable if it serves the left's political purpose.
• 
As for the report itself, there's not much there, at least in the version made public.  It is full of assertions that Vladimir Putin wanted to hurt Clinton and help Trump, but zero evidence is offered.  I repeat: zero evidence.
• 
Instead, the 25-page document serves up a dog's stew of innuendo and anecdotes.
• 
Examples include that Russian television operating in America said nice things about Occupy Wall Street.
• 
Well, so did President Obama and half the Democratic Party.  Is Obama a Russian agent?
• 
The report cites the fact that Russian TV anchors are required to have social-media accounts as proof of Putin's evil intent.
• 
Here's a fact that really matters and it's not in the report: The FBI concluded that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee without ever inspecting its computers.
• 
None of this is normal.  And it's no excuse that Trump himself often veers outside the lines.  He won the election fair and square, period.
• 
Asked if she believed hacking cost Clinton the election, Pelosi declared to reporters: "You were accomplices in this.  Every single day you reported there was an e-mail that was embarrassing to the Clinton operation, without saying we know this because of a disruption by a foreign power of our election system.  You knew that."
• 
Wow, so journalists are "accomplices" when they report embarrassing news.  Nothing could be more Putin-like than her view of the media's job.
• 
To be clear, it may be true that Putin ordered that the e-mails of John Podesta and the DNC be stolen and given to WikiLeaks.
• 
But officials also admit that Russia hacked our government and industries for years and always pushes negative propaganda about America, including during the 2012 campaign.
• 
So why the sudden DefCon outrage, especially when the intelligence report concludes there was no attempt to change vote tallies?
• 
It's a dumb overreaction, or part of the effort to thwart a president the establishment doesn't want.  Either way, intelligence leaders are proving they are part of the swamp that must be drained.
• 
By all means, America needs better cybersecurity and a retaliation policy to act as a deterrent.
• 
The current president has no interest in the issue, so perhaps we'll get better policies when we get a new president.
      Was Friday's declassified report claiming Russian hacking of the 2016 election rigged?  (Fox 01/07/2017)
• 
... noted that the declassified report represents the views of only three intelligence agencies, not seventeen.
• 
... questioned why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not co-author or clear the report and why it lacked dissenting views.
• 
... a longer report ordered by President Obama that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to undermine the 2016 president election, hurt Hillary's candidacy and promote Donald Trump through cyber warfare, social media and the state-owned Russia cable channel RT.
• 
Although the report's authors said they have high confidence in most of these conclusions, they were unable to include any evidence for classification reasons.
• 
As someone who worked in the intelligence field for 25 years ... I am concerned both intelligence assessments were rigged for political purposes.
• 
Since it came out only a month before the presidential election and was co-authored by only two intelligence agencies, the October memo looked like a clumsy attempt by the Obama White House to produce a document to boost Clinton's reelection chances.
• 
Its argumentation was very weak since it said the alleged hacking of Democratic emails was "consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts" but did not say there was any evidence of Russian involvement.
• 
Friday's declassified intelligence report on Russia hacking is even more suspicious.
• 
Given how politically radioactive the issue of Russian interference in the U.S.  presidential election has become, why wasn't the January 6 Russia report an intelligence community-coordinated assessment?
• 
Why were several important intelligence agencies and their experts excluded?
• 
Although the report made serious accusations of Russian interference in the election, it did not back them up with evidence.
• 
... the report made some dubious arguments that Russia succeeded in influencing the election using its RT cable channel, a Russian propaganda tool that is only taken seriously in the United States by the far left.
• 
It's also troubling that the unclassified report does not mention the extremely weak internet security of Clinton's private email server...
• 
... the exclusion of key intelligence players and the lack of dissenting views give the appearance that the conclusions of this report were pre-cooked.
• 
... the entire purpose of this report and its timing was to provide President Obama with a supposedly objective intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that the president could release before he left office to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's election.
• 
Adding to the Trump team's concerns time intelligence agencies were are playing political games over possible Russian interference in the election is the fact that at the same time these agencies were refusing to brief Congress about their findings on this issue they were constantly being leaked to the news media.
• 
The new intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election broke so radically with the way objective and authoritative intelligence community assessments are supposed to be produced that it appears to have been rigged to support a pre-ordained set of conclusions to undermine President-elect Trump.
• 
... o forge new policies to protect our nation against the many serious threats it faces, including radical Islam, cyber warfare, nuclear proliferation, Russia, China and other threats.
• 
Intelligence agencies were led astray by the Obama administration's partisanship and national security incompetence.
• 
... over time, the outstanding men and women Trump has named to top national security posts will ensure that America's intelligence agencies have Trump's confidence and produce the hard hitting and objective intelligence he will need to defend our nation.
      Dr.  Keith Ablow: Thanks for finally speaking out about Black on white violence, Mr.  Obama but...  (Fox 01/07/2017)
• 
The racial divide fanned by Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder has a new highlight reel, courtesy of four black adults in Chicago who allegedly held hostage a white man with special needs and humiliated, beat, slashed him, while screaming slurs about white people and Donald Trump.
• 
The video of their alleged crimes was streamed live on Facebook.
• 
Not everyone, of course, will agree that the President should be held to account for this hate crime, and the President did condemn it.
• 
But I think that when the President of the United States and former Attorney General repeatedly accused police officers (who were merely doing their jobs) of racial prejudice and when he failed to strongly condemn riots in Baltimore and elsewhere he set the stage for acts of perceived retribution by violent minority individuals.
• 
No President of the United States in recent history has ever shown more of an inclination to look the other way when cities burn, police officers are killed or, for that matter, when terrorists commit crimes against our nation (and are then set free by him from Guantanamo Bay).
• 
Because no President in recent history seems to have been gripped by such deep conviction that America — and, particularly, white America has so much about which to be ashamed and so much payback coming.
• 
The truth is that terrible crimes against black people have been committed by white criminals.
• 
But the President's psychological stance, on public display, has made equality look like the freedom for minorities to be hateful to other races, too.
• 
And that profound tragedy, as I see it, is Barack Obama's legacy, more than anything else.
• 
... maybe Mark Zuckerberg could take a look in the mirror and wonder why young adults seem to think it is just fine to videotape horrific acts, as though they are stars in a macabre movie.
• 
Because he provided the platform that degrades the empathetic instincts of millions of Americans and turns them into attention-seeking, mini-reality TV versions of themselves.
• 
It will be a monumental task for President-Elect Donald Trump to heal the nation, which is a necessary part of making it great, again.
      The Obama Legacy: Those golden years  (INN 01/06/2017)
• 
Some of the moments his administration gave us during his two terms in office include, but are not limited to:
• 
Providing people of ambiguous gender with the freedom to use the public toilet of their choice.
• 
Allowing late night celebrations with occasional rioting and looting to celebrate the end of racism in America.
• 
Encouraging large corporations to move their plants to needy countries around the world where they can enjoy large tax breaks and cheaper labor.
• 
Abandoning old friends in order to buy a new friend with a plane load of money secretly delivered at night, when no one was supposed to have been looking.
• 
Signing into law by executive order ambitious policies, which Congress would never have approved.
• 
Screening airport passengers, not with intelligence and sophistication as was once the case, but in a way that would demonstrate TSA's skill at intimate pat downs and body scans. 
• 
Hurling racism calls at anyone who needed to be silenced once and for all for their objectionable views.
• 
Installing security guards at border points to allow the safe entry and exit of undocumented visitors, especially those carrying huge loads of contraband.
• 
Offering new identities, food stamps, lodging, income, and, when appropriate, voting cards to immigrants, landing in remote U.S.  areas of the country late at night to influence America's cultural change.
• 
Using political correctness as another sophisticated tool for silencing opposing views on campuses, in board rooms, and at parties when riots, sit-ins, and shout-downs don't work.
• 
Reducing the guest list at Guantanamo by returning the residents to their loving families abroad, where they may continue their noble crusade for peace through genocide.
• 
Politicalizing the FBI and Department of Justice in order to accelerate hope and change among Americans who may not want it – and those in government who may need it to protect their reputation.
• 
Using Air Force One as the President's private carrier for vacations and lecture tours to world capitals, in which America's past activities are discussed apologetically with appropriate shame.
• 
Introducing two new words, Allahu akbar, to the vocabulary of students interested in joining a growing international movement.
• 
Supporting as a Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodman Clinton, whose impressive resume includes e-mail indiscretions, Benghazi, and pay-to-play deals while Secretary of State.
• 
And expecting Americans to accept Obamacare, a limited health care program that few really want and even fewer can afford because of its swiftly rising costs.
• 
Yes, there's no question about it.  Mr.  Obama's presidency will long be remembered, especially his parting shots at Russia and Israel, and God only knows who else.
• 
Goodbye, Mr.  Ex.  None of us hard-working Americans will ever forget you.
• 
Despite the tears you have caused us over the years with your many spankings, we are all very thankful in the end for the main thing you have done for us.
• 
You have given us "deplorables" back our common sense.
      Russia Isn't Our Friend, but That Doesn't Make the Democrats' Conspiracy Theories True  (01/06/2017)
• 
First, Russian President Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian who, though no Josef Stalin, subverts human rights and is generally antagonistic to the idealistic aims of the United States.
• 
When Republicans cozy up to this sort of person, as President-elect Donald Trump has done, they undermine the stated beliefs and values of conservatism.
• 
Second, though there's little doubt he wishes he could, Putin did not hack the American election.
• 
In fact, there's no evidence whatsoever that the Russians had anything to do with Trump's victory.
• 
Now, I understand why so many on the left want to force Republicans to choose between these two statements.
• 
They'd like to delegitimize the democratic validity of Trump's presidency ... and smear those who don't join them in this endeavor as unpatriotic Putin-defending lackeys.
• 
By "election hacking," reporters and editors mean there might be evidence that Russians successfully phished a Democratic operative named John Podesta, who used the word "password" as his password.
• 
Although we should thoroughly investigate foreigners who illegally access American emails, this is not tantamount to infiltrating an election or undermining its legitimacy.
• 
To say there is no indication that Russia tried to infiltrate the grid "so far" almost seems like someone is hoping the story might one day turn out to be true.
• 
Many in the left-wing punditry have already taken to speaking about the stolen 2016 election.  ... asserted that not only was there "evidence that Russian intelligence carried out a successful plan to pick the government of the United States" but it was "probable that the hacks swung enough votes to decide a very tight race," and the latter could not be "proven."
• 
In politics, proving something isn't nearly as important as feeling it.
• 
Democrats are now more likely to believe the Russians installed Trump into the presidency than Republicans are to have ever believed President Barack Obama is a Muslim.
• 
It's unsurprising that losers of an election would attempt to minimize its validity.  It happens all the time.
• 
But for the same people who were lamenting our deteriorating trust in democratic institutions — all the rage not long ago — to now embrace this kind of conspiratorial rhetoric is unprecedented.
• 
It's a lot more damaging than the Podesta hack.  It also undermines genuine concerns about Russian activity.
      Chicago torture video represents two distinct kinds of hate crimes - and that means double trouble...  (Fox 01/05/2017)
• 
How can such cruelty exist?  How could someone inflict all that pain and suffering on another human being?
• 
And for what?  Because of the victim's skin color?  Because he was mentally disabled?
• 
The suspects so enjoyed their heinous acts, they videotaped themselves kicking, punching and cutting their victim with a knife.  He was forced to drink out of a filthy toilet.
• 
Their torment lasted for almost two days.  All the while, they laughed.  The footage was displayed on Facebook. 
• 
The perpetrators are heard on the tape yelling obscenities about white people and Donald Trump.  The victim is ordered to say, "I love black people." How does any of that make sense? 
• 
Perhaps it is born of ignorance.  But I suspect these individuals are somehow missing the essential faculties that elevate humans above all other species: compassion and the ability to distinguish right from wrong.  The capacity to reason and feel.
• 
I can't imagine a jury ignoring the incontrovertible acts of brutality seen on the tape.
• 
But then, this is Chicago where criminal justice is to justice... as military music is to music. 
• 
A judge who cares about law and order should rule that the sentences run consecutively, not concurrently.
• 
Throw away the key.  The remote chance at rehabilitation should take a back seat to deterrence and retribution. 
• 
As sad and unnerving as the video is, the remark made by a Chicago police commander should illicit chills.
• 
He seemed to characterize the attack as driven by immaturity.
• 
"They're young adults, he said.  "And they make stupid decisions."
• 
As for the racist taunts, he held out the possibility that they were nothing more than "stupid ranting and raving."
• 
No, sir... these were not the acts of callow misspent youth.  This was torture driven by racial animus. 
• 
Whether it comes from a white man who gunned down nine black parishioners in Charleston or from four black people who inflicted savagery on a white mentally disabled man, it makes little difference. 
• 
Society should give no quarter to bigotry, nor sanction to persecution.
      Disgraceful Obama-Clinton era ends with a dagger in Israel’s back  (INN 01/01/2017)
• 
The incredible electoral landslide victory of non-conservative radical populist Donald Trump, who ran on an anti-elite platform and appealed to the working class, was a watershed moment in all of American history.
• 
Trump's remarkable struggle against his detractors and sore losers transmogrifying into ‘useful idiots', and the increasingly irrelevant media's mockery of the president-elect ad nauseam was a dramatic triumph over adversity.
• 
Obama-Clinton's wider left-establishment cabal and their counterpart in the GOP establishment, represents everything that is wrong with politics in America, and the mainstream media, no longer capable of instilling trust, has lost its credibility.
• 
Americans have known all along: Obama-Clinton completely neglected and ignored the will of the American people in pursuit of a subversively pro-Islamist globalist agenda, Marxist beliefs and evident willingness to undermine and destroy U.S.  sovereignty.
• 
Obama's actions showed deep-seated antipathy to Israel and hatred for everything American. 
• 
After eight years of a lawless presidency and unprecedented actions without consequences, "politics under Obama now seem not just naive but delusional."
• 
Choosing not to veto a UN resolution censuring the Jewish state over biblical Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, the lame duck's parting legacy of stabbing "Israel in the back" was truly appalling.
• 
This is not just scandalous; it's absurd.  America acquiesces to a declaration that, as a matter of international law, the Jewish state has no claim on the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, indeed the entire Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.  They belong to 'Palestine.'
• 
Instead of choosing truth and reconciliation, Obama exploited Muslim grievances, fanned the flames of hatred and religious mistrust, creating even more fear, violence and terrorism across the globe.
• 
Obama's deep-seated "political narcissism" and delusions left the Middle East burning and turned the world upside down. 
• 
Trump was right: "Obama-Clinton have single-handedly destabilized the Middle East, handed Iraq, Libya and Syria to ISIS, and allowed our personnel to be slaughtered at Benghazi.  Then they put Iran on the path to nuclear weapons."
• 
Hillary's meddling in the "Arab Spring" and the failure of America's Do-Nothing Policy in the Middle East gave rise to unprecedented human disasters, global chaos, gut-wrenching violence and expansion of Islamic terrorism and havens for terrorists across the globe.
• 
In the end, the Obama administration will go down as the second largest criminal organization coming in just behind the Clinton's "pay for play" globalist agenda with an admixture of socialist and rigid Marxist ideology.
• 
Obama's ‘deep emotional ties to Islam' and projection of an image of weakness and defeat have significantly hurt the United States and Israel, emboldened America's enemies, endangered our traditional allies and compromised U.S.  security.
• 
As the most sanctimonious, self-righteous and arrogant presidency in history, Obama denigrated America and made it powerless in world affairs.
• 
Obama plays it cool on the golf course, breaking records for the sheer number of pardons for terrorists and criminals as a wave of terror spreads across the globe.
• 
... Obama has added by far more to the U.S.  debt than any president in history.
• 
Obama's legacy will include an increase to the number of 43 million Americans on food stamps, suicide rates at a 30-year high, racial tensions in which policemen were murdered and the rise of groups such as Black Lives Matter.
• 
But Obama seems to be planning to save his 'legacy' by sabotaging Trump.
• 
So this is the way the disgraceful Obama administration and Hillary's political future ends; not with a bang ... but a pathetic whimper and a dagger in Israel's back!
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      Obama's full-blown, year-end temper tantrum  (Fox 12/30/2016)
• 
He is just beside himself that the stupid American voter elected Donald Trump.
• 
... Obama is having an extremely difficult time dealing with what may be his first-ever serious setback.
• 
He has been told over and over – even by the Nobel Committee that awarded him their coveted Peace Prize on spec– that he is extraordinary.
• 
So when a man like The Donald bests him, a man Obama clearly considers a joke, he is undone.
• 
Not for Obama the normal gracious withdrawal into political stasis; no, he wants to prove in these waning weeks of his presidency that he was right all along.
• 
That his agenda is what The People want, even if they don't know it.
• 
... Obama fully expected that by dint of his winning personality, superior insight and sympathy for the Muslim people, to conquer the divides in that region.
• 
He was shocked that his Cairo speech did not cause the waters to part, and the wounds to heal.
• 
And he is angry that, in his mind, Bibi Netanyahu has stood between him and fulfilling this key legacy achievement.
• 
"[Getting peace in the Middle East] is just really hard"; notably, this came as a surprise.
• 
Make no mistake: we do need to rein in Russian misbehavior.  Putin is a dangerous adversary and should never have been allowed out of the penalty box inflicted by drooping oil prices.
• 
But, Obama gave him running room by putting him in charge of the Syrian debacle and making him a key figure in the Iran nuke deal.
• 
So important were those quests to Obama that our president chose to ignore Moscow's serial aggressions and misbehavior.
• 
Indeed, after the conclusion of the Iran accord, Obama called Putin to thank him for his help
• 
Obama is having a difficult time passing the baton, because he thinks the baton should be his in perpetuity. 
• 
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has once again outfoxed President Obama.
• 
His response to Obama's eviction of 35 diplomats and other grave-sounding but ultimately unimportant retaliatory measures?
• 
Instead of engaging in traditional diplomatic tit for tat, the Russian leader has invited the children of U.S.  diplomats to the Kremlin for a holiday party.
• 
Who looks like the adult in the room? 
• 
See related Passing the Baton (Gary Varvel, 11/20/2016) cartoon from Government picture album
      Barack Obama's swan song to Israel  (Fox 12/28/2016)
• 
Now that the smoke has cleared at the United Nations, there is little question about President Obama's intentions; they are now crystal clear.
• 
Incontrovertible evidence exists that suggests the proposal for a return to the 1967 borders in Israel was orchestrated by the White House.
• 
By any measure that is a break from the historic ties between the U.S.  and Israel and, as many commentators have noted, an act of betrayal.
• 
Of course, Israel will ignore the proposition.  Netanyahu hasn't any alternative.
• 
President Trump will regard it as an openly hostile act and may repudiate it by naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
• 
Now terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian Quds can claim a legitimate right to attack an Israeli government theoretically violating the law.
• 
That Obama chose this matter as his swan song is revealing.
• 
His hostility towards Israel has been manifest in many ways, but at no point in the past has an American president acted as Obama has.
• 
This White House abstention and behind the scenes maneuvering with sponsoring states is unprecedented.
• 
The lies leading to the decision and rationalizations in the aftermath are also unprecedented.
• 
Obama has virtually destroyed any legacy he hoped to transmit to future historians about his eight years in office.  He has left in ruins all he tried to manage.
• 
The world is in disarray in large part because of his mismanagement or ignoring any management.
• 
His ego won't allow a dispassionate assessment of the Obama presidency, but if one were to do so after this recent U.N.  fiasco, Barack Obama would have to be considered among the worst presidents in American history.
      Thank You, Professor Sowell  (JWR 12/28/2016)
• 
I first read Thomas Sowell in college — no thanks to my college.
• 
At the majority of America's institutions of "higher learning," reading Thomas Sowell was a subversive act in the early 1990s when I was a student.
• 
It remains so today.  Why?  Because the prolific libertarian economist's vast body of work is a clarion rejection of all the liberal intelligentsia hold dear.
• 
Among the left's most corrosive ideas is the concept of perpetual and permanent racial victimhood, which social engineers pretend to rectify through federally mandated, taxpayer-subsidized preferential policies.
• 
The grand rhetoric of diversity masks the true intent and actual impact of current racially discriminatory "solutions" to past racial discrimination: solidifying the power of the few over the many. 
• 
"Live people are being sacrificed because of what dead people did."
• 
Who benefits?  Not the students, but the bean-counting administrators and political correctness marketers ... who exploit minority students for their glossy admissions brochures.
• 
The other vested interest?  Tenured radicals in what Sowell called the "black studies establishment" who "need students to be in their classrooms" to justify their paychecks.
• 
"In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly 'thinking people' who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression."
• 
"In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes, but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety.  Seldom have so few cost so much to so many."
• 
Sowell's 1999 tome, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice," addressed the abject failures of those who seek to cure all inequities, inequalities, disparities and ills through government intervention.  He summed up his findings thusly:
• 
1.  The impossible is not going to be achieved.
• 
2.  It is a waste of precious resources to try to achieve it.
• 
3.  The devastating costs and social dangers that go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account.
• 
Asked once how he would like to be remembered, Sowell responded: "Oh, heavens, I'm not sure I want to be particularly remembered.  I would like the ideas that I've put out there to be remembered."
      Farewell  (JWR 12/28/2016)
• 
Even the best things come to an end.
• 
After enjoying a quarter of a century of writing this column for Creators Syndicate, I have decided to stop.
• 
Age 86 is well past the usual retirement age, so the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long.
• 
Being old-fashioned, I liked to know what the facts were before writing.
• 
That required not only a lot of research, it also required keeping up with what was being said in the media.
• 
Looking back over the years, as old-timers are apt to do, I see huge changes, both for the better and for the worse.
• 
It is hard to convey to today's generation the fear that the paralyzing disease of polio inspired, until vaccines put an abrupt end to its long reign of terror in the 1950s.
• 
In some other ways, however, there have been some serious retrogressions over the years.  Politics, and especially citizens' trust in their government, has gone way downhill.
• 
Back in 1962, President John F.  Kennedy, a man narrowly elected just two years earlier, came on television to tell the nation that he was taking us to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, because the Soviets had secretly built bases for nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from America.
• 
Most of us did not question what he did.  He was President of the United States, and he knew things that the rest of us couldn't know — and that was good enough for us.
• 
Fortunately, the Soviets backed down.
• 
But could any President today do anything like that and have the American people behind him?
• 
Years of lying Presidents ... destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility which the office itself once conferred.
• 
The loss of that credibility was a loss to the country, not just to the people holding that office in later years.
• 
When I have mentioned sleeping out on a fire escape in Harlem during hot summer nights, before most people could afford air-conditioning, young people have looked at me like I was a man from Mars.
• 
But blacks and whites alike had been sleeping out on fire escapes in New York since the 19th century.
• 
They did not have to contend with gunshots flying around during the night.
• 
We cannot return to the past, even if we wanted to, but let us hope that we can learn something from the past to make for a better present and future.
• 
Goodbye and good luck to all.
      Obama and Kerry's Middle East peace 'plan' is simply an act of moral cowardice  (Fox 12/28/2016)
• 
For eight years, Barack Obama has given lip service to our special relationship with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and our longtime ally.
• 
... with less than four weeks before he leaves office, Barack Obama finally worked with Israel's enemies to pass a United Nations resolution hostile to Israel.
• 
Nothing has changed in our relationship with Israel in the past several years.
• 
Obama has been increasingly hostile toward Israeli interests, but he has maintained a facade of friendship.
• 
The only thing that has changed is how much longer Barack Obama has in office and the fact that voters will never again see him on a ballot.
• 
... John Kerry ... is allegedly expected to recognize a Palestinian state — something no American administration, including this one, has done.
• 
Doing so three weeks before departing office does nothing but create headaches for an incoming administration by an outgoing administration too cowardly to do this before now.
• 
It is not leadership to wait till you have one foot out the door to be bold.
• 
Turning nearly a half-century of American foreign policy on its head in the literal final weeks of a presidency is not competent leadership, but childish petulance.
• 
Childish petulance ... is Barack Obama's legacy.  His childish petulance ... gave rise to Donald Trump, who is Obama's ultimate legacy.
      Obama stabbed Israel in the back  (12/27/2016)
• 
While Christmas carolers were proclaiming Joy to the World - President Obama was backstabbing Israel.
• 
The Simon Wiesenthal Center named the Obama administration's move as the worst case of anti-Semitism in 2016.
• 
"The most stunning 2016 UN attack on Israel was facilitated by President [Barack] Obama when the US abstained on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement construction.  It reversed decades-long US policy of vetoing such diplomatic moves against the Jewish State."
• 
And honestly — it's not all that surprising.  This president seems more comfortable sipping appletinis with the despots who want to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.
• 
"This is about right and wrong.  This is about evil [and] good.  This is such a clear-cut issue.  And I am just beyond, in a seething rage, over what this administration has done in its last days," former Arkansas Gov.  Mike Huckabee told...
• 
President Obama's behavior toward our closest ally is beyond cowardice.  It's downright despicable. 
• 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu says there is proof - ironclad proof - that President Obama was behind the resolution.
• 
"We have rather ironclad information from sources in both the Arab world and internationally that this was a deliberate push by the United States and in fact they helped create the resolution in the first place."
• 
The White House strongly denied the accusation.
• 
But let's be brutally honest, folks.  Who do you believe - Prime Minister Netenyahu or the man who pals around with the Ayatollahs?
• 
If, in fact there is ironclad proof, Congress needs to take immediate action against the president.  At the very least a public censure would be in order.
• 
To be clear, such action by Congress would be unprecedented.
• 
But an unprecedented act of betrayal demands an unprecedented rebuke.
      Trump was right to try to stop Obama from tying his hands on Israel  (Fox 12/23/2016)
• 
The Egyptian decision to withdraw the one-sided anti-Israel Security Council resolution should not mask the sad reality that it is the Obama administration that has been pushing for the resolution to be enacted. 
• 
... in the context of the Security Council where only an American veto can prevent anti-Israel resolutions from automatically passing, an abstention is a vote for the resolution.
• 
And because of this automatic majority, an anti-Israel resolution like this one cannot be reversed by a future American president.
• 
The effect, therefore of the Obama decision to push for, and abstain from, a vote on this resolution is to deliberately tie the hands of President Obama's successors, most particularly President elect Trump.
• 
the passage of such a resolution would disincentivize the Palestinians from accepting Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu's invitation to sit down and negotiate with no preconditions.
• 
Any such negotiations would require painful sacrifices on both sides if a resolution were to be reached.
• 
And a Security Council resolution siding with the Palestinians would give the Palestinians the false hope that they could get a state through the United Nations without having to make painful sacrifices.
• 
President Obama's lame duck attempt to tie the hands of his successor is both counterproductive to peace and undemocratic in nature.
• 
The lame duck period of an outgoing president is a time when our system of checks and balances is effectively suspended.
• 
The outgoing president does not have to listen to Congress or the people.  He can selfishly try to burnish his personal legacy at the expense of our national and international interests.
• 
He can try to even personal scores and act on pique.  That is what seems to be happening here.
• 
... Obama is determined – after 8 years of frustration and failure in bringing together the Israelis and Palestinians – to leave his mark on the mid-East peace process.
• 
But if he manages to push this resolution through, his mark may well be the end of any realistic prospect for a negotiated peace.
• 
One would think that Obama would have learned from his past mistakes in the mid-East.  He has alienated the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Emirates and other allies by his actions and inactions...  Everything he has touched has turned to sand.
• 
Now, in his waning days, he wants to make trouble for his successor.
• 
He should be stopped in the name of peace, democracy and basic decency.
• 
Addendum
• 
As predicted, the United States allowed the anti-Israel resolution to be approved by the United Nations Security Council.
• 
Votes in favor were cast by Russia, which has occupied Kornengsberg since 1945, after capturing that ancient German city, ethnically cleansing its population and bringing in hundreds of thousands of Russian settlers; China, which has occupied Tibet and brought in thousands of Chinese settlers; France who occupied and settled Algeria for many years; Great Britain which has occupied and colonized a significant portion of the globe; and assorted other countries, several of which have horrendous human rights records.
• 
Israel on the other hand, offered to end the occupation and settlements in 2000-2001 and again in 2008 only to be rebuffed by the Palestinian leadership.
• 
But Israel is the only country to have been condemned by the Security Council for an occupation and settlement.
• 
This hypocrisy is typical of the United Nations as even our representative acknowledged when she explained why the United States abstained.
• 
Now peace will be more difficult to achieve, as the Palestinians become further convinced that they do not have to accept Netanyahu's offer to negotiate without preconditions. 
• 
Thank you, President Obama for completing your 8 years of failed foreign policy with a final blow against, peace, stability and decency.
      Happy white males  (Fox 12/23/2016)
• 
Former President Bill Clinton said in an interview days ago, "Donald Trump doesn't know much.  But one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him."
• 
Bravo Mr.  Clinton.  You finally got it right.  It took you a while.  First you blamed the FBI for your wife's defeat.  Then Russia.  Then the electoral college.
• 
But you've finally come to the right conclusion.  It was in fact your Democrat Party's inability to appeal to angry white males that cost your wife the election.
• 
Can you even imagine if I said, "Barack Obama doesn't know much, except how to get angry black people to vote for him."
• 
Every Democrat and civil rights leader in the country would denounce me as a "racist."
• 
Bill Clinton sees white men as dumb and angry for no reason.  He thinks they voted for Trump just because Trump is a man and white.  How insulting.  How racist.
• 
I'm a white male and I voted for Donald Trump because the policies of Obama and Hillary have wrecked the U.S.  economy, killed middle class jobs, skyrocketed the price of healthcare, made it almost impossible to start or run a business, and they've spent our country into unimaginable debt and bankruptcy.
• 
Secondly, Democrats should be asking WHY did so many white males and white people abandon the Democrat Party.
• 
Instead of making fun of us...or insulting us...or writing us off like we don't matter...maybe Democrats should try to figure out why we're angry and craft an agenda that appeals to us, resonates with us, provides solutions to our problems.
• 
Maybe Democrats should come to the realization that if tens of millions of members of one group are angry, maybe there's actually a legitimate reason.
• 
The truth is the Democrat Party offers not a single reason for any angry white male to vote for them.
• 
There's not a single thing you offer to someone who works for a living.
• 
There's not a single thing you offer to someone who pays taxes into the system.
• 
There's not a single thing you offer to someone who desires no handouts from government.
• 
There's not a single thing you offer to someone who pays for their own health insurance out of their own pocket. 
• 
Mr.  Clinton, angry white males are angry at the Democrat Party for good reason.  Your party left us a long time ago.  You wrote us off.  You left us for dead.
• 
You made us feel like villains, for working hard, for earning an honest living, for achieving prosperity, for paying taxes, for asking for nothing from government.
• 
Yes, we're angry.  Yes, we voted for Donald Trump.  This is called payback.
• 
But the good news is, we're not angry anymore.  ... The future looks bright.  We're going to make America great again- for people of all races, religions and genders. 
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: America at Christmas  (Fox 12/22/2016)
• 
What if Christmas is a core value of belief in a personal God who lived among us and His freely given promise of eternal salvation that no believer should reject or apologize for?
• 
What if Christmas is the rebirth of Christ in the hearts of all believers?
• 
What if Christmas is the potential rebirth of Christ in every heart that will have Him, whether a believer or not?
• 
What if many folks today have rejected the true God for government-as-god?
• 
What if the government-as-god has set itself up as providing for all secular needs in return for fidelity to it?
• 
What if this seductive offer has been accepted by millions in America?
• 
What if the acceptance of this seductive offer of government-as–god has ruined individual initiative, destroyed personal work ethic, fostered cancerous laziness, enhanced deep poverty and impelled thoughtless obedience to government in those who have accepted it?
• 
What if government charity is really munificence with money it has taken from those who work and earn it?
• 
What if Jesus came to set us free from the yoke of government oppression and the chains of personal sin?
• 
What if we say with our hearts and mean with our words — Merry Christmas?
      Six ways Trump can show real leadership [and keep Americans safe] in the fight against radical Islam  (Fox 12/21/2016)
• 
A semi-truck plows through a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany, killing 12 and injuring 48.
• 
The Russian ambassador to Turkey is assassinated in Ankara by an off-duty Turkish police officer.
• 
Make no mistake.  What we are seeing in Europe is the hard lesson of what happens when you put out the "welcome mat" to hundreds of thousands of refugees from known terrorist hotspots.
• 
The Tunisian suspect had applied for asylum in Germany last year and received a temporary stay permit and reportedly has extensive ties to radical Islam.
• 
We are also seeing the hard lesson of what happens as a result of the Western world devoting fewer and fewer resources to national security and less emphasis on protecting its citizens.
• 
We should not be surprised by recent events.  ISIS and Al Qaeda have both called on their followers to use trucks in particular to attack crowds.
• 
President-elect Trump was criticized during the campaign for calling for a 21st Century NATO, but he has been absolutely right.
• 
Only 5 of the 28 members of NATO spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on national security as required by NATO guidelines.
• 
Germany, one of the richest countries in Europe, is not even close to being one of the five.
• 
President-elect Trump will step into the Oval office as Europe and other parts of the world are struggling with a terrorism crisis.
• 
It reminds us that radical Islam is now on American soil and much needs to be done to keep Americans safe here at home.
• 
President-elect Trump has promised big changes to our terrorism strategy, but what exactly can he do in the near term?
• 
We must truly transform NATO from fighting the Cold War to fighting terrorism.
• 
One of the president-elect's most important appointments will be the new NATO ambassador.
• 
Remove our nuclear weapons from Turkey now.
• 
Our nuclear weapons should be pre-positioned off of American soil only in those countries that are strong, reliable and stable allies.  It's time to get our nuclear weapons out of there now.
• 
Fund and enforce the Secure Fence Act of 2006 to secure America's borders immediately.
• 
The law is on the books.  Neither President Bush nor President Obama funded it or enforced it.
• 
Mandate more use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) by our intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and NSA.
• 
Establish a real "situational awareness hotline" to harness the power of social media to prevent a terrorist attack and to improve situational awareness during an attack.
• 
As President-elect Trump prepares to take office, his most important responsibility will be to keep Americans safe.
• 
It's time for bold, decisive American leadership once again.
      Laura Ingraham: The NeverTrump crowd is still a nuisance, and still wrong  (Fox 12/20/2016)
• 
... he continues his attacks on the president-elect while celebrating what he calls the "ancient virtue" of moderation. 
• 
He fears that moderation is "out of step with the times, which are characterized by populist anger and widespread anxiety."
• 
He's right about the anger and anxiety.  But, as usual, he's wrong in his diagnosis.
• 
The voters didn't turn on the Clinton/Bush Establishment because it was too moderate — instead, they turned on it because it was too radical.
• 
The whole problem with Wehner's argument is that it rests on a flawed understanding of what "moderation" looks like.
• 
He has confused the message with the form in which it is delivered.
• 
Donald Trump often gives fiery and dramatic speeches in front of thousands of cheering blue-collar types.
• 
George W.  Bush and Hillary Clinton prefer giving really dull speeches to small groups of extremely rich people.
• 
Wehner assumes that the cheering blue-collar types want radical policies, while the boring millionaires want to be safe and steady.
• 
But this assumption is simply incorrect.  On issue after issue, for the last 20 years or so, the bipartisan Establishment has delivered policies that were not moderate, or even safe:
• 
1.) It was not moderate to respond to 9/11 with a sweeping plan to bring democracy to every nation in the Middle East, even nations that had no tradition of free and open elections.
• 
2.) It was not moderate for a president — no matter how much money he raised from big donors — to radically alter the immigration policy of the United States by unilaterally refusing to enforce the law.
• 
3.) It was not moderate to take the position that almost any effort to push back at the market-distorting practices of China ... is nothing more than "protectionism."
• 
4.) It was not moderate to assume that any deal claiming to advance "free trade" ... is good for the United States.
• 
5.) It was not moderate to stretch the executive war-making power to its absolute constitutional limits...
• 
6.) It was not moderate to do nothing, year after year, to prevent a massive housing bubble that almost destroyed the economy in 2008.
• 
7.) It was not moderate to go to Republican voters who were furious with party leadership, and who had been complaining about the immigration issue for almost 20 years, and tell them that the only two acceptable presidential candidates in 2016 were Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.
• 
On each and every one of these points, it's the Bush supporters like Wehner who are the radicals, and the Trump voters who are simply trying to reassert common sense. 
• 
With respect to immigration, for example, the moderate — and even prudent — thing to do is to assure everyone that the laws on the books will be enforced without special privileges for anyone.
• 
The notion that the president executes the laws as written is a bedrock principle of our democracy, but one that was sadly ignored in recent decades.
• 
... it makes sense to use our economic leverage over China to encourage that country to stop acting in ways that distort markets — it is not only radicalism but folly to pretend China will change on its own.
• 
We need to understand that talking in a low tone of voice doesn't make you a moderate.
• 
Trump didn't win the election because the voters wanted to do radical things like threaten war with Russia, eliminate any legal distinction between citizens and non-citizens, require gay marriage by judicial fiat in all 50 states, sell off more and more of the country to China, or allow policy discussions to be dominated by a tiny coterie of insiders and donors.
• 
Trump won the election because the voters were trying to stop those type of radical notions.
• 
Populist candidates like Donald Trump will always communicate in a very dramatic way, because that's the only way they can overcome the institutional advantages of their elite opponents.
• 
But after two decades of radical ideas couched in really boring prose, Trump is actually offering common sense solutions that are much more consistent with our history and prior practice.
      Cal Thomas: What Michelle Obama doesn't understand about hope [and humility]  (Fox 12/20/2016)
• 
"Those who travel the high road of humility will not be troubled by heavy traffic."
• 
Because of Donald Trump's election, she told ... "We are feeling what not having hope feels like."
• 
Michelle Obama's hubris that only her husband could provide hope, despite the unpopularity of his policies (his personal popularity remains high), may be why St.  Paul cautioned: "Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought." (Romans 12:3).
• 
Pride is the first sin, which leads to all others.
• 
Anyone who puts faith in a politician to make his or her life better is worshipping a false god.
• 
Politicians promote faith in themselves because it helps their careers and feeds their egos.
• 
When was the last time you heard a politician say only you can make your life better by the choices you make?
• 
Have you ever heard a politician say, "We are clearing the field of liberty as much as we can so that you have the best opportunity to succeed at whatever you believe your gifts qualify you for"?
• 
If politicians started talking like that people might have more faith in themselves and politicians would see their influence and power decline significantly.
• 
A friend of mine once observed that humility is so light a grace that once you think you have attained it, you've lost it.
• 
The Obamas could have offered real hope, especially in the hearts of African-American children, by leading the poor among them out of failing inner-city schools and giving their parents a choice of where to send them for a better education, which would have led to a better life.
• 
They rightly sent their daughters to elite private schools, rather than bad D.C.  public schools, but denied that choice to those less affluent, thus perpetuating a spirit of hopelessness in those voters who had hoped for something beyond a "let's move" exercise program and a vegetable garden on the White House lawn.
      Time to face reality, Obama — Trump is going to be president  (NYP 12/18/2016)
• 
So this is how it ends — in a whimper wrapped in self-pity and recriminations.
• 
It was supposed to sit atop the national power pyramid for decades, a new paradigm of liberals, progressives, the young, the old, the unions and blacks, Latinos, Muslims and Asians.
• 
The torch would be passed from Obama to Clinton, a liberal Supreme Court would vastly expand executive power and the regulatory state would enforce climate-change orthodoxy on all industry and elitist dictates on every American.  Globalism would be the new patriotism.
• 
But a funny thing happened on the way to one-party dominance: The people who work for a living said no, hell no.
• 
Their punishment was well-deserved, as demonstrated by Obama and Clinton.  Full of excuses and blaming everyone except themselves, their closing acts proved it is time for them to go.
• 
They have nothing new to offer, with their vision of the future limited to larger doses of the same failing medicine and their intolerance for disagreement showing they would never learn from their mistakes.  Their bad ideas had run their disastrous course.
• 
With Obama and the Clintons encouraging the attempted theft of an election they lost and failing to denounce intimidation and death threats against Trump electoral voters, most Americans have reason to consider the Dems a dead letter.
• 
Yet the final verdict on 2016 depends on Trump's performance as president.  If he delivers "jobs, jobs, jobs" and peace-through-strength abroad, he will forge a new governing consensus and remake the political landscape.
• 
While it's too soon to know what exactly Trumpism stands for, it's clear that many Republican orthodoxies and special-interest debts are being tossed overboard.
• 
The obstacles, of course, are many.  Much of the Islamic world is on fire and the great powers are moving ever closer to confrontation in Europe and Asia.
• 
Obama leaves office with Russia, Iran and China eating our lunch, with the Chinese theft of a Navy drone a goodbye insult.  The unspeakable horror of Syria and the rise of the Islamic State will forever be part of the 44th president's legacy.
• 
So too will be domestic divisions, which grew more stark and bitter in the last eight years.
• 
Against that dark reality, it is reasonable to worry the nation is on the verge of a crack-up.  But there is also a possibility that America is on the verge of a new greatness.
• 
It's up to Trump.  ... victory presents him with an opportunity to make government work for the people, instead of the other way around.
• 
He is off to a great start and must stay focused to avoid falling down the rabbit holes of petty disputes.
• 
America needs the change he promised and he needs to commit every ounce of his being into keeping that promise.  If he succeeds, so will the nation
      Keith Ablow: Free therapy because Trump won?  (Fox 12/15/2016)
• 
Taken literally (and we should), the mayor is telling citizens of New York City that they should indulge any potential weakness inside them that makes them believe they can't deal with the results of American democracy when the results don't go their way — that they're easily injured, inherently weak and don't have the personal fortitude to keep fighting for what they believe in.
• 
See, there are politicians who will use any occasion to coax people into dependency on the state — whether for food, shelter, the raising of their children or hand-holding — when anything in life doesn't go their way.
• 
The mayor is suggesting to citizens of New York City that they should consider whether the democratic process has injured them to such an extent that they need to limp into therapists' offices and, kind of, cry it out.  Like coddled children.
• 
He seems to believe that he and other progressive "leaders" like him should be the only ones with personal power — the only real adults.
• 
Isn't that why progressives would tax citizens even more, if they could — because individuals don't really know how to use their own money?
• 
Isn't that why they would disarm citizens, if he could — because Americans don't need to be able to defend themselves and decide when it is necessary?
• 
Isn't that why many of them would reverse the election of Donald Trump, if they could — because they believe that Americans who voted differently than they did must not have known what they were doing?
• 
Be weak, de Blasio and the likes of him say, and you will be embraced.  You will be loved.
• 
This undermining of human autonomy, self-confidence and self-determination in citizens of a city or a nation is the opposite of what psychiatrists like me stand for — which is self-possession.
• 
And make no mistake, it isn't just funny and it isn't just foolish.
• 
It is a strategic effort to erode individual well-being, individual thought, individual action and individual potential.
• 
This nation has faced tests of its will before, in world wars — and it faces one now, in radical Islamic terrorism.
• 
Our survival — and the survival of liberty around the globe — will depend, ultimately, on American, God-given strength.
• 
And those who would bleed that strength from our souls, would only set the stage for other vampires, who don't pretend they love us, to finish us off.
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: Did the Russians hack Hillary?  (Fox 12/15/2016)
• 
... made the startling allegation that the Russian government hacked into Clinton's colleagues' email accounts to tilt the presidential election toward Donald Trump.
• 
They even pointed to statements made by CIA officials backing their allegations.
• 
President-elect Trump has characterized these claims as "ridiculous" and just an "excuse" to justify the Clinton defeat, saying they're also intended to undermine the legitimacy of his election.
• 
He pointed to FBI conclusions that the CIA is wrong.  Who's right?
• 
The American intelligence community rarely speaks with one voice.
• 
The members of its 17 publicly known intelligence agencies ... have the same biases, prejudices, jealousies, intellectual shortcomings and ideological underpinnings as the public at large.
• 
The raw data these agencies examine is the same.  Today America's spies rarely do their own spying; rather, they rely on the work done by the National Security Agency.
• 
... the Fourth Amendment requires a judicially issued search warrant specifically describing the place to be searched or the thing to be seized before the government may lawfully invade privacy, and these warrants must be based on probable cause of criminal behavior on the part of the person whose privacy the government seeks to invade.
• 
Instead of these probable cause-based, judicially issued search warrants, the government obtains what the Fourth Amendment was written to prohibit — general warrants.
• 
General warrants are not based on evidence of probable cause of criminal behavior; rather, they are based on government "need."
• 
This is an unconstitutional and absurd standard because the government will always claim that what it wants, it needs.
• 
General warrants do not specifically describe the place to be searched or the thing to be seized; rather, they authorize the bearer to search where he wishes and seize whatever he finds.
• 
This is the mindset of the NSA — search everyone, all the time, everywhere — whose data forms the basis for analysis by the other agencies in the intelligence community.
• 
In the case at hand, the CIA and the FBI looked at the same NSA-generated raw data and came to opposite conclusions.
• 
Needless to say, I have not seen this data, but I have spoken to those who have, and they are of the view that though there is evidence of leaking, there is no evidence whatsoever of hacking.
• 
Leaking is the theft of private data and its revelation to those not entitled or intended to see it.
• 
Hacking is remotely accessing an operational system and altering its contents — for example, removing money from a bank account or contact information from an address book or vote totals from a candidate's tally. 
• 
There is no evidence of anyone's altering the contents of operational systems, but there is evidence — plenty of it — of leaking.
• 
If hackers wanted to affect the outcome of the election, they would have needed to alter the operational systems of those who register voters and count votes, not those who seek votes.
• 
... whoever accessed these emails did not alter the operational systems of any of the targets; the accessor just exposed what was found.
• 
We do not know what data the president-elect examined.  ... He should be given the benefit of the doubt because constitutionally, the intelligence community works for him — not for Congress or the American people.
• 
Who did the leaking to WikiLeaks?  Who had an incentive to defeat Clinton?
• 
Whose agents' safety and lives did she jeopardize when she was extremely careless — as the FBI stated — with many state secrets, including the identity and whereabouts of U.S.  intelligence agents and resources?
• 
The answer is obvious: It was the same intelligence community that cannot agree on the meaning of the raw data it has analyzed.
• 
Though the truthful revelation of private facts may have altered some voters' attitudes, there is no evidence that it altered ballot totals.
• 
Did the Russians hack Hillary Clinton?  No.  No one did.
• 
But some American intelligence agents helped WikiLeaks to expose much dirty laundry.
      Buckle up — Trump’s era of disruption has only just begun  (NYP 12/14/2016)
• 
Iran warns it will destroy Israel and start World War III if Donald Trump tears up the nuclear deal.
• 
China calls him "as ignorant as a child" and threatens to end all cooperation if Trump doesn't recognize Taiwan as part of China.
• 
Then there are the Hillary Clinton Democrats, who are trying to steal the election they lost.
• 
Some fellow Republicans also are breaking with the president-elect over Russian hacking allegations...
• 
If you blinked, you missed the Trump honeymoon.  He hasn't taken office, yet already, the long knives are out for him.
• 
Numerous reports of his demise were not premature, they were flat-out wrong.
• 
I suspect something similar is happening now.  The whole world looks to be having a nervous breakdown over his early actions, and many Americans are wondering if the wheels are about to come off the Trump train.
• 
Some on the left, including those in the White House, certainly hope so and are doing all they can to delegitimize his victory and undermine democracy.
• 
If only they treated America's enemies so ruthlessly.
• 
Still, the good news is that they hope and scheme in vain.  Trump shows no signs of going wobbly, and while he doesn't always keep calm, he does carry on.
• 
He has taken the most vicious pounding of any candidate in modern times, and still pulled off one of the great upsets in political history.  Why would he buckle now?
• 
If he were the appeasing sort, he would back off now, say soothing things to make the hysterics feel better, and pledge to play nice.
• 
Fortunately, that's not the man America elected.
• 
Trump is a master negotiator, and now that he has the attention of China, Iran and Democrats, he will try to use that as leverage to cut better deals for national security and working Americans.
• 
But Trump is also a pure disrupter, the greatest threat to politics-as-usual ever to win the Oval Office.
• 
He may want to negotiate, or he may keep plowing ahead until he gets all that he wants.
• 
The other party never knows which side of him they're getting.  Is he looking to make a deal, or does he want it all?
• 
"My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward.  I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I'm after."
• 
That's why he won the election.  Most of the voters in 30 states wanted change, and he was the clear change agent.
• 
But change of the magnitude they want and he seeks — wholesale change, at home and abroad — can't happen smoothly.
• 
Many eggs must be broken to rearrange the power structure.
• 
The architects of the status quo, including the mainstream media, establishment leaders of both parties, as well as hostile powers such as China and Iran, have everything to lose from Trump's agenda.
• 
Most of his changes will come at their expense, so they can be expected to fight him all the way, as they are now.
• 
That's fine, that's how the Founders devised the separation of powers, and that's the way the world works — everybody pursues their own interests.
• 
Trump will not always prevail, or always be right.
• 
His election was an urgent course correction, but sometimes, the correction will need to be corrected.
• 
The key is for him to keep his bond with the American people by speaking directly to them, and listening to what they say in return.
      Sean Hannity: The real political hacks are Dems who suddenly care about cybersecurity  (Fox 12/14/2016)
• 
Sore loser Democrats continue to push the idea that Russia helped President-elect Donald Trump win the election.
• 
The left wing is running wild with reports saying the CIA, without any concrete or new evidence, somehow knows that Russian hackers influenced the election in favor of Trump.  That's their conspiracy.
• 
Democrats and the abusively biased alt-left mainstream media are pushing the CIA's assessment as an undeniable fact, but of course, it is not.
• 
The FBI has reached a much different conclusion than the CIA.  It has not found conclusive evidence that Russia was trying to assist Donald Trump in any way.
• 
... the left, led by President Obama, continue to repeat falsehoods.  Why?  To delegitimize President-elect Donald Trump.
• 
President Obama has done a major flip-flop on the potential of the election in America being rigged or interfered with.
• 
Back in October, President Obama mocked Trump for raising concerns about fairness in an election.
• 
"The larger point that I want to emphasize here is that there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even — you could even rig America's elections," the president said three weeks before Election Day.
• 
"And so I'd advise Mr.  Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes."
• 
Who's whining now that Donald Trump won?
• 
President Obama took the Russian hacking idea even further by alleging that President-elect Trump has direct ties to Russia.
• 
"You had what [were] very clear relationships between members of the president-elect's campaign team and Russians and a professed shared view on a bunch of issues," he said.
• 
When it comes to working with the Russians, well, President Obama clearly has a pretty short memory. 
• 
Remember when he was caught on a hot mike saying this to the prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, back in 2012?
• 
"This is my last election," he said, when he thought no one else could hear.  "After my election, I have more flexibility."
• 
"I understand," Medvedev replied.  "I'll transmit this information to Vladimir."
• 
The Obama administration knows a lot about interfering in foreign elections, too.
• 
A 2014 congressional investigation found an Israeli political group used a $300,000 Obama State Department grant to create a political apparatus to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election bid.
• 
President Obama pretends to be morally outraged over Russian hacking and influence, but he's done next to nothing on cybersecurity in the entire eight years he's been president.
• 
During his time in office, we have seen hacks of NASA, the Department of Energy, the FEC commission networks, the U.S.  Postal Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the IRS, the Office of Personnel Management and the White House itself!
• 
If the White House ever addresses cybersecurity, it'll be under the Trump administration.
• 
This president had his chance, and he failed to act.
      Dreaming of leaving: How California can wave goodbye to the US  (Fox 12/14/2016)
• 
Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 led South Carolina to try to secede from the Union.
• 
Donald Trump's election last month has raised similar talk in California.
• 
"It's impossible to look at the Trump campaign and not see a direct threat to the civil liberties and dignity of California citizens."
• 
California can't secede.  The Civil War settled that.
• 
But there are other potential avenues by which the Golden State can leave the Union: unanimous consent, retrocession, and deannexation. 
• 
California might be able to exit theoretically — and certainly could practically — if nobody objected. 
• 
Another alternative is to let California go out the way she came in.
• 
The common historical view is that the United States "conquered" California ... in the Mexican "war of aggression" of 1846-48.
• 
This is true as far as it goes, but incomplete.
• 
Technically, we acquired California as part of the Mexican "cession" in the 1848 Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo.  The U.S.  paid Mexico $15 million for this territory.
• 
So, why couldn't we cede California back for, say, $415 million (what $15 million in 1848 dollars is worth today)?
• 
Maybe that's what candidate Trump and Mexican President Nieto were talking about last summer.
• 
The proceeds would pay for the border wall after all.
• 
San Francisco wouldn't need to be a "sanctuary city" for Mexican illegals, it would be part of Mexico again.
• 
While easier than "unanimous consent," retrocession would be difficult if it required an old-fashioned treaty and ratification by two-thirds of the Senate.
• 
While President Obama would feel free to retrocede by "executive agreement" with his "pen and phone," President-elect Trump would have proper constitutional scruples.
• 
That leads us to a third scenario.  California could go out the way that Texas came in.
• 
The Texans (mostly illegal Anglo immigrants) won their independence from Mexico in 1836.
• 
Lincoln recognized the legitimacy of this exercise of the "right to revolution" (not "secession").
• 
"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better."
      Newt Gingrich: Donald Trump and the incredible 2016 election  (Fox 12/13/2016)
• 
The media and the political establishment didn't take Donald Trump seriously when he announced his campaign the following June.  They didn't take him seriously when he sped to the top of the polls.  They didn't take him seriously when almost every indicator on social media showed he won the first debate.
• 
And as their shock on election night proved, many didn't take him seriously right up until the moment he won the election.
• 
Fifteen years into the 21st century, Americans had suffered through 9/11, two wars without victory, a housing bubble, a financial crisis, a Wall Street bailout, a failed stimulus, a weak recovery, a health care law passed over the strong objections of the public, its disastrous implementation, a lawless administration, and a media elite that was increasingly disdainful of ordinary Americans.
• 
The border was not under control (in fact the administration had illegally suspended immigration enforcement), the U.S.  had reached a dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, Baltimore was burning, the left was pushing transgender "bathroom bills" in many states and cities...
• 
Americans were disgusted with all of this.  ... The stage was set for an outsider who would bring real change to reverse the years of failure and decline.
• 
And Donald Trump arrived on the scene, promising to "Make America Great Again" and seeming big and brash enough to actually do it.
• 
Having voted for well-intentioned "change" in 2008, Americans finally understood that a government managed by the same people with the same ideas was not going to suddenly upend a system they created, owned, and thrived in.
• 
So Americans were open to someone radically new — someone who understood the problems they faced and offered common-sense, clear commitments to get back to a government that works.
• 
This is what the media didn't understand, and why they were so surprised when attacks they expected to end Trump's campaign didn't have much effect.
• 
People understood the difference between the important and the trivial — and they weren't going to let trivia ruin their only chance at real change.
• 
The currents that propelled his candidacy were strong and consistent: populism, disgust with the Washington establishment in both parties, opposition to corruption, distrust of the media, resistance to a policy of managed decline, and a desire for revolutionary change.
• 
Trump's message was strong and consistent over time, as well.  He was for the people over special interests.  He was for America over the global elites.  And he was for common sense over continuing stupidity.*
• 
President-elect Trump now has the opportunity to follow through on this bold change agenda he campaigned on.
      Sean Hannity: Why Obama, Democrats and Never Trumpers suddenly care about cybersecurity  (Fox 12/13/2016)
• 
After President-elect Donald Trump's decisive victory, hacking suddenly matters to sore loser liberals, the Obama administration and of course, the never Trumpers.
• 
"Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and we tried to play the Russian/CIA card.  It would be called a conspiracy theory!"
• 
... Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, said that Electoral College electors have the right to see intelligence on potential Russian hacking before they vote on Dec.  19.
• 
Imagine if the tables were turned and it was Donald Trump's campaign trying to do this?  The left would go nuts!
• 
The left's recount scheme failed miserably.  So did their effort to blame the Electoral College system that has served our nation for more than two centuries.  Ditto the attempt to pin the blame on "fake news."
• 
Now, they're going to blame the Russians.  It won't put Hillary Clinton in the White House, but President Obama and his fellow Democrats are hoping for the next best thing: to delegitimize Donald Trump.
• 
If all of these people care so much about Russia's alleged hacking, why did they seem so unconcerned about Clinton's private server scandal and the great threat that that posed to our national security?
• 
... authorities believe there is a 99 percent chance that up to five foreign intelligence agencies may have accessed Clinton's server and taken emails.
• 
No one has offered proof as to who hacked Podesta's emails, but we do know who put them out and we know what they showed us.
• 
... the mainstream media – not the Russians – were trying to influence the election in favor of Clinton win.
• 
The emails revealed how alt-radical left journalists sent their stories to Podesta and others for pre-publishing approval, went to his home for secret dinners and also how interim DNC chair Donna Brazile leaked debate questions to the Clinton campaign.
• 
How about doing an investigation into that?
• 
America has a major cybersecurity problem.  In the past couple of years alone, government agencies like the Office of Personnel Management, the IRS, the Department of Defense, the State Department and the White House have all been hacked.
• 
Obama did little or nothing about those hacks, but now that his party has lost the White House, he has gotten religion on cybersecurity.
• 
But the real goal of the Democratic Party's fake moral outrage machine is not to improve security or even get to the bottom of a hacking investigation.
• 
It is simply to wound Donald Trump as he prepares to take office and try to make America great again.
      Sore loser Obama turns to Russian hacking to delegitimize Trump's triumph  (Fox 12/12/2016)
• 
Make no mistake: it's payback time.  In ordering up a "deep dive" into possible Russian interference in the election of Donald Trump, sore loser Barack Obama wants to delegitimize the real estate magnate's win.
• 
His motive?  Punishing Trump for the years the mogul spent publicly questioning whether Obama was an American citizen, which cast doubts on the legitimacy of his presidency.
• 
Ah, how sweet the revenge.  And how pitiful.
• 
President Obama has searched high and, increasingly, low, for the reasons he and Hillary Clinton lost the election.
• 
The suggestion is that Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to win; the liberal media has hinted darkly that the president-elect and his campaign team have "ties" to the Russian head of state.
• 
As most Americans review Trump's defense and security picks, the notion that the new administration will go easy on our adversaries – including Russia – is laughable.
• 
Like most of the world, Moscow no doubt expected Clinton to win.
• 
Coming into office weakened by Putin's meddling would have undoubtedly pleased Moscow no end.
• 
Obama's call for an investigation is transparently bogus.  ... everyone knows that no serious inquiry could possibly be completed by January 20, when Trump will be sworn in.
• 
The federal government operates with glacial pacing; Obama knows the report will likely never be completed, and so the issue of Russian hacking will hang like a cloud – like the "birther" rumors – over the Trump White House.
• 
The United States should not tolerate cyberattacks from a foreign government; nor should we tolerate cheating in our politics.
• 
Obama is still smarting from having put himself on the line during the campaign, telling the Black Congressional Caucus, for instance, "I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election."
• 
He made Hillary's campaign all about him, but she lost anyway.  That has to sting.
• 
Especially since Americans, in choosing Trump, also chose to undo most of Obama's most precious accomplishments.
• 
On the campaign trail, Trump made no secret of his desire to toss Obama's climate agenda, his Iran deal and, most importantly, ObamaCare.
• 
In recent weeks, he has nominated cabinet officials who are well suited to carrying out those promises.
• 
For a president who has put such stock in his "legacy", and who took office being compared to Abraham Lincoln, the erasure of his eight years must be intolerable.
• 
What will be left of the Obama presidency, which chose to act unilaterally through executive actions and regulations rather than work through Congress?  Not much.
• 
Actually, with his embarrassing reluctance to shoulder any responsibility for the drubbing given Democrats over the past eight years, his legacy will begin with a very sour taste in the country's mouth.
      I'm a Democrat but Clinton staffer Jennifer Palmieri's twisted logic is exactly why we lost  (Fox 12/08/2016)
• 
"As I like to note, Clinton received more votes for president than any white man in history," she crowed.
• 
Got it.  White men bad, women good.
• 
... she believes that we can cruise to electoral dominance if we build a coalition of voters based on identity politics.
• 
In other words, if Democrats can get a particular slice of Americans to the polls – women, Jews, ethnic minorities, gay men and lesbians – we will win.
• 
In short, we couldn't lose.  We just needed to better organize these various categories of people and inspire them to show up on Election Day.
• 
First, they assumed that each category of people was largely homogenous.
• 
Next, the experts came up with policy solutions and related messaging to cater to a category's specific needs. 
• 
With those two pieces in the bag, the actual candidate running for office was important but not terribly so, provided that she or he stuck to the script.
• 
And then, on November 9, America woke up to President-elect Donald Trump.
• 
As a shell-shocked campaign and party struggled for answers – coming up with a litany of excuses – they missed the obvious: successful campaigns are built on candidates first, policies second, and coalitions of voters last.  We had it completely backwards.
• 
... I couldn't stomach Clinton and didn't trust Trump.  In fact, I still don't.
• 
But the American people chose differently.  Whether I like it or not, Donald Trump will be the president of the United States in just over a month.
• 
I will not whine or protest.  I will not demand a recount.  Instead, I will encourage people to support President Trump as their conscience allows, and oppose him respectfully and fairly where they cannot.
• 
We owe him the chance to succeed.  That's how adults behave in a democracy.
• 
We will not be falsely divided into a nation of neat categories.  If you cannot accept that, then please go away.  And take your fellow ideologues with you.
• 
The country deserves a faithful opposition, and that requires a credible voice to hold Trump accountable.
• 
Unless we ditch identity politics and stop whining, we will not be taken seriously.  Instead, we will be stuck at the edge of an electoral abyss.
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: Are sanctuary cities legal?  (Fox 12/08/2016)
• 
Trump has made known his intention to deport all undocumented people, irrespective of family relationships, starting with those who have committed crimes.
• 
In response to Trump's stated intentions, many cities ... have offered sanctuary to those whose presence has been jeopardized by the president-elect's plan.  Can they do this?
• 
Under the Constitution, the president is the chief federal law enforcement officer in the land.
• 
Though the president's job is to enforce all federal laws, as a practical matter, the federal government lacks the resources to do that.
• 
As well, the president is vested with what is known as prosecutorial discretion.  That enables him to place priority on the enforcement of certain federal laws and put the enforcement of others on the back burner.
• 
It is one thing, the courts ruled, for the president to prioritize federal law enforcement; it is quite another for him to attempt to rewrite the laws and put them at odds with what Congress has written.
• 
It is one thing for the president, for humanitarian reasons or because of a lack of resources, to look the other way in the face of unenforced federal law.  It is another for him to claim that by doing so, he may constitutionally change federal law.
• 
Enter the sanctuary cities.  These are places where there are large immigrant populations, among which many are undocumented...  Thus the question: Are state and local governments required to help the feds enforce federal law?  In a word: No.
• 
The term "sanctuary cities" is not a legal term, but it has been applied by those in government and the media to describe municipalities that offer expanded social services to the undocumented and decline to help the feds find them...
• 
As unwise as these expenditures may be by cities that are essentially bankrupt and rely on federal largesse in order to remain in the black, they are not unlawful.
• 
Cities and towns are free to expand the availability of social services however they please, taking into account the local political climate.
• 
Enter the Supreme Court.  It has required the states — and thus the municipalities in them — to make social services available to everyone resident within them, irrespective of citizenry or lawful or unlawful immigration status.
• 
This is so because the constitutional command to the states of equal protection applies to all persons, not just to citizens.
• 
So the states and municipalities may not deny basic social services to anyone based on nationality or immigration status.
• 
As Ronald Reagan reminded us in his first inaugural address, the states formed the federal government, not the other way around.
• 
They did so by ceding 16 discrete powers to the federal government and retaining to themselves all powers not ceded.
• 
Thus the Trump dilemma.  He must follow the Constitution, or the courts will enjoin him as they have his predecessor.
• 
He cannot use a stick to bend the governments of sanctuary cities to his will, but he can use a carrot.
• 
He can ask Congress for legislative grants of funds to cities conditioned upon their compliance with certain federal immigration laws.
• 
All of this is part of our constitutional republic.  By dividing powers between the feds and the states — and by separating federal powers among the president, Congress and the courts — our system intentionally makes the exercise of governmental power cumbersome by diffusing it.
• 
And since government is essentially the negation of freedom, the diffusion of governmental powers helps to maximize personal liberty.
      Mr.  Trump, you have a unique opportunity to defeat Islamism.  As a Muslim I'm ready to collaborate  (Fox 12/05/2016)
• 
Islamist attacks are very much related to Muslims – all Islamists are Muslims, even though most Muslims are not Islamists.
• 
Islamism comes from within Muslim communities,Thus the question: Are state and local governments required to help the feds enforce federal law?  In a word: No.  and, while a corruption of Islam, nonetheless relates to Islam proper from which Islamism steals and borrows.
• 
Without Islam there could be no Islamism.  But without knowing Islam, one cannot unveil Islamism. 
• 
Why have we failed to dismantle Islamism, the ideology that delivered 9/11?  Because we have been unable to examine and disable Islamism through frank speech.
• 
Dismantling Islamism demands we distinguish Islam the religion, from Islamism the totalitarian ideology.
• 
Trump's Commission on Radical Islam is the first step towards doing just that.
• 
the United States remains stymied in advancing understanding of Islamism restrained by President Obama's refusal to acknowledge Islamism.
• 
Claiming ‘Islamophobia,' this refusal, championed by much of the American intellectual press through both Obama administrations, confines public discourse.  Ironic, since refusing to acknowledge Islamism is the ultimate Islamophobic act.
• 
This denial has had several negative effects:
• 
First, U.S.  military and strategic thinkers are hindered in identifying threats and planning efforts to counter both violent and nonviolent Islamism. 
• 
Second, but far worse, Muslims like me – observing Islam but avowed combatants of Islamism- experience reverse Islamophobia: while our views are marginalized on the basis of ‘Islamophobia,' we are simultaneously denounced as Islamophobic by both the uninformed and Islamist-sympathizing Muslims who seek our silence.
• 
The net result?  The space examining Islamism narrows stifling debate.  Islamism wins.
• 
Islamism is the single most compelling threat to secular liberal democracy.
• 
Islamism is a political totalitarian ideology, a 20th century creation, which masquerades as Islam, a 1,400 year old monotheism.
• 
Islamism is both nonviolent and violent.  Radical Islam is the violent component of Islamism.  Nonviolent Islamism — institutional Islamism — seizes organs of democracy to shore power.
• 
First – the relentless seeking of a new world order via imposition of a global transnational dictatorial ‘caliphate.'
• 
Islamism seeks its establishment within democracies.  Islamists understand the potency of installation through popular vote.
• 
All totalitarianisms need an external enemy.  Islamism is no different.  Hence a third tenet: Islamism holds Jews and global Jewry as chief enemy manifesting an anti-Semitism with religious overtones as central to its ideology.
• 
Evolutionary terrorist jihad renders not only as sanctioned but as sacrament the targeting of non-combatant civilians.
• 
The fifth tenet is Islamist ‘sharia law' — an invented version perverted to impose totalitarian rule without historical precedent.
• 
Finally, Islamists are consumed with a craving for authenticity and purity - spending all their energies asserting theirs is the true Islam, and the rest of us, Muslim or not, are all imposters...
• 
As a nation, we may come to the necessary realizations slowly and with difficulty because of the intensely inflammatory climate surrounding such debate ... but if we remain silent, both Muslim and U.S.  interests will suffer greatly.
      I'm a Democrat and I'm ashamed at how tone deaf we've become  (Fox 12/03/2016)
• 
"There's a difference for voters between what offends you and what affects you."
• 
To understand what she meant, look to the recent developments in Indiana.  Millions of voters in the Rust Belt are in awe as 1,100 of their fellow blue-collar workers at Carrier narrowly missed being laid off.
• 
Media reaction captures how tone deaf we have become.  My party is advancing stories of outrage over the generous tax incentives that Carrier received – some $7.0 million at present.
• 
We're hearing disbelief that companies can now blackmail Trump into getting their own sweetheart tax deals. 
• 
While there's merit to these concerns, ... however offended some people may be, there are far more who are affected by the outcome.
• 
For better or worse, the headline is clear: Trump is a president who picks up the phone and saves jobs.  Democrats are whiners.  It doesn't matter whether that's fair.
• 
During the election, Secretary Hillary Clinton levied a million arguments for why Trump wasn't fit for the presidency.
• 
He was accused of hating women, gays, Latinos, Jews, Muslims, and overweight beauty queens.
• 
He had a bad temperament.  He was a Russian spy.  He bankrupted contractors.  He hadn't paid taxes since the 1980s.  His skin was orange and his hair fake.
• 
Since the election, we've stuck to the same script.  His chief strategist is a white supremacist.  His cabinet picks are Islamophobic.  His business interests are in conflict with Washington protocol.
• 
But guess what?  Most voters didn't – and still don't – care.  In the Rust Belt and rural communities, they have bigger problems to tackle. 
• 
Idle factories, saw mills, and coal mines.  Families falling apart from opioid addiction.  Incomes that have less buying power than 40 years ago.  Kids living at home because they are swamped with student debt.
• 
They're running out of hope.
• 
Enter Donald Trump and his willingness to shame an American corporation into submission.  First with Ford in Kentucky.  Now Carrier in Indiana.
• 
Love him or hate him, voters see a man who delivers.
• 
All of which begs the question: how will Democrats be relevant in this new era of a hands-on president?
• 
After all, the country needs a faithful opposition.  We are not China with their one Communist Party.
• 
First, we must swallow our pride and acknowledge that Trump is America's president. It doesn't matter if we don't like the man.  The American people have chosen.
• 
Next, let's celebrate if Trump succeeds. When over 1,000 men and women in Indiana keep their paycheck, let's be joyful and figure out how to do it again.  Wishing for his failure – or minimizing his successes – is petty and undignified.  Voters see right through it.
• 
Third, let's find common cause with Trump where it's in concert with our values.
• 
Of course, there are important differences between the parties where compromise will be tough.  ... Republicans want fewer benefits, Democrats higher taxes.  We're all going to have to give a little.  Nobody will get everything they want.
• 
Make no mistake, there are areas where we simply cannot compromise.  ... But even here we can at least be civil as we disagree.  Voters and the courts will decide who is right.
• 
All told, Democrats have a choice: we can make the next four years productive for the American people, or we can choose obstruction.
• 
But let's remember that the friends and family of those Carrier workers are watching.  And so, too, are the American people.
      Liberals get hysterical over the 'alt-right' but we are living in their 'alt-left' world  (Fox 12/02/2016)
• 
There is no alt-left.  They are not alternative.  Their mainstream is radical and out of the American mainstream on almost everything.
• 
This was quite obvious as liberals bemoaned the death of Fidel Castro, a man his own daughter called "a tyrant."
• 
... the left is even worse when it comes to policy, where it shows its true colors (red).
• 
On every major issue of the day, the left is unified.
• 
Taxes.  Climate.  So-called "free" college.  Citizens United.  Transgender bathroom/locker rooms/showers.  ObamaCare.
• 
In each case and thousands more, the left wants more, bigger, better-funded government.
• 
Liberals want higher taxes because they know how to spend your money better than you do — on what they want.*
• 
They have turned climate science into a religion where disbelief is to be persecuted or even prosecuted.
• 
... rather than examine the causes for spiking college costs, the left wants taxpayers to spend another $50 billion a year as the national debt nears $20 trillion.
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This is the essence of the liberal world view.  The solution to every problem is bigger government.
• 
If there are no regulations, then they are needed.  If they exist, then there needs to be more and a better-funded enforcement agency.
• 
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
• 
... they are out of the mainstream of an America where 37 percent are conservative and 35 percent are moderate.  Just 24 percent are liberal.
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Yet the most extreme of that 24 percent dominate our culture.
• 
The progressive, far-left agenda has conquered the traditional left's agenda.
• 
It is extreme and doesn't want compromise.  It wants to demonize or destroy opponents and intrude into every aspect of our lives.
• 
Opposing views are suppressed in any space liberals control — academia, Hollywood and media.
• 
Colleges and universities have become safe spaces for liberal thought while conservative speakers are regularly chased off campuses or harassed by rabid alt-left protesters.
• 
Hollywood spent a quarter century promoting Hillary Clinton for president and has already used nearly 30 TV shows to target the man who eventually defeated her.
• 
Liberals saw the Obama presidency as a chance to kill off conservativism and they used the tactics honed by brown shirts of the 1930s — including violence, vandalism and intimidation.
• 
They and their media allies then treat every such incident as the reincarnation of Gandhi.
• 
... protesters vandalized, blocked traffic, intimidated and threatened police and set fires — all under the banner of "revolution."
• 
The alt-left doesn't just use violence to enforce its will.  It smears its opponents as racists and Nazis while journalists help them do it.
• 
The alt-left is more than just a web of sometimes-demented liberal websites and pundits.  It is the major media outlets and journalists who credential those sites and ideas.
• 
If this election didn't prove the traditional news media are devoted left-wingers, nothing will.
      Cal Thomas: Mr.  Trump, please pick John Bolton for State  (Fox 12/01/2016)
• 
... ormer presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has divided the Trump team between those who think it is a good idea and those who think Romney's severe criticism of Trump during the campaign disqualifies him.
• 
After Trump hammered Hillary Clinton for her "extremely careless" handling of classified material when she was secretary of state, it would be hypocritical of Trump to name Petraeus.
• 
How about someone with experience as a diplomat, including within the State Department and as a former U.N.  ambassador?
• 
John Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a regular commentator on cable news, does not engage in wishful thinking, or project American morals on those who don't share them in the vain hope they might be contagious.
• 
Here is Bolton on the threat of radical Islamic terrorism: "When you have a regime that would be happier in the afterlife than in this life, this is not a regime that is subject to classic theories of deterrence."*
• 
... Bolton is unrelenting in his criticism of the toothless UN and of many U.S.  policies that have not produced results in America's best interests — precisely the attitude of President-elect Trump, who wants to look out for America and its interests first.
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In this pursuit he is not unlike one of his predecessors, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who said, "What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving."*
• 
It is a mugging, and too often it is the United States and Israel who get mugged.
• 
Here's another Bolton quote: "Negotiation is not a policy.  It's a technique.  It's something you use when it's to your advantage, and something that you don't use when it's not to your advantage." That is the opposite of wishful thinking.
• 
... Bolton wrote that it is a fiction to believe Iran won't violate terms of the nuclear weapons deal it made with the Obama administration.
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He argues that "snapback" sanctions won't work because sanctions failed before.  He thinks the only option for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of the ayatollahs is Israel.
• 
"However, Iran may well retaliate," Bolton acknowledges.
• 
"At that point, Washington must be ready to immediately resupply Israel for losses incurred by its armed forces in the initial attack, so that Israel will still be able to effectively counter Tehran's proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, which will be its vehicles for retaliation.  The United States must also provide muscular political support, explaining that Israel legitimately exercised its inherent right of self-defense.  Whatever Obama's view, public and congressional support for Israel will be overwhelming."
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Who is to blame for this situation?  Bolton writes: "American weakness has brought us to this difficult moment.  While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore its duress with pride.  It was never an even match.  We now have to rely on a tiny ally to do the job for us.  But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern states), get ready.  The easy ways out disappeared long ago."
• 
This is sober reality and precisely the worldview that is needed at the Department of State.
      Greg Gutfeld: Obama slams Fox News [nd rings the division bell, for the last time]  (Fox 12/01/2016)
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In a recent interview in that reprehensible wad of trash called Rolling Stone, President Obama pinpointed why the Democrats lost the election.  He blamed it on Fox News.
• 
It's true that "big chunks" watch Fox News, but they don't have it on in their bars and restaurants, because those who are not leftists are usually not outwardly political.
• 
They have no desire to enforce their views on you. 
• 
And perhaps they're used to keeping their views to themselves because people like Obama often mock them for having them. 
• 
Trump's outgoingness may have changed this, but for the most part, the average non-liberal would rather talk pets than politics.
• 
For the left, it's always been the reverse.  For them, the personal is always political, and they have no choice but to infect every arena in life with their strident opinions. 
• 
... because Obama is a progressive, and because he's surrounded by progressives, he projects their sense of political urgency and identity onto his political adversaries.  He assumes we're all just like him, only in reverse.
• 
In the Rolling Stone interview, he accuses Fox News and others of lying to foment division.
• 
That's ironic, given that he's saying these things in Rolling Stone, the rag that peddled a massive lie (the UVA rape hoax) that ruined lives, and the same rag that put the Boston Bomber in heroic pose on its cover.
• 
You can't get a better mix of deceit and divisiveness than that.
• 
The bottom line: The division began decades ago, when the left made politics a measure of your morality.
• 
If you weren't like them, you were immoral.  You were not simply wrong, as the saying goes, you were evil...
• 
No one on the right ever pulled this kind of stuff on the left.  True, some held on to bad ideas, but some on the left did, too.
• 
But we just assumed they were wrong, whereas they saw us as damned.  Or as Hillary said, irredeemable.
• 
Comedians, singers and assorted talking heads continue to crap on Trump voters, reducing them to some braying, mindless, bigoted mob.  But the more they do this, the more Trump supporters they create.
• 
Their simplistic, single-minded arrogance reveals the debilitating irrelevance they feel when the country no longer listens to their whine.
• 
Oh, yes ... in the good old days, it used to be that you could call someone a bigot, a sexist or simply evil — and it mattered.
• 
But the left called it all too much, abusing their power, so it's no longer believable.
• 
So you're left with a President Obama — a smart, gifted man — ending his tenure bitterly chatting to a pathetic, marginal magazine about a network he believes gave the country President-elect Trump.
• 
He's lost the plot.  All Trump did was galvanize and organize a group of people tired of being villain-shamed by the arrogant and the elite.
• 
The fact that this group happened to watch Fox News is simply a correlation, not a cause.
• 
But by blaming Fox News, it at least helps the outgoing president achieve one thing: not having to blame himself.
      Laura Ingraham: 'Infantile' Obama has no 'sense of personal responsibility'  (Fox 12/01/2016)
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"Almost seven in 10 people routinely say the country's going in the wrong direction, wages have basically been flat since 1999, and yet this president comes out and in a very infantile manner blames cable news without any sense of personal responsibility."
• 
... apparently felt that his own record had absolutely nothing to do with Trump's stunning election victory and the Republicans' success in maintaining control of Congress. 
• 
"In this election, [voters] turned out in huge numbers for Trump.  And I think that part of it has to do with our inability, our failure, to reach those voters effectively.  Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country, but part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments."
• 
"They say Trump can be immature at times, [but] what was that?"
• 
"And he goes over to Europe and he goes, 'well you know I'm actually very popular, look at the polls, my policies are actually very popular,' [but he] just got shellacked, [his] party just got shellacked."
• 
Of course, Obama has spent his entire time in office blaming other people ... for his own failures and unpopularity, so it's hardly surprising that with less than two months left in office his blame-everyone-but-himself game is still going strong.
      Five ways Trump can change the conversation about police  (Fox 12/01/2016)
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America has endured nearly eight years of bitterly divisive politics and policies regarding law enforcement.
• 
President Obama's contentious actions and rhetoric only served to drive a wedge between three quarter million law officers and the communities they serve.
• 
It hasn't been impossible to see instances where a police officer acted in a manner that brought doubt and suspicion on their department.
• 
But the misguided narrative that linked the actions of a very few to an entire profession has generated a wave of mistrust against law officers and gave a voice to hateful, anti-cop groups like Black Lives Matter.
• 
In fact, were it to be fully and fairly reported, we would know of exponentially more acts of police bravery, sacrifice and heroism than the comparatively few questionable shootings of citizens.
• 
Too often in the media we see a singular theme when it comes to law enforcement – that the police are racist, over-militarized Neanderthals who sign on to abuse the rights of citizens.
• 
With that predicate, here are five recommendations for President-elect Trump to guide him along a far different path than his predecessor:
• 
1.  Put it in perspective. Hundreds of thousands of police officers engage in tens of millions of citizen contacts every year, the vast majority of which are entirely routine and uneventful.  By comparison, police use of deadly force is extraordinary and fatalities at the hands of police are anything but an epidemic.
• 
2.  Keep your thumb off the scale. President Obama's background in law and national platform often led him to weigh in prematurely, and inappropriately, on law enforcement matters that were nascent or where fact-finding was ongoing.
• 
3.  Data matters. The lack of comprehensive data available on crime and punishment in this country creates an opportunity for those who seek benefit from a false narrative.
• 
4.  Use your words and actions wisely. Build up rather than break down and recognize that the imagery of where you go, what you do and who you're with has great power.
• 
Building enduring coalitions locally or nationally includes recognition that black lives do matter, just like blue lives, and, yes, all lives; however, groups that presume their own viewpoints are only those worthy of consideration should be rejected.
• 
5.  Invest, invest, invest. In too many places, America's police are expected to do far too much with far too little.
• 
The new administration should invest in hiring, training, equipping, and leading police officers across the country.
• 
Community policing, crisis intervention and de-escalation training, and tools like body cameras are only beneficial if the right training and leadership is behind them.
      I'm a Democrat.  Here's how Hillary and the recount campaign leaves me feeling  (Fox 11/28/2016)
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Saturday, Hillary Clinton announced that she had joined a recount effort in at least three Midwestern states, questioning whether "an accurate vote" will be reported to the Electoral College.
• 
This comes on the heels of a concession speech where she told her supporters that, "We must accept this result... Donald Trump is going to be our president.  We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."
• 
Hours after Clinton delivered her remarks, President Obama joined his nominee in asking the same of the country – and my Democratic party.
• 
It was a moment of pride for many Americans.  We could celebrate a peaceful transition of power, even if we didn't like the result.
• 
It's now clear that Clinton's speech wasn't genuine.  According to her campaign, they've had lawyers, data scientists and analysts combing over election results starting "the day after the election," or the day of her otherwise thoughtful concession speech.
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Their goal: find evidence that would suggest a hacked result, despite the president – and my former colleagues in the intelligence community – stating clearly that there are no signs of foreign tampering at the ballot box.
• 
Why would Clinton do this?  Some suggest it's a vengeful ploy to make Trump look illegitimate in the eyes of the American people.
• 
But I suspect that this is the last, embarrassing gasp of a flailing politician, unable to accept defeat with grace.
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As a Democrat, I am frustrated and ashamed.  Unlike Clinton, I realize that America's history was built not just on its gallant winners but also on its noble losers.
• 
Clinton is not the first Democrat from New York to lose the presidency after winning the popular vote.  That honor goes to Samuel Tilden during his disputed election of 1876.
• 
At the time, Tilden's supporters were utterly convinced that his opponent – President-elect Rutherford B.  Hayes – would bring about the end of the nation.
• 
As one voter put it: "Goodbye free government, free elections, free speech, and free press, as well as all civil liberties."
• 
Newspaper titan and fellow Democrat Joseph Pulitzer – of Pulitzer Prize fame – called for 100,000 armed Tilden supporters to storm Washington D.C.
• 
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed; Tilden was not one to foment a revolution.  He gave a respectful concession speech and retired to New York.
• 
Perhaps in the back of Tilden's mind was another great American loser, General Robert E.  Lee.
• 
Just before his surrender at Appomattox near the end of the Civil War, Lee's chief of artillery – General Porter Alexander – proposed that the Southern army collapse into bands of guerilla fighters, continuing the war until an exhausted North finally conceded.
• 
Lee refused, eloquently summarizing why the South had to accept defeat.
• 
"You and I as Christian men have no right to consider only how this would affect us.  We must consider its effect on the country as a whole.  Already it is demoralized by the four years of war.  If I took your advice, the men ... would be compelled to rob and steal in order to live.  They would become mere bands of marauders... We would bring on a state of affairs [that] would take the country years to recover from."
• 
Lee surrendered the next day.
• 
In politics and war, the lesson is clear: American patriots aren't always the winners.  Indeed, how we lose sets the example for what it means to win.
• 
Tilden could have led an army to D.C.  – he won the popular vote.  Lee could have opened the gates of hell and secured a Southern victory.
• 
But both men understood something of far greater consequence: the American republic is worth more than ego or ambition.
• 
With Clinton's embrace of an electoral recount, it is clear that she cannot accept defeat with grace, nor does she hold our nation in the same regard as Tilden or Lee.
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We must make clear that we offer no excuses for our loss.  ... we realize that we lost because the nation wanted change and our candidate was too flawed and untrustworthy to carry that mantle.
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And so we will work with President-elect Trump to make America great again. 
• 
When his solutions make sense, he will have our vote.  When he loses his way, we will hold him accountable.
• 
In short, we will be a faithful opposition; we will offer better solutions.
• 
That is how America works, even if it's not the America that Hillary Clinton wants us to be.
      Gregg Jarrett: Did Hillary Clinton just squander her "get out of jail free" card?  (Fox 11/28/2016)
• 
Hillary Clinton has never played the board game, "Monopoly". 
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How do we know?  Because even novice players learn quickly that you always hang on to a "get out of jail free" card.  No matter what.  You never know when you're going to need it.  And you usually do. 
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Clinton had such a card... and has managed to recklessly squander it. 
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... it was clear the Democratic nominee was losing Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and had no hope of winning the White House.  Clinton heeded the advice and made the call.  Wise move.
• 
The president-elect was clearly moved by what he described as a "lovely" conversation with Clinton.  "It was a tough call for her.  She couldn't have been nicer.  She's very strong and very smart".
• 
The newly-elected president suddenly seemed reluctant to have his Department of Justice pursue Clinton for criminal wrongdoing.
• 
After spending months promising his supporters that he would see to it that Clinton is prosecuted over her email server and, perhaps, the Clinton Foundation, Trump reversed himself.
• 
"It's just not something that I feel strongly about.  I don't want to hurt the Clintons, I really don't.  She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways."
• 
Clinton's election night concession seemed to have prompted Trump to hand her a "get out of jail free" card.  If she was moving on, then he was moving on.  And so would the nation. 
• 
But in politics, what is given... can be taken away.  Especially when the recipient of a generous gift exhibits a conspicuous lack of gratitude.  Which is precisely what Clinton has now done.
• 
Recounts almost never swing enough votes to change the outcome.  Clinton would have to do it in not one, but all three states.
• 
The deadlines are imminent and, in some districts, have already passed.  Forget the fact that Trump's lead in the state exceeds 70,000 votes.
• 
... FBI Director James Comey laid out a meticulous case of how Clinton violated the Espionage Act, but then dismissed it by claiming that "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case". 
• 
Sorry, Mr.  Comey, but there are plenty of reasonable prosecutors who would be eager to do so
• 
Common sense, or lack thereof, is evidenced by a person's actions.
• 
While Clinton may be a smart person, it makes no sense whatsoever for her to risk criminal indictment by alienating the one person who can best insulate her from the legal consequences of her own extremely careless, if not intentional, conduct.
• 
And for what?  A recount that is destined to fail? 
      Dems' doctrine of tribalism at home and universalism abroad is finally finished  (JWR 11/25/2016)
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One of the more salutary outcomes of the recent election is that Democrats are finally beginning to question the wisdom of basing their fortunes on identity politics.
• 
They're reconsidering now not because identity politics balkanizes society, creates state-chosen favored groups and fosters communal strife.  They're reconsidering because it's not working.
• 
Moreover, the legitimation of identity politics by the Democrats has finally come back to bite them.
• 
Trump managed to read, then mobilize, the white working class and to endow it with political self-consciousness.
• 
What he voiced on their behalf was the unspoken complaint of decades: Why not us?
• 
All these other groups, up to and including the relatively tiny population of transgender people, receive benefits, special attention and cultural approbation, yet we are left out in the cold, neglected and condescended to as both our social status and economic conditions decline.
• 
Here is a man telling a black audience in September that he would "consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy" if they don't turn out for the Democratic candidate in November.
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Yet on his valedictory tour abroad just nine weeks later, he lectures anyone who will listen on the sins of parochialism.
• 
His urgent message for the nations of the world, including his own, is to eschew "tribalism" in the name of a common universalism.
• 
Putin is quite prepared to leave the Antarctic ice sheets to Kerry while he sets his sights on Eastern Europe and the Levant.
• 
Our allies, meanwhile, remain amazed that Obama still believes the kinds of things he said in his maiden U.N.  address about the obsolescence of power politics and national domination - and acts accordingly as if his brave new world of shared universal values had already arrived.
• 
Now he returns to Europe to urge everyone to resist the siren song of "a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism."
• 
This is rather ironic, given that what was meant as a swipe at both European and Trumpian ethno-nationalism is a fairly good description of the Democratic Party's domestic strategy of identity politics.
• 
As for foreign policy, there has always been and always should be an element of transcendent mission to U.S.  actions.
• 
But its reductio ad absurdum was the Obama doctrine of self-sacrificial subordination of U.S.  interests to universal values.  That doctrine is finished.
• 
The results, from Ukraine to Aleppo to the South China Sea, are simply too stark.
      Trump's supposed 'Muslim registry' is just more fake news  (JWR 11/23/2016)
• 
The first thing to know about Donald Trump's alleged proposal for a Muslim registry is that it isn't a Muslim registry.
• 
This has been lost in a freakout that has some brave souls already promising acts of civil disobedience to disrupt and overwhelm the prospective registry. 
• 
... the administration might re-instate a Bush-era program tracking visitors to the United States from countries with active terrorist threats.
• 
This suggestion was spun into a first step toward herding our Muslim neighbors into internment camps.
• 
... was referring to the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS, which placed special requirements on adult male visitors from countries like Saudi Arabia.
• 
Implemented after 9/11 - when, you might recall, adult male visitors from Saudi Arabia toppled the World Trade Center - it collected fingerprints and photographs when visitors from the select countries arrived and required them to check in periodically to confirm that they were abiding by the terms of their visas.
• 
It's true, as the critics point out, that the selected countries all were, with the exception of North Korea, majority-Muslim.
• 
But any program concerned with international terrorism will, inevitably, focus largely on Muslim countries (although European countries like France and Belgium have developed an indigenous terror threat).
• 
The 9/11 hijackers, notably, all came from majority-Muslim countries.
• 
The requirements of the Bush program were watered down over time until it was suspended by the Obama administration in 2011.
• 
But the program wasn't illegal or unconstitutional (the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in its favor).
• 
Nor was it immoral — foreign visitors should be subject to any reasonable strictures we impose in exchange for the privilege of coming here.
• 
That the so-called Muslim registry is now a thing, a subject of high dudgeon and hot debate, is testament to how the same media that complains about "fake news" is committed to manufacturing and driving its own narratives only loosely connected to reality.
      John Stossel: Thanksgiving tragedy  (Fox 11/23/2016)
• 
... before that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because they didn't respect private property.
• 
When they first arrived in Massachusetts, they acted like Bernie Sanders wants us to act.  They farmed "collectively." Pilgrims said, "We'll grow food together and divide the harvest equally."
• 
Bad idea.  Economists call this the "tragedy of the commons." When everyone works "together," some people don't work very hard.
• 
Pilgrims almost starved.  Governor Bradford wrote in his diary, "So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could ... that they might not still thus languish in misery."
• 
His answer: He divided the commune into parcels and assigned each Pilgrim his own property, or as Bradford put it, "set corn every man for his own particular.  ... Assigned every family a parcel of land."
• 
That simple change brought the Pilgrims so much plenty that they could share food with Indians.  Bradford wrote that it "made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been."
• 
We see this principle at work all around us today.  America is prosperous because private property is mostly respected, and people work hard to protect what they own.
• 
China rose out of poverty only when the Communist rulers finally allowed people to own property and keep profits from it.
• 
But wait, you say, didn't the Native Americans live communally?  Isn't that proof that socialism and collective property work?
• 
No.  It's a myth that the Native Americans had no property rules.  They had property — and European settlers should have treated those rules with respect.
• 
"Private garden plots were common in the East, as were large community fields with plots assigned to individual families.  Harvesting on each plot was done by the owning family, with the bounty stored in the family's own storehouse."
• 
Today, however, many American Indians live in poverty.  It's not because Native Americans are lazy or irresponsible.  When Indians are allowed to own their own land, they prosper.  The laws of economics are the same for all people.
• 
"Well, by taking care of us, that means providing social welfare programs.  The only way to break the cycle of poverty (is) real property rights."
• 
... no group in America has been more "helped" and "managed" by the federal government than Indians.  Because of that, no group has done worse.
• 
If we want to give people — all people — reason to celebrate this Thanksgiving, give them the proven formula for prosperity.
• 
Get government out of the way, and respect every individual's property rights. 
      Backward-Looking 'Progressives'  (JWR 11/22/2016)
• 
When it comes to criminal justice, there is much the same kind of preoccupation on the left with the past that cannot be changed.
• 
Murderers may in some cases have had unhappy childhoods, but there is absolutely nothing that anybody can do to change their childhoods after they are adults.
• 
The most that can be done is to keep murderers from committing more murders, and to deter others from committing murder.
• 
People on the left who want to give murderers "another chance" are gambling with the lives of innocent people.
• 
That is one of many other examples of the cruel consequences of seemingly compassionate decisions and policies.
• 
Ironically, people on the left who are preoccupied with the presumably unhappy childhoods of murderers, which they can do nothing about, seldom show similar concern about the present and future unhappy childhoods of the orphans of people who have been murdered.
• 
Such inconsistencies are not peculiar to our time, though they seem to be more pervasive today.
• 
But the left has been trying, for more than 200 years, to mitigate or eliminate punishments in general, and capital punishment in particular.
• 
What is peculiar to our time is the degree to which the views of the left have become laws and policies.
• 
A long overdue backlash against those views has begun in some Western nations, of which the recent election results in the United States are just one symptom.
• 
How all this will end is by no means clear.  Just as the past cannot be changed, so the future cannot be predicted with certainty.
      Will Trump live up to his promises?  (INN 11/22/2016)
• 
Donald J.  Trump won.  He stood alone, while others attacked, and he beat them all, one by one at their own game.  He did it without the support of K-Street lobbyists, the media, the political machine, and key Republican leaders.
• 
Despite his rough exterior and his mischievous past, Americans rewarded him by choosing him as the 45th president of the United States of America.  Not by a thin margin, as some predicted, but by an electoral landslide.
• 
Will he succeed?  Will he be committed enough to lead America in the right direction and correct the damage Barack Obama has caused?
• 
He has proven to Americans during his campaign that he could.  The big question: Will he?_
• 
Few will question the significance of what he had achieved during his record-breaking run for presidency.  He did the impossible. 
• 
He outsmarted the smart, and he exposed the big three – America's left-wing political-educational-media establishment – for what they were: hypocrites, liars, traitors and corrupters – and he turned the American public against them.
• 
He emerged from political obscurity to the number one spot because he connected with the people by telling them what they believed.
• 
Obviously blinded by his actions, she never realized that the man whom she identified as a loser was a showman, a clever, self-made billionaire businessman who knew tricks on winning that no one else has ever used so successfully to win.
• 
Any self-made billionaire who was willing to sink an estimated $50 to $100 million of his own money into his campaign had to know what he was doing.
• 
... regardless of what singular force put Donald over the top, it can never be denied that the corruption of the big three (educators, journalists and government) together with Hillary's collusion (with the government and the media) and her political embarrassments (Benghazi, her emails, the Clinton Foundation, and more) finished her off.
• 
It took the failures of the Obama administration and the promises of its continuation under Hillary to convince Americans that it was time to rise up against the establishment in place.
• 
Yet, despite this impressive victory, his enemies have refused to accept the will of the people.  In the days following the election, organized groups of left-wing radicals began rioting in key U.S.  cities to protest the election results.
• 
Every single nuance of their anger, regardless of how irrational, was reported by the media with special attention and support.
• 
The left-wing establishment who couldn't deal with defeat was fighting back like petulant children in panic mode.
• 
They feared the president-elect just might live up to his promise and drain the swamp in Washington and destroy the long-standing, corruption in the city.
• 
Some pundits don't think this will happen, that the president-elect will become another fast-talking, Inside the Beltway politician.
• 
His battle was too fierce; his ego is too huge to fail us.
• 
Failure to live up to his promises, after such a strong mandate from the public, would not only destroy him and the Trump empire, but it could also bring about a civil war.
• 
I don't think this is what the President-Elect Donald J.  Trump really wants and will allow.
      Enough hysterics.  Donald Trump's foreign policy isn't reckless or radical  (JWR 11/21/2016)
• 
The global funk over President-elect Donald Trump's nascent foreign policy — from Sen.  John McCain's declaration that his Russia policy is "unacceptable" to hysterical over-interpretations of his intentions regarding China and trade — will not last long.
• 
Trump has declared that Japan should spend more on defense to share the burden of containing China more evenly, but there will be no rude demands.
• 
As for China and its maritime expansionism, Trump's other policies matter more than his China policy in and of itself
• 
... he appears not likely to stop Pacific Command from doing its job of "keeping the sea lanes open" — the polite expression for denying Chinese territorial claims over coral reefs, rocks, and shoals.
• 
... Trump has said many times that he will press for more fairness in alliance burden-sharing, especially by NATO's richer members.
• 
The more likely outcome is that Trump will get his increases — perhaps to the agreed-upon 2 percent of GDP.
• 
... no American president can say much on the subject once he is in office, and he can do even less, because the United States has no say in Europe's own institutions.
• 
Trump has said many times that he views "radical Islam" as a hostile ideology.  Saudi Arabia has been the main source of this brand of Islam worldwide, followed by India (yes, secular India gives a tax exemption to the enormous Deobandi seminary that spawned the Taliban).
• 
But the Trump administration will not start religious quarrels and is not likely to abandon established diplomatic doctrine on sovereign immunity...
• 
In his eagerness to reach a nuclear accord with Iran, Obama disregarded Israeli and Saudi security concerns — they are under attack by Iran every day — and treated their objections with icy contempt.
• 
The Saudis took it personally as a betrayal — Washington consorting with its enemies against its friends.
• 
Although Trump will not repudiate the Iran accords he so loudly criticized (he can't do so alone, as it's a multilateral agreement), he will stand strong against Tehran.
• 
His officials will not tolerate any deviations from the nuclear deal, will not move toward lifting the ballistic missile and terrorism sanctions, and if Iran's Revolutionary Guards try to humiliate Trump with naval provocations as they did with Obama, the U.S.  Navy will sink a small boat or two, and U.S.-Saudi relations will be splendid once more.
• 
For many, it was Trump's criticism of recent trade treaties that was most alarming.  A belief in free trade these days is something of a religion, and that made Trump an apostate.
• 
He will not withdraw the United States from the Word Trade Organization, and he will not cancel any existing trade treaty, including the North American Free Trade Agreement he kept attacking during the campaign.  That treaty is U.S.  law like any other treaty, and presidents cannot change the law; only Congress can, and it will not.
• 
On the other hand, Trump would certainly invoke the existing anti-dumping trade barrier provisions that his predecessors were very reluctant to use.
• 
True, that would allow the Chinese to retaliate against the dumping of U.S.  exports — except there is no such thing.
• 
Look instead for fiscal measures to discourage U.S.  industries to migrate abroad, offset by the lower corporate tax that will reduce the incentive to offshore anyway.
• 
So, yes, Wall Street was right to oppose Trump, and industrial workers were right to back him.
• 
It is all very reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's arrival.  Nobody believed that the United States could renounce coexistence — going totally against the establishment consensus — but Reagan did that, simply refusing to endorse detente.
• 
The outcome was not a nuclear war and the end of the world but rather the end of the Soviet Union.
• 
This time there is something else to end: the enormously costly pursuit of wars in countries where the United States keeps failing.
      Advice for the Loyal Opposition  (JWR 11/21/2016)
• 
"The object of Parliament," observed Winston Churchill at election time in 1951, "is to substitute argument for fisticuffs."
• 
The object of at least a proportion of those on the streets is to substitute fisticuffs for argument, and indeed for Parliament: The less self-aware even chant "This is what democracy looks like!" — by which they mean not the election but the post-election riots and looting and assaults.
• 
Some among these self-proclaimed champions of women and immigrants wish to substitute rape for argument, a cause of such broad appeal that the ideological enforcers at the monopoly social-media cartels breezily permitted the hashtag "Rape Melania" to "trend" on Twitter.
• 
The object of the food-delivery company Grubhub, meanwhile, is to substitute unemployment for argument.
• 
The CEO, Matt Maloney, wrote to all his employees advising any Trump voters among them to take a hike:
• 
"Please reply to this email with your resignation because you have no place here."
• 
Ha!  What a wimp.  Why fire your political opponents when you can fire at them?  Substituting assassination for argument, Matt Hartigan:
• 
"Getting a sniper rife and perching myself where it counts.  Find a bedroom in the whitehouse that suits you motherf**ker.  I'll find you."
• 
Who's Matt Hartigan?  Some unemployable lippy slacktivist with a master's in transgender and colonialism studies?
• 
No, he's President and CEO of a cool high-tech cyber-security company called PacketSled.  The sled has now decided to move on without its lead dog.
• 
CNN's Sally Kohn was getting it back-to-front at 9pm on election night:
• 
"My sense is that if Trump wins, Hillary supporters will be sad.  If Hillary wins, Trump supporters will be angry.  Important difference."
• 
When a major political party suffers the scale of defeat the Democrats have (losing the presidency, the Senate, the House, and governor's mansions and state legislatures across the map), a period of private introspection and public circumspection is often helpful...
• 
Just a thought, but, if you keep insisting that half your fellow citizens are haters, maybe you're the hater.
• 
For a year-and-a-half they shoveled industrial-strength coastal sneering into the path of the Trump train on a scale that would have derailed any other candidate before he got to Iowa.
• 
Instead, Trump just bulldozed through it — and so easily that he won the White House for a fifth of what Hillary spent.
• 
If elite condescension failed to deny him the presidency, is it likely to be any more effective now that he is the president?
• 
Strangely enough, all these people swaggering about insouciantly demonizing millions of their fellow citizens as haters and Satanists profess to feeling "scared" and "unsafe" from the terror all around.
• 
Fortunately, in the midst of their fears they've found a marketing opportunity:
• 
"Days after Donald Trump was named president-elect, Americans are spreading a message of unity with a simple symbol: a silver safety pin."
• 
"My #SafetyPin shows I will protect those who feel in danger bc of gender, sexuality, race, disability, religion, etc.  You are safe with me."
• 
That's true in the sense that, if Matt Hartigan is around and they've confiscated his sniper rifle, he'll be able to borrow your safety pin and stab Trump with it.
• 
Can you really substitute virtue-signaling for argument?  Especially when it's this lame?
• 
And, indeed, are there enough safety-pins in America for all those who feel unsafe?
• 
Or will Trump's trade war be dealt a massive crushing defeat as cheap knock-offs from Chinese safety-pin factories flood the US market?
• 
There is something grim and trivializing about snowflakes with safety-pins.  Are they truly feeling "unsafe" in their safe space?  If so, the safety-pin will come in handy for holding their recyclable diapers on.
• 
... the reaction to the normal pendulum swings of contested elections is profoundly unhealthy, and totalitarian in its implications.
• 
The exit-polling revealed that large numbers of people who didn't "approve" of Trump personally nevertheless voted for him ...because they agreed with him on policy, on trade and immigration and unwon wars, and his willingness to stick to his positions through a barrage of elite scorn. 
• 
Thus: "Hater!" "Racist!" "Misogynist!" These are safety-pins with the point drawn, but in the end they're mere fashion accessories, too.
• 
"What shocks me is that students, academics, men of letters, should display what I had thought was an essentially uneducated inability to differentiate between a disputation and a quarrel.  The real objection to this sort of thing is that it is all a distraction from the issue.  You waste on calling me a liar and hypocrite time you ought to have spent on refuting my position.  Even if your main purpose was to gratify resentment, you have gone about it in the wrong way.  Any man would much rather be called names than proved wrong."
• 
So you're gonna need something new.  Like maybe try refuting Trump's positions rather than labeling the millions of voters who support them.
• 
If the object is to win the next election, sneering is not a substitute for argument.
• 
"The Play-Doh generation might not have the mettle to slog it out on the Western Front , but that doesn't mean that they are not ready and willing to fight.  These are exactly the types who get motivated to savage mob violence very quickly and easily, which is the ultimate goal of the Left's infantilization of the culture."
• 
... if you de-normalize Trump, you de-normalize the millions of your fellow citizens who voted for him.  And, if you de-normalize his voters, you de-legitimize their votes.  And, if you de-legitimize their votes, you de-legitimize the very idea of representative government.
      Barack Obama’s legacy has been canned  (INN 11/19/2016)
• 
American voters took Trump seriously without taking his words literally, whereas American elite took his words literally and never took him seriously.
• 
The Democrats ... needed a candidate that could connect with people, not with despotic dictators, investment bankers, and Lady Gaga.
• 
Hillary said she was "shattering the glass ceiling" for women.  She was not shattering anything.
• 
She is the wife of a previous president, which is common in banana republics...
• 
Many Democrats simply want a "woman" to be the U.S.  president, and Hillary is the best-known woman in politics, though by no means the best qualified.
• 
The intervention of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Libya and Egypt undermined governments that were no threat to American interests, leading to terrorist chaos in Libya and Islamic extremists taking over in Egypt.
• 
Fortunately, contrary to American foreign policy, the Egyptian military got rid of the extremist government that persecuted Christians, threatened Israel, and aligned itself with America's enemies.
• 
Libya, as a failed policy, belonged to Hillary as much as to Obama.
• 
... Libya was supposed to be her great accomplishment as Secretary of State; she would knock off Qaddafi and get a big foreign policy triumph.
• 
Instead, because she gave it no further thought except in terms of political benefit to her, she left a failed state in Libya.
• 
This resulted in Libyan ports being controlled by ISIS and used to flood the shores of Greece and Italy with migrants, destabilizing them and other European countries.  Obama and Hillary turned Libya into not only just another failed state, but a failed state that destabilizes American allies.
• 
Obama alienated America's friends and emboldened America's enemies.
• 
... he offered the Muslim world "a new beginning." By this, he meant not a Muslim new beginning but an American change of heart.
• 
According to public opinion polls, his appeasement of Islamic rage has led to a situation in which America is more hated today in the Middle East than it was at the height of the war in Iraq.
• 
Under Obama's watch, Iran signed a nuclear agreement with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council...
• 
The details of the agreement are irrelevant, when compared to the two irrefutable aspects: Iran will develop nuclear weapons and the ayatollahs will get $150 billion.
• 
Obama's years-long negotiations with Iran allowed time to multiply, disperse, and fortify Iran's nuclear facilities.
• 
His administration's leakage of Israel's secret agreement with Azerbaijan, allowing Israeli warplanes to refuel if attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, sabotaged any Israeli attempt to destroy Iranian facilities.
• 
Donald Trump has described the agreement as a disaster which places the entire world at risk.
• 
He recognizes that America still holds enormous leverage over Iran and has pledged to impose better terms upon Iran or cancel the agreement altogether.
• 
Despite the mistakes made, Iraq was a viable country when Obama came into office until he pulled out all American troops ... just so he could claim to have restored "peace," when in fact he invited defeat.
• 
Obama's sympathies lie with Islam.  ... Obama sided with the ayatollahs.  His administration was intent on "engagement" with the world's most dangerous regime and vilest state-sponsor of terrorism, cutting funding to organizations supporting Iranian human rights, and then sat by as thousands of Iranians were imprisoned, tortured and executed.
• 
Obama's reaction to the Arab Spring was to drop allies who were in trouble, in the hope of making himself look good.
• 
Bashar al-Assad crossed the red line, but Obama did nothing, because bombing might make him look bad.
• 
Obama sought to put distance diplomatically between America and Israel, demanded reckless concessions from Israel to promote "peace talks" while never making serious demands of the Palestinian Authority or ever holding it accountable.
• 
Netanyahu infuriated Obama when he talked about the truth of the internationally supported Palestinian Arab demand that Israel must transfer control over Jerusalem and the 'Territories' to the Palestinian Arabs Jew-free.
• 
From inception, the Obama administration rejected the civil rights of Jews as Jews in these areas and seeks the complete negation of their rights through destruction, mass expulsion, and property seizure: ethnic cleansing.
• 
Trump knows that Israelis want peace, and he trusts them to pursue it as well they can without pressure from America.
• 
He recognizes that Palestinian Authority failed leadership, hatred and violence pose challenges to any peace deal.
• 
In the 2008 and 2012 elections, millions of Republican voters were appalled by the refusal of their nominees to go on the offensive against Obama.  ... After their party's defeat, Republican voters noted that their candidates cared more about what media said about them than they cared about winning.
• 
Trump did not merely run against Democrats and the liberal establishment.  He ran against the Republican establishment as well.
• 
The American establishment understood that Trump was a grave threat to their power and attacked him accordingly.
• 
What they did not understand was that he goaded them into a fight that they could only lose: The elite thought the issue was Trump; American voters thought the issue was the elite.
• 
He won without the consultant class, without donors, without field offices, without the support of party's office-holders, etc.
• 
Even if American voters were concerned about some of the things he said, the statements were never going to take priority over Obama's legacy on the economy, foreign policy, etc.
• 
In 2008, Obama's election slogan was "Yes, we can!" He wanted to move America politically leftwards, permanently.
• 
Before his inauguration, he told a crowd of cheering supporters: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
• 
Campaigning in 2016, he stated that even though he was not on the ballot, his legacy was. 
• 
The election determined the fate of Obama's fundamental transformation that could have been irreversible if Hillary had won.
• 
Another four years of business as usual would have pushed America past the point of no return.
• 
Disaster averted: she could not impress voters over immigration, jobs, national security and terrorism, so the voters looked elsewhere.
• 
Yes, we can: Trump's voters have canned Barack Obama's legacy like diced vegetables.
      Gregg Jarrett: Will Donald Trump channel Ronald Reagan to put an end to sanctuary cities?  (Fox 11/18/2016)
• 
Reagan sent a stern message to air traffic controllers at the outset of his presidency in 1981: if you break the law, I will fire you. 
• 
They did... and he did.
• 
Reagan's decision to terminate 11,345 controllers who were engaged in an illegal strike was a stunning act of presidential authority and managerial leadership. 
• 
When he takes office in January 2017, President Trump may face a similar defining moment.  Will he allow big city mayors to defy federal law by protecting illegal immigrants in their so-called "sanctuary cities"?
• 
Trump can't fire them.  But he can take away their federal money.  In some cases, he could prosecute them or other city officials should they continue to flaunt and obstruct the law.
• 
More than 300 cities and counties have sanctuary policies.  For some, it is simply a political statement.  They have taken no real action to give sanctuary to people who are there illegally. 
• 
But other cities like San Francisco actively protect illegal immigrants.  They refuse to turn over people who committed low-level crimes to federal agents for deportation.  And when ICE asks for a "hold" on a prisoner, the city ignores it.  Often they walk free.
• 
Politicians love to take public stands on their idealistic principles, however misguided they may be.  Until, of course, you hit them in the wallet.
• 
When faced with budgetary catastrophes like the loss of $ 1 billion dollars, they often exhibit a sudden change of heart.  Funny how that works. 
• 
If the carrot and stick approach fails to force city officials to abide by the law, perhaps President Trump should begin charging people with crimes.  He can do so under another federal statute which makes it a felony to shield someone who is here illegally:
• 
"Any person who, knowing that an alien has come to the U.S.  in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection such alien in any place, including any building... shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years."
• 
Five years behind bars might give city officials pause to rethink their sanctuary philosophy.
• 
But there's an added punishment written in the law: if someone dies because a city official decided not to comply with federal law, as in the Steinle case, the maximum penalty is life behind bars.
• 
I'm pretty sure that'll get the attention of some sheriffs, police chiefs and mayors.
• 
Whether President Trump and his Department of Justice will decide to criminally prosecute city officials who thumb their noses at federal law is unknown.
• 
How many innocent victims like Kate Steinle have to die before people realize that most laws exist for a reason — to protect citizens.
      A Harvard student's open letter to the delicate flowers of the Ivy League  (Fox 11/17/2016)
• 
So your candidate lost.  You have a right to be upset, frustrated and angry, but you also have an obligation to be respectful to others and to the will of the American people.
• 
Intellectual hypocrisy continues every day on campuses, where opinions that are not the norm are vilified or silenced.
• 
Imagine if you treated people of different races as you treat people with different opinions.  ... somehow it is fine to discriminate against those with different views.
• 
Did it ever occur to you that this may be why people voted for Trump?
• 
That it might not have been the "racist proclivities" of the U.S.  or the "dangerous nationalism" of the people, but that it was people who tell them not to think or speak the way they do.
• 
Trump won, and he did not overthrow the government or kill people to silence them.  He won in the standard fashion — by getting 270 votes in the Electoral College.
• 
As I said, you have a right to be upset, but what we have on our hands now is an embarrassment.
• 
Universities themselves are making all types of provisions to coddle those who have been traumatized by the will of the American people.
• 
Now protests are popping up at universities all over America.  What are you protesting ... the democratic process?
• 
There are calls for changing the Electoral College to just a popular vote; but, of course, if Hillary had won the electoral vote and lost the popular vote, you would be reprimanding those who called it an injustice.
• 
Protesting the orderly transfer of power under the Constitution is a head-scratcher.
• 
Maybe we can trace the root cause of this behavior to our generation receiving participation trophies while growing up.
• 
Many never learned how to be graceful in defeat, much less handle it.
• 
The election is over.  The people have made their decision.
• 
You can be angry, happy or indifferent, but above all you can be polite, have some etiquette.
• 
There is a difference between political correctness and politeness etiquette, and unfortunately one has taken over universities while the other has been lost.
• 
It's time to put away your Play-Doh (yes, some universities are actually handing out Play-Doh to help students cope), move on and do what it takes to better our nation, because we are all on this ship together.
      Sean Hannity: Toughen up, crybabies — Trump is your next president  (Fox 11/17/2016)
• 
Loony liberal crybabies need to get over themselves and accept the fact that Donald Trump will be our next president.
• 
"I'm crying.  I want to move to Spain.  I really, really want to move to Spain right now.  And everyone in my office is, like, 'You have a responsibility and you have a voice and you need to use it and you have to be here.'"
• 
It's gotten even worse.  ... elite private schools in New York City are helping coddled, pampered students, quote, "deal with the election results."
• 
They're bringing in therapy dogs and offering, "disaster counseling."
• 
... co-eds at an Ivy League university, Cornell University, are holding "cry-ins," where the faculty are providing students with tissues and hot cocoa.
• 
... the University of Michigan is handing out coloring books and allowing college kids to play with Play-doh to help them cope with the discomfort of losing an election.
• 
There are also reports that students at campuses all across the country Wednesday were staging walk-outs to protest Donald Trump.
• 
On top of that, you've got all these left-wing agitators, day after day after day, taking to the streets to cause disruption and chaos over Donald Trump's victory.
• 
... I was not happy with the results in 2008 and 2012, and I'm sure some of you weren't that happy, either.
• 
Did you see me throwing a temper tantrum?  Was I crying hysterically?
• 
Was I carrying on because I didn't get my way or you didn't get your way?
• 
Of course not, because that's not how adults act.
• 
But apparently, this is how the PC culture, where everybody's a winner, everybody gets a participation trophy, and these liberals operate.
• 
We have a national epidemic, with about a quarter of a million soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and experiencing real suffering.
• 
It's called PTSD, and they experience real pain, real trauma, real suffering, watching their friends have their legs blown off and die right in their arms.
• 
But we're supposed to roll out the red carpet for sore loser liberals because their subpar, crooked and corrupt candidate lost an election?
• 
Please, give me a break.  It's time to grow up.
      Judge Napolitano: The gross mismanagement of our nation's premier law enforcement agency  (Fox 11/17/2016)
• 
When Hillary Clinton delivered a campaign post-mortem to her major supporters in a telephone conference call late last week, she blamed her loss in the presidential election on FBI Director James Comey.
• 
She should have blamed the loss on herself.
• 
Her refusal to safeguard state secrets while she was secretary of state and her failure to grasp the nationwide resentment toward government by the forgotten folks in the middle class were far likelier the cause of her defeat than was Comey.
• 
Yet it is obvious that law enforcement-based decisions in the past four months were made with an eye on Election Day, and the officials who made them evaded the rule of law.
• 
The statutory obligation of the FBI is to gather evidence to aid in the prosecution or prevention of federal crimes or breaches of national security.
• 
The process of complying with this obligation necessarily involves making some legal judgments about the relevance, probity and even lawfulness of the gathered evidence. 
• 
But the whole purpose of this evidence-gathering and decision-making is to present a package to the Department of Justice, for which the FBI works, for its determination about whether or not to seek a prosecution.
• 
Federal judges become involved when search warrants or arrest warrants are needed.
• 
Having issued many search and arrest warrants myself, I know that judges need to be curious and skeptical.  After all, only one side is appearing before the judge, and the whole appearance is often quick, unorthodox and in secret.
• 
All of this is commanded by law to be kept secret so as to preserve evidence, avoid tipping off a potential defendant capable of flight and preserve the reputation of a person not indicted.
• 
That is at least the way these things are supposed to work.
• 
Yet none of this happened in the recently reopened and re-terminated investigation of the misuse of emails containing state secrets by Clinton.
• 
... he declared that he and his colleagues in the FBI — not the DOJ — had concluded that "no reasonable prosecutor" would take the case; so Clinton would not be prosecuted.  He then proceeded to outline in detail the gathered evidence against Clinton.
• 
Then, just 11 days before the 2016 presidential election, Comey saw a chance to redeem himself with his critics.
• 
He unlawfully announced the unexpected discovery of a treasure-trove of 650,000 emails that he and his team had not then examined but that they thought might affect the decision not to prosecute. 
• 
Then, two days before the election, Comey announced that the FBI had reviewed all 650,000 recently discovered emails in a week and concluded that none of them affected the decision not to prosecute Clinton.
• 
Shortly thereafter, a DOJ official announced that the email investigation was closed — for a second time.
• 
We have the gross mismanagement of the nation's premier law enforcement agency.
• 
We have a DOJ uninterested in the truth and willing to shield a target of a criminal investigation for political reasons.
• 
We have the improper and unlawful revelation of matters the law quite properly commands be kept secret.
• 
We have the dangerous injection of the FBI into elective politics, which can do ruinous harm to the rule of law.
• 
And we had a candidate who should blame only herself for the whole controversy.
      Our military is no longer large enough, strong enough or modern enough to keep America safe  (Fox 11/15/2016)
• 
Throughout the year, news organizations have feasted on stories of terror attacks, saber-rattling provocations and outright wars.
• 
Is the world really as dangerous as all that?  And is the military's ability to protect us against these dangers really on the decline?
• 
Unfortunately, the answers to both questions are: "yes."
• 
The adequacy of U.S.  military power must be assessed in terms of what our troops must be prepared to deal with: the "bad actors" that threaten our vital interests.
• 
Russia systematically intimidated our NATO allies.  ... And it continued its extraordinary commitment (at least 5 percent of GDP) to military modernization.
• 
China has now fully militarized the islands it has built in the South China Sea.  ... Two decades of annual, double-digit increases in defense spending has produced the J-20 5th generation stealth fighter and a stronger deep-water navy that includes a nascent aircraft carrier capability.
• 
Iran expanded its destabilizing activities across the Middle East...  And it's negotiating a $10 billion arms purchase from Russia to better protect its nuclear development program
• 
North Korea conducted two nuclear weapons tests in 2016, advanced its intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities and tested submarine launched ballistic missile systems.
• 
Terror groups, from ISIS to Boko Haram and a resurgent Al Qaeda, wreaked havoc across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe during 2016.
• 
What does all this matter to the U.S.?  America suffers whenever the bad guys disrupt markets, suppress freedom and threaten our friends and partners.
• 
The surest protection against such dangers is a military force large enough, strong enough, and modern enough to deter the bad guys from acting up and, if they choose to make trouble anyway, to stop them before they cause substantial harm.
• 
Funding our troops at a reasonable level — one commensurate with the missions they may be required to undertake — isn't about militarizing U.S.  foreign policy, seeking to be interventionist, or subsidizing the defense-industrial complex.
• 
It's about deterring the forces of disorder, ensuring our homeland is protected, incentivizing other countries to be on our team rather than our competitors', and maintaining a secure domestic environment in which freedom, opportunity and prosperity can flourish.
• 
A strong, confident, and engaged America is good for the world.  That has been the case since the close of World War II when America took up the mantle of leadership in opposition to the authoritarianism of the Soviet Union.
• 
Today, the free world needs a force for good that is able to stand against the darker future presented by terrorism and the repressive regimes in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang.
      A conservative's advice for the newly humbled press  (Fox 11/13/2016)
• 
... members of the fourth estate have engaged in a bit of collective groveling, talking about how they need to do more to suppress their blatant displays of smugness in the face of the "others" in our society who don't have to good sense to live in a large metropolitan city with sanitized points of view.
• 
... I don't believe that disconnect will change as long as the media's "analysis" of the problem continues to ignore the very people whom they claim to want to talk with and get to know.
• 
In the last few days, panels of reporters have interviewed each other about why they and other professional critics missed the story, but when was the last time you saw them talking to the people who made this change happen with that same curiosity.
• 
A network of people across the country, frustrated with government, academia, entertainment and media empires decided to act, and even now, when you watch the "analysis" of the change, what is offered is more naval gazing by the people who didn't look up over the last 8 years, as wages have fallen and costs have exploded and millions of Americans have cried out for some relief.
• 
But God forbid that the actual people who are fighting the good fight on any specific issue get booked and are given the opportunity to speak for themselves.
• 
Activists on the left get the courtesy of speaking for themselves, whether it is actors with an environmental gripe or people whose identity drives their activism.  But for those on the conservative front, the media filters even the sight of the "other."
• 
And then there is the psychological approach to treating conservatism as some kind of weakness for which reporters and academics dismiss as lack of learning or response to economic pressures or a misplaced desire to return to the 1950s.
• 
Arriving at a different conclusion is not deplorable; it's a Constitutional right.
• 
Isn't it interesting that it is clearly bullying if someone is mocked for their looks or sexual orientation but it's commentary and analysis if they are mocked for their faith, or the region of country they live in or their support for a candidate they have every right to choose.
• 
On social media after the election, a number of people made disparaging comments saying, among many profanities, that the vast numbers of Americans who painted the country red with their votes were like "sheep."
• 
It's work to hold and to defend a position that mainstream culture rejects.  Your facts must be sharp and your arguments backed with insight.
• 
It's work to endure the droning on of celebrities and media analysts who are always telling you why they are right.
• 
You must be strong to be gracious in the face of blatant disrespect and kind in explaining complex issues from a point of view that many reporters don't even have the vocabulary to understand.
• 
... following Trump's win, reporters seem puzzled about why the people they ignore are not listening to them.  I offer some advice:
• 
Pick up your phone.  Check your e-mail.  Go to an event not sponsored by the same groups you contribute to and yes, spend time in places where someone might disagree with you.
• 
And to those gatekeepers of shows, columns and news coverage, next time you want to explain a conservative point of view, feature an actual conservative.  Go to the source and skip the filter.  You just might learn something new.
      How the Tea Party helped Trump win the election  (Fox 11/12/2016)
• 
We have long argued that the Washington Establishment is disconnected from (and sometimes simply disinterested in) the issues that are most pressing to American voters. 
• 
The Republican nominee's win, then, is nothing short of remarkable, and it challenges many of the fundamental beliefs held by the political class.
• 
Donald Trump won because, at the end of the day, this election was not about money raised, or slick campaign operations.
• 
This election was about one overarching theme: ending the status quo in Washington, D.C.
• 
Throughout his campaign, Trump reiterated his willingness to disrupt all of the "norms" in Washington.
• 
Those "norms" include the culture of cronyism, the backroom deals, and the pervasive notion that rules simply do not apply to the Washington Elites.
• 
Donald Trump won his bid for the White House because he ran on overwhelmingly popular and commonsense issues.
• 
President-elect Donald Trump deserves to be congratulated, not only for winning the presidency, but also for campaigning so unabashedly on his promise to shake things up in Washington.
• 
Because of Trump's consistent emphasis on his intentions to rein in the federal government, it turns out that the real loser in this election cycle was not primarily a political candidate or campaign, but, rather a political philosophy – namely, the political viewpoint that Big Government is the end-all and be-all solution to every problem.
• 
This viewpoint was the signature feature of Barack Obama's presidency, and it was the campaign platform for all of the Democrats, from Hillary Clinton to Senate Democrat candidates.
• 
Americans resoundingly rejected that viewpoint this election cycle.
      Erick Erickson: Conservatives don't riot.  They understand that individuals are good  (Fox 11/11/2016)
• 
First, the polling and exits were wrong because so many people refused to talk to pollsters.
• 
We live in a day when the president of the United States hired a propaganda officer who encouraged people to report their neighbors for lying about Obamacare.
• 
They encouraged people to forward emails to the White House from friends and family that had "misinformation".
• 
The left took to systematically shaming people and hounding people from jobs if those people dared to disagree on cultural issues.
• 
Give money to support traditional marriage and expect protestors to show up at the restaurant where you wait tables and demand you be fired.
• 
The result is that a large number of Americans refuse to speak up, even to anonymous pollsters.
• 
And who can blame them?  Tweet something you find funny and suddenly an angry horde of "progressives" show up at your office demanding punishment.
• 
... because the polling and data are wrong, people are more and more likely to trust the anecdotes of their experience.
• 
Pollsters presumed, based on their world view, what the turn out would be.
• 
Their polling into households too scared or embarrassed to admit who they support only affirmed their world view.
• 
As more and more people turn to anecdote for data, the more confirmation bias will creep into the system.
• 
What a person's family, friends, or political circle think is a good idea is more and more likely to be implemented as public policy without testing, research, or data to show the idea really is good.
• 
One thing we do know from the campaign ... is that ObamaCare insurance premium increases had an effect of voters in Trump's favor.
• 
That was easily foreseeable to anyone who understands human nature and conservatives have a fundamentally better understanding of human nature than the political left.
• 
Conservatives understand that individuals are good.  We love our neighbors.
• 
But collectively, humanity descends into mob rule where some become more equal than others.
• 
We see that on the streets today as the very people who attacked Trump supporters for suggesting the election was rigged are now protesting a fairly held election because they dislike the outcome.
• 
Conservatives are going to need to show the universal values of individual liberty and the humility of restraint can elevate lives and feed souls.
• 
Conservatives need to walk in the shoes of culturally conservative heartland voters who share conservatism's deep suspicion of Washington and power, but do not think intellectual conservatism makes a difference in their lives.
• 
We now know a lot of voters, including not just white non-college educated voters, feel increasingly marginalized, fearful of the future, and worried they cannot express themselves without punishment or harassment.
• 
Progressivism, in its demands for diverse skin color and homogenous group think, has no solution for these people's problems.
• 
Conservatism must.
      Liberal journalists are biggest losers in Trump victory  (Fox 11/10/2016)
• 
Trump won despite a massive effort by the liberal media establishment to discredit and destroy him, and they were still at it early Wednesday morning, even as it became obvious that they'd utterly failed to derail his candidacy.
• 
... painted the anti-Washington wave that carried Trump to victory as a racist "push-back against the advancement of African-Americans, of Hispanics, of women, of Muslim-Americans."
• 
The Stop Trump effort among journalists has played out in newspapers and on TV screens for months now.
• 
The networks spent far more airtime airing the details of Trump's controversies than trying to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for her scandals.
• 
... bluntly called out Trump for lying in his public remarks in a way they never did with Clinton, despite her own robust record of false statements.
• 
... slammed him for "racism, xenophobia, misogyny, incitement, breathtaking ignorance on issues, both foreign and domestic, and a nuclear recklessness..."
• 
... speculated that Trump was "clinically insane." ... "It's time to hear from somebody in the mental health community..."
• 
... claim Trump's "nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism that wreaks terror on the American democratic experiment."
• 
... Trump's coalition "includes an awful lot of bigots and nativists and a lot of hateful people."
• 
"What's the worst-case scenario for America if he [Donald Trump] wins?  I've been reading a lot about what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor....I think that's possibly where we are."
• 
"American democracy will be in greater danger than it's been since 1860, if Donald Trump were elected president."
• 
The anti-Trump venom was welcomed by a number of leading journalists, who openly lobbied their brethren to drop any pretense of objectivity and become full-throated anti-Trump partisans.
• 
... suggesting objectivity was impossible if reporters believed "Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation's worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes."
• 
"It is journalism's job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history's judgment.  To do anything less would be untenable."
• 
"If a candidate is making racist and sexist remarks, we cannot hide in the principle of neutrality.  That's a false equivalence."
• 
"In an ordinary presidential campaign, press neutrality is essential.  But in Trump....attempting neutrality legitimized the illegitimate."
• 
You don't have to be a Trump fan to see this kind of thinking as a dangerous corruption of the news media's role in our system.
• 
Reporters are supposed to supply honest and balanced information about both candidates, and then voters get to decide which is the better choice.
• 
Throwing those rules away means either that journalists have no faith in voters to select the "correct" candidate, or arrogantly presume to make the choice themselves.
• 
Journalism's own credibility appears to be the final casualty of reporters' over-the-top campaign bias.
• 
Now that Trump has won, journalists need to recognize that their unprecedented attempt to take destroy a presidential candidate has resulted in serious, perhaps permanent damage to their credibility.
      Thank you, Dr.  Trump — Our Stockholm Syndrome's finally been cured  (Fox 11/10/2016)
• 
More than 15 years have passed since terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people.
• 
And I believe it has taken that long for America to begin to snap out of its version of Stockholm Syndrome and elect a president who doesn't try to appease our enemies by apologizing for what America represents and dissolving our patriotism in a meaningless ocean of globalism.
• 
"Stockholm Syndome," by the way, is the name given to a phenomenon that gripped hostages taken during a bank robbery in Sweden.
• 
The hostages unconsciously adopted the perspectives and demands of their captors, presumably because they intuited that they might not be killed by those who considered them allies — albeit newly-fashioned ones
• 
I think Barack Obama's election was fueled, in large measure, by a similar unconscious phenomenon that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center: We hid behind a leader who never seemed, to me, to like us Americans very much — at least not in our desire for individual autonomy, our insistence on the rights guaranteed by our Constitution and our sense that the world would be better off, if more of the world adopted our core values.
• 
Clinton promised a longer run of Stockholm Syndrome — further denial that the America is truly great and that the world relies on our ingenuity and ideals and ideas to fuel freedom here and, everywhere. 
• 
Donald Trump won not only because he promised the middle class jobs, but because it turns out the brainwashing of an entire population to deny their core beliefs and sense of self doesn't work, forever. 
• 
His outsized persona was powerful enough medicine to cure our Stockholm Syndrome and remind us that we had been taken hostage and told to parrot a pathological, party line of self-loathing.
• 
I'm not sure that any other candidate could have — at this moment in history — shaken us out of our contempt for our national character, our complacency about losing our fundamental rights and our turning away from our manifest destiny as Americans and America.
• 
A country that was lost and wandering has found its way home, again, thanks to an unlikely hero who is hyperbolically American and apologizes to no one for it.
      Donald wins: 'Deplorables' trump Clinton  (Fox 11/09/2016)
• 
Donald Trump shocked pundits (and many political experts) Wednesday by winning the presidency.  But his followers weren't shocked at all.
• 
They understood from the start the power of Trump's message, and the anger of middle class Americans.
• 
Americans suffering from stagnant wages and lost jobs, who were the last to benefit from the liberal agenda of Barack Obama. 
• 
Americans fed up with the self-serving Washington political establishment, the crony capitalism and the insufferable political correctness stifling our workplaces and our universities.
• 
Americans tired of the intellectual elites who look down on flag waving and old-fashioned patriotism and consider themselves morally superior.
• 
A clear majority wanted to set the country on a new direction, and Donald Trump promised to do just that.  He promised to Make America Great Again, and they believed him.
• 
People didn't flood those huge Trump rallies because of rock stars like Jay Z or Lady Gaga; they turned out because Trump was saying what they longed to hear.
• 
They cheered when Trump said he would revamp our trade policies to protect U.S.  workers.
• 
They liked that he promised to close our borders and reestablish the rule of law.
• 
They especially applauded his pledge to take on the corrupt elites in Washington and to push for term limits.
• 
Maybe next time Democrats should try to speak to the whole country, and stop slicing and dicing the electorate.  Stronger together indeed!
• 
Here's what else happened in the 2016 election: voters decided to put the Clintons and their greedy corruption out to pasture.
• 
Clinton had everything going for her: a compliant media, a popular president in her corner, over a billion dollars in campaign fund and a well-organized party apparatus.
• 
At the end, none of it mattered.  Clinton had no message and no vision.  She wandered as a candidate, portraying herself alternately as a benevolent grandma, a firebrand progressive and a champion of women and children.
• 
In the closing weeks of the campaign she was the angry, shrill prude offended by Donald Trump's lewd remarks about women, while at the same time lauding Jay Z's foul lyrics.
• 
There is noting genuine about Mrs.  Clinton.  She is a hypocrite and she is dishonest, and the voters know it.
• 
It's not that complicated.  Average Americans, the men and women who work hard and play by the rules, decided to make their voices heard.*
• 
Now comes the hard part.  Trump will have to flesh out a thoroughly undernourished organization and quickly find the people who can carry out his agenda.
• 
Trump promised to quickly convene a special session of Congress and demand that they repeal and remodel ObamaCare.
• 
It is a brilliant idea.  Imagine how excited the country would be to see actual progress.
• 
Maybe this will be the next shocker; Donald Trump might turn out to be a good president.
      Trump victory is a win for the little guy over the elite  (NYP 11/09/2016)
• 
And so this is how the Obama era of Hope & Change really ends.
• 
With the world turned upside down, and with President Obama having to pass the baton to Donald Trump.
• 
Trump stands today as the greatest disrupter in modern politics, the winner of the biggest upset imaginable, but for most of the campaign, he was not even the best argument for his own candidacy.
• 
That distinction belonged to the millions upon millions of everyday Americans who found in him the bare-knuckled brawler they were desperately seeking.
• 
Their movement grew and spread until, early Wednesday, as the key states swung red one after another on TV maps, the last walls of resistance came tumbling down.
• 
It was a hallelujah moment, the ultimate underdog leading the forgotten masses to triumph.
• 
All the more so because Trump's voters often took great risks and were routinely insulted and demeaned for their passion.
• 
But they wore those insults as badges of honor, proudly calling themselves the "deplorables" and the "irredeemables."
• 
They would not be deterred, and today they have taken back their country.
• 
Trump's remarkable victory is their victory.  It is a victory for democracy, for the common men and women of America.
• 
This, the greatest nation ever conceived on Earth, proved once again that America is exceptional because Americans are exceptional.
• 
Trump voters had the courage of their conviction to go against all their betters, all the poobahs and petty potentates of politics, industry and, above all, the fraudulent hucksters of the national liberal media.
• 
And who, at this extraordinary juncture, dares say that Trump is not worthy of victory and of the salute of his countrymen?
• 
No candidate in modern times and perhaps ever has suffered such abuse at the hands of the dominant culture.
• 
It was dirty pool, against any standard of fairness and decency, but that was not the would-be assassins' biggest mistake.
• 
It was that failing to destroy Trump, the elite smart set unleashed its contempt on his supporters.
• 
Now America, at last, has a countervailing cultural force.
• 
Not so much a conservative standing against a liberal establishment, but rather a fearless populist who likes to mix it up and insists on doing things his way.
• 
I said some time ago that the pendulum sometimes swings farther than we think it will, and that's what we're witnessing.  Obama begat Trump.
• 
As for Hillary Clinton, she didn't deserve to be president, despite wanting it more than life itself.
• 
She had no rationale for running, was so ethically challenged and so patently dishonest that, to me, it would be a give-up if she became president.
• 
She would have made history and ruined the country.  That was too high a price for shattering the glass ceiling.
• 
Beyond Clinton, Obama and George Soros, Hollywood and the media, the losers include political correctness, that disease of the spirit that saps confidence in one's own values and success.
• 
Most important, Trump pledged to make America strong again, and if he does, he will be a success.
      Patrick Caddell: The real election surprise?  The uprising of the American people  (Fox 11/07/2016)
• 
For more than two years the American people, in a great majority, from left to right, have been in revolt against the political class and the financial elites in America.
• 
It is a peaceful uprising of a people who see a country in decline and see nothing but failure in the performance of their leadership institutions.
• 
And they have signaled their intent to take back their country and to reclaim their sovereignty.
• 
... the analysts, the pollsters and most importantly the commentariat of the political class have never understood, and in fact are psychologically incapable of understanding what is happening.
• 
And for the entire cycle of this presidential campaign they have failed to grasp what was happening before their eyes – for it runs counter to everything they believe about themselves.
• 
In truth, they are suffering from cognitive dissonance believing in their righteous superiority and are not capable of realizing that it is they who have become the adversary of the American people.
• 
... the critical point that is missed, by almost everyone, was that neither Sanders nor Trump created this uprising.
• 
They were chosen vehicles – they did not create these movements, these movements created them.
• 
In less than a day we will know how far this revolt has come.  But, make no mistake, whatever the outcome, this revolt is not ending, it is merely beginning.
• 
The conventional wisdom that America is absolutely divided into warring tribes is a tired falsehood.
• 
First, the American people believe that the country is not only on the wrong track but almost 70 percent say that America is in actual decline.
• 
Second, for more than three centuries, the animating moral obligation of America has been the self-imposed obligation that each generation passes on to its children a better America than they themselves inherited.
• 
... a great majority says that THEIR children will be worse off than they themselves are today.  This is the crisis of the American Dream.
• 
And it is no surprise that a majority of Americans agree that if we leave the next generation "worse off" that there will still be a place called "the United States" but there will no longer be an "America.
• 
Third, when asked whether or not everyone in America plays by the same rules to get ahead or are there different rules for well-connected and people with money, a staggering 84 percent of voters picked the latter.
• 
Unfortunately, I suspect, if you asked these questions of the political, financial and media elite they would have a very different response.
• 
Despite everything we are told day and night – that political battle in America is between Democrats and Republicans – two thirds of the American people believe that the battle lines are drawn between mainstream America and its ruling Political Class.
• 
THIS is the battle of 2016 and beyond.
• 
The uniqueness of 1980 is this: In the history of American polling this was the only presidential election that entered the last weekend close and finished in a landslide.  The only one.*
• 
The question on the table now is: could 2016 be the second such election?  If it is, it won't be for Hillary Clinton.
• 
But regardless of who wins on November 8 this uprising of the American people has just begun.
      Greg Gutfeld: The three most important lies about this election  (Fox 11/07/2016)
• 
1.  THE ELECTION WAS ABOUT THE OUTSIDER
• 
Not really.  It was about culture.  ... The culture enveloped within the liberal industrial complex deems any opposition to be evil.
• 
So really, the rebellion wasn't about insiders vs.  outsiders — it was about a rejection of decades of liberal fascism expressed through identity politics, balkanized grievances, racial politics, attacks on traditional institutions and anti-exceptionalism.
• 
The Trump phenomenon was a thumb in the eye of liberal complacency.
• 
It was the first time in my memory that a Republican gave the same treatment back to the Democrats.
• 
2.  THE MEDIA'S IN THE TANK FOR (FILL IN NAME OF CANDIDATE)
• 
No, the media is in the tank for ratings.  Remember, Trump got more free media than all the candidates combined.
• 
Every network loved him, because he made them money by getting them eyeballs — which helped pave the way for his nomination.
• 
Team sport ideology has compromised principles — as we accept certain actions that would have repulsed us before.
• 
Fact is it's just easier to scream at the enemy than it is to support your own embarrassment. 
• 
3.  THE WORLD IS ENDING
• 
It's not.  Or if is ending, it has nothing to do with this election.
• 
It's a good thing when we let a little emotion in but to let it govern your decisions is wrong.
• 
So if Trump wins, he becomes more liberal, and if Hillary wins, she becomes more conservative.
• 
Trump ran to the right of his internal vision; Hillary ran toward Bernie Sanders to save herself.
• 
Once they take the oath, they will change. 
• 
And we'll read about it online.  Then walk the dog.
      It's Trump — or the end of the America we know and love  (Fox 11/06/2016)
• 
I was taught by my wonderful, true red, white and blue, patriotic, salt-of-the-earth American parents that certain specific things made America great.
• 
Faith in God, prayer, love of country, family, a belief in American exceptionalism, capitalism, Judeo-Christian values, Constitution, limited government, personal responsibility, economic freedom, the military and police.
• 
Everything from that list above...everything we believe in...everything that made America great... has been under full scale assault for eight long years — from multiple directions.
• 
And Hillary Clinton is here to finish the job.  She already publicly stated she wants to be Obama's third term. 
• 
So... we have only a few days left, before it's all over.
• 
The truth is, we either send a strong message heard around the world and elect Trump, or the America we know and love...  the America created by our Founding Fathers...  is finished.  Forever.
• 
I'm not exaggerating.  I'm not being hysterical.  I'm just explaining the facts.
• 
Trump is our last chance to turn it all around.  It's Trump... or America continues a long decline towards the bottom
• 
Because if Trump doesn't win, no other Republican will ever be elected president again.  President Hillary Clinton will make sure of that.
• 
Hillary will open the borders like never before, to let in millions of illegal aliens who have no love for anything that made America great.
• 
Illegals come here for the cradle to grave welfare state that America has become.
• 
Eighty percent of them (or higher) will vote for Democrats forever to keep the checks coming.  That's Hillary's plan.
• 
This was the exact formula that destroyed California.  Open the borders, let in millions of foreigners, make them dependent on government welfare checks, train them to vote Democratic to keep the checks and handouts coming.  It worked!_
• 
The plan is to flood the country with illegals and foreigners who don't share our values or love of America.
• 
Then it's over for America.  In four years we'll be California-cated.  We will never win a popular vote for president again.
• 
Donald Trump is our last chance to ever again elect a Republican president.
• 
It's Donald Trump... or it's the end of the GOP on the national level... and the end of America.
• 
Think of the Supreme Court.
• 
Think of open borders.
• 
Think of millions of Muslim refugees imported by Hillary to turn America into Western Europe.
• 
Think of your children's future.
• 
Think of the future of your unborn grandchildren.
• 
Think of your job.
• 
Think of capitalism, American exceptionalism, Judeo-Christian values.
• 
Think of this as the last time you can EVER elect a Republican.
• 
Vote for Trump like...
• 
It's Trump, or the end of America.
• 
Because it is.
      Saving America from economic, cultural and physical collapse  (Fox 11/05/2016)
• 
In fact, the United States is fighting for its existence on three fronts: economic, cultural and physical.
• 
Economic: GDP growth is stagnant at about 1 percent.  It should be 3-4 percent.
• 
Cultural: The American Constitution and way of life are under constant attack from enemies determined to destroy our liberties and our lives.
• 
Physical: On national security, countless state and non-state actors are working to disrupt our day-to-day existence.
• 
We are exposed on all three fronts because political, business and cultural leaders are either naive, willfully blind or corrupt and complicit in flatlining the economy, allowing our traditions to be trampled over and making our citizens vulnerable to attack.
• 
The people who have created this dire situation believe in one or more of these four false narratives: globalism, socialism, isolationism and "Political Islam."
• 
The first three narratives have been in the American mainstream for decades, but political Islam is different.
• 
Under the guise of a religion, political Islam has penetrated our culture, politics and media. 
• 
"Political Islam" refers to the politicization of Islam.  It preaches hate.  It demands that non-Muslims must be killed or submit to Islamic law.
• 
It calls for global rule and it uses physical, intellectual, financial, legal and demographic means to attain it.
• 
To save America and Western civilization, we must defeat Political Islam.  We must commit ourselves to destroying the forces that attack us every minute of every day.
• 
On the economic front: The government must get out of the way.  We must reduce the tax burden on every American citizen and business.
• 
We must stop the government's intergenerational theft, or our children and grandchildren will never be able to repay the current level of overspending.
• 
On the cultural front: Adherence to core values made America strong.  The U.S.  must re-instill the values of the Founding Fathers: liberty and opportunity on top of a strong Judeo-Christian base.
• 
We must return to the constitutionally dictated balance of power shared by the three branches of government.
• 
To revive American exceptionalism, we must defend our freedom of speech against the false narrative of political correctness.
• 
On the physical front: We must defeat the four leading Political Islamic terror organizations: Shiite Iran, ISIS/al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabism/Salafism.
• 
These entities indiscriminately terrorize and kill Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and all others.  In fact, Muslims are the No.  1 victims of Political Islam, as evidenced in Syria, Iraq and Iran.
• 
The ideology that feeds these entities must be debunked, and their leaders must be removed.
• 
To protect the homeland, we must screen all refugees and immigrants, seal our borders and secure our critical infrastructure by protecting the electric grid from natural disasters, cyber/GPS hacking and electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack.
• 
The American voter should keep these core issues in mind as we vote on November 8!
      The forgotten women who are supporting Trump  (Fox 11/05/2016)
• 
... while the media have been celebrating Republican women who finally "get it," they have been less vocal about a striking class and education divide that should be a familiar theme in this election.
• 
Yes, college-educated women are overwhelmingly for Clinton; but women without college degrees are sticking with the Republican nominee. 
• 
So why are less-educated white women willing to look past Trump's serial offenses?
• 
One preferred media explanation is that many of these women are evangelical Christians who remain wedded to traditional gender roles and feel anxious about women in powerful positions.
• 
"Women who want to be protected in the private sphere or need to be protected in the private sphere tend to emphasize the need to protect and privilege women's special capacities for nurturing."
• 
The picture that emerges from on-the-ground reporting ... clashes with this image of the timid Biblical "help meet."
• 
They work in insurance offices, hospitals, or schools, where they have to put on proper attire and say "Pardon me" without thinking when they bump into someone.
• 
Still, away from work, they are familiar with rural life and the coarser manners that sometimes go along with it.
• 
Almost all these women have male relatives or friends in the military; some of those men are serving in very dangerous places.
• 
Their devotion to these men motivates some of their bitterness toward elites whose men don't have to worry about IEDs and midnight visits from the military police.
• 
Their fears for the men's safety also explain much of their contempt for Hillary Clinton, whose infamous question from the Benghazi hearings — "What difference at this point does it make?" — was the verbal equivalent of a cottonmouth bite.
• 
None of this means that Trump-supporting women approve of the candidate's wandering hands and foul mouth.
• 
But they take for granted a certain degree of bawdiness in relations between the sexes.
• 
"When a group of women are together, we're talking just as nasty as the guys.  We're all guilty."
• 
"All of these liberal women, I find it funny they're so outspoken fighting for women's rights and now they're afraid?  It's all bullshit."
• 
This language and worldview is a planet apart from our Trump-o-phobic media, professional, and political class, among whom I include myself.
• 
We work with men who sweat primarily when they go to the gym.
• 
We intuitively sense the line between playfully suggestive and inappropriate, a word that has become oddly resurgent in this era of the bourgeois f-bomb.
• 
To understand this election, we should have spent much more time talking to women at ease with skinning a snake or having nightly dinner with a bone-tired man with calloused hands and few words.
      It's time to ask Hillary's supporters: How could you?  (Fox 11/04/2016)
• 
Why aren't Hillary's backers made to explain how they can vote for a candidate who promised not to trade access for money while she served as Secretary of State, but then did it anyway?
• 
Who vowed to reveal all monies collected by the Clinton Foundation from foreign entities while she was in office but failed to do so?
• 
Who has lied innumerable times to the American people and who has time and again revealed herself as lacking a moral compass?
• 
Whose campaign has engaged in dirty tricks, colluding with the DNC and with the media?
• 
Who offers voters nothing but enraged disparagement of her opponent?
• 
It's a reasonable question that should be asked: how can anyone with good conscience vote for Hillary Clinton?*
• 
Thiel, the successful founder of PayPal, sinned against the liberal establishment by donating $1.25 million to the Trump campaign.
• 
He has come under withering criticism from Silicon Valley elites, followed by "demands that Facebook drop him from its board of directors and that Silicon Valley's leading start-up incubator, Y Combinator, sever ties with him."
• 
This, for supporting the standard-bearer of one of America's main political parties; a candidate who has a real shot at winning.
• 
... the liberal media, exposed through numerous leaked emails as colluding with the Hillary Clinton campaign, has done a terrific job of turning Trump backers into pariahs.
• 
But shouldn't we question those who are putting their money behind Hilary Clinton, the first person to run for the presidency while subject of a criminal investigation?
• 
Whose natural instincts are to lie, about matters serious and inconsequential?
• 
Whose greed outweighs incandescent ambition? 
• 
Many take solace in following President Obama, who has not stinted in his efforts to elect Clinton.
• 
He does not call her the most trustworthy, or the most genuine, or respectable or moral; the man is not a total idiot.
• 
He describes her as tough and says she has tenacity.  That we know.
• 
Obama isn't campaigning for Hillary Clinton because he likes her; he's out there hustling for votes because if Donald Trump is elected, Obama's cherished legacy will melt away faster than ice cream in August.
• 
Donald Trump is no Boy Scout.  His business history is checkered and his personal manner is off-putting.
• 
But, the portrayal of him as racist and dangerous has been overblown by Hillary's team, because they have nothing else to talk about.
• 
Hillary fears the appeal of a fresh-start candidate, and especially one who is willing to challenge the status quo and push back at the politically correct idiocy ensnaring our national discourse.
• 
Trump is offering voters a real choice, which doesn't happen often.
• 
President Obama campaigned on hope and change, but delivered neither.
• 
It is possible – likely, even – that it will take an outsider to shift the direction of the country, to upend the corrupt politics of Washington, to stem the unbridled expansion of the federal government and return power to the people, which most Americans seem to want.
• 
That outsider, in this cycle, is Donald Trump.
      Bushes abandon Trump, but he's running against the GOP brand, not just Clinton  (Fox 11/03/2016)
• 
If Donald Trump wins the White House next week, it will be without the support of the last two presidents named Bush.
• 
Clinton is touting the prominent Republicans who are backing her, including Colin Powell, Hank Paulson, Richard Armitage, Michael Chertoff and Brent Scowcroft.
• 
But the truth is that Trump doesn't really need their support.  He is running as a different kind of Republican and assembling a very different kind of coalition.
• 
The very essence of his candidacy, in fact, is to break with the GOP orthodoxy of the past.
• 
... Trump has an appeal to white working-class voters that typical GOP nominees do not. 
• 
He is a populist outsider and former Democrat who is more interested in shaking up the system than in meeting an ideological litmus test.
• 
So much of the race has turned on Trump's persona, and controversial comments, that issues other than immigration have often been overshadowed.
• 
But it's clear that on subjects like trade, entitlements and Russia, he is far from a Ryan Republican. 
• 
Of course the regular Republicans would rather have had Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or even Cruz.
• 
Trump doesn't owe them anything.  His relations with the RNC have been strained
• 
Trump often casts the GOP as part of the problem.  His "drain the swamp" rallying cry doesn't exactly distinguish between the two parties that dwell in Washington.
• 
Win or lose, Trump is creating a movement that will either change the Republican Party or break away from the party the Bushes helped build.
      Elites can afford a Clinton presidency, working people cannot  (Fox 11/01/2016)
• 
"This is no longer a choice for me on personalities, because I'm not a fan of either one.  What it is about is policy."
• 
... "the best person based on the policies and dealing with things like Obamacare still is Donald Trump..."
• 
Clinton has confirmed all the worst fears people had about her: the lying, the corruption, the constant political calculation and lack of deep conviction; the jaw-dropping arrogance and sense of entitlement displayed by her and her acolytes in America's insular ruling elite; their snooty and divisive contempt for working people and anyone who doesn't share their ideological worldview.
• 
On the other side of the fence, Donald Trump has tested the loyalty of even his most fervent supporters with a string of offensive remarks, displays of almost crazed indiscipline, self-generated distractions from his fundamental argument for change, and revelations about his attitude to women that nobody could possibly defend.
• 
The question for the responsible voter is: how to weight these questions of character alongside questions of policy and the likely real-world impact of voting for one or other of the candidates?
• 
Is it not acceptable to vote, in good conscience, for a candidate on the basis of the likely consequences of their election on people's real lives, rather than some nebulous impact on our ‘culture'?
• 
All this reminds me of a concept first proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943: the Hierarchy of Needs.
• 
It seems to me that this is why the rich coastal elites are backing Hillary and have turned on Trump.  They can afford a Clinton presidency, whatever outcomes it delivers.  They don't really care whether a President Clinton would grow the economy a little, a lot, or not at all — they will do just fine.
• 
But for the half of all Americans who still, according to official statistics earn less than in 1999, such virtue-signaling is a luxury.  Their basic needs are not being met, and they desperately need change, even if it's delivered by someone who is a long way from being their perfect candidate of 'Self-actualization'.
• 
It really matters to them what happens to the economy, jobs, the cost of healthcare and many other practical matters, where the Trump policy agenda ... could bring positive forward movement after years of stagnation, hardship and anxiety.
• 
How dare anyone tell these Americans that they're wrong — or worse, immoral — to weigh up the choice that way?
• 
... you don't have to agree with everything Donald Trump says or does to conclude that he would make the most positive, practical difference in the real lives of real people.
• 
In the end, isn't that what elections are supposed to be about?
      John Stossel: Your ballot matters beyond Clinton vs.  Trump.  Here's why  (Fox 11/02/2016)
• 
The presidency isn't the only choice next week.  There are more issues than "Who's worse, Trump or Clinton?"
• 
I'm surprised politicians stop at gambling and don't tax all the Bible's deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, etc.  Probably because politicians don't want to tax themselves.
• 
In the Federalist Papers, in words that would be partly echoed in the Constitution, Madison wrote, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined.  Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
• 
Since then, arrogant presidents and other federal officials have taken powers from the states.  That leaves Americans fewer choices.
• 
But the states will prove again on Tuesday that they still have a say, even if we're stuck with President Hillary Clinton for the next four (or eight?!  please no!) years.
      Laura Ingraham: For the good of the country, it's time for elites to let the Clintons go  (Fox 10/31/2016)
• 
With eight days left before the election, it is time for Americans to come to grips with three critical questions regarding Hillary Clinton and her political machine:
• 
1.  Was Hillary Clinton careless about protecting and preserving secrets that were vital to the national interests of the United States?
• 
2.  Did Bill and Hillary Clinton use their access to the U.S.  government — including Hillary's position as secretary of state and a likely future candidate for president of the United States — to make money for themselves?
• 
3.  Is Hillary Clinton a patriot — that is, can she be trusted to look out for the interests of the United States in all circumstances, even when doing so may force her to take actions that could hurt the financial interests of herself or her donors?
• 
It goes without saying that if Hillary Clinton cannot be trusted with our national secrets, used her government positions for personal gain, or puts her personal interests ahead of the national interest, she should not be elected president.
• 
In a commercial republic like ours, the one unforgivable sin of a politician is putting money ahead of national honor.
• 
We ask the people to put up with a lot from their leadership.  They have to pay taxes they don't want to pay, they have to obey laws that they don't like, and they may have to fight in wars that they oppose.
• 
If the people come to believe that the whole system is a scam — that the folks at the top don't really believe in the very system they're supposed to uphold — then this country will quickly become ungovernable.
• 
All voters have to decide for themselves how they feel about Hillary Clinton.  But no group has to take these questions more seriously than the elites of our society — the wealthy and highly educated people who run our media, staff our government, and manage our largest financial and commercial institutions.
• 
There's been a lot of complaints about the elites this year — and with good reason.  For the most part, the policies they have supported in this century have been extraordinarily good for them — and not so good for most Americans.
• 
But the Hillary issue goes far beyond this election.  It goes to the character of the type of people who govern the United States, who run its largest businesses and manage its biggest media outlets.
• 
Do they really care about the ideals of our country or not? 
• 
If they do, then they must understand that they cannot turn the White House over to a collection of petty grifters who care more about lining their own pockets than watching out for the nation's interests.
• 
And they must understand that they have a duty — a solemn and almost sacred duty — to answer the three questions posed above.
• 
In America, the government belongs to all of us — and all of us, especially the richest and most powerful, have a responsibility to do the right thing.
• 
Some will try to duck that responsibility by complaining about Donald Trump.
• 
However, the Founders created a whole system to block demagogues from wielding too much power.
• 
Yet what about a check on a corrupt leadership class?  Our Founders didn't create that — because they were smart enough to realize that no such check is possible.
• 
If the richest and most powerful members of our society no longer care about the ideals of this society, then the dream of the Founders has already been lost.
• 
... the whole point of being in the elite is that you have special power — and a special responsibility.
• 
There's no question that our elites have enjoyed their power.
• 
Now it's time for them to live up to their responsibility.
      Gregg Jarrett: 10 questions and answers in the Hillary Clinton case  (Fox 10/31/2016)
• 
Here is a primer on the law to help address questions and accusations as voters prepare to exercise their freedom of choice.  Hopefully, it is an informed choice. 
• 
1.) Did FBI Director James Comey violate the "Hatch Act", which prohibits federal employees from using their position to influence an election?
• 
No, not even close.  ... As long as Comey's intent was honesty and not partisanship, then he did not violate the law.
• 
2.) Did the FBI need to get a warrant to examine these emails found on Anthony Weiner's devices? 
• 
Not initially, but later, yes.  ... It's like police discovering bags of white powder in the backseat of a car stopped for speeding.  They can seize the bags, but they should get a warrant to examine and test the contents.
• 
3.) Can this be resolved before election day? 
• 
It seems impossible.  The FBI needs to examine tens of thousands of emails.  ... it could take months to analyze all of them and determine if any laws were broken.
• 
4.) If newly discovered classified emails are connected to Clinton, is that a crime? 
• 
Not necessarily.  ... Much will depend on the content of this newly discovered evidence.  But Comey must have seen something in the evidence that alarmed him enough to re-open the investigation. 
• 
5.) Could Clinton pardon herself if she becomes president? 
• 
She most certainly can.  The power of pardon is without limitation.  A president can pardon any person, including the president, except in cases of impeachment.  ... if Clinton were to issue her own pardon, she would be poisoning herself politically.  It is the equivalent of admitting guilt, but evading the consequences.  The public outrage would be deafening. 
• 
6.) What would happen if Clinton is indicted after being sworn in as president? 
• 
This is where it gets dicey.  Presidents have broad constitutional immunity against prosecution for ordinary crimes.  ... a president could murder someone in the Oval Office and not be prosecuted, at least until the term of office expires.
• 
But it is unclear whether that same immunity applies to acts committed before taking office.
• 
The Founders wanted a president to be free of prosecutorial threats over actions taken in the course and scope of a commander in chief's duties.  They did not contemplate potential criminal acts of a candidate prior to an election or inauguration.  So, the issue of immunity is unclear.
• 
7.) Could Clinton step aside temporarily to face prosecution upon indictment?
• 
She could do so by invoking the 25th Amendment if she decides she is "unable to discharge the powers of the presidency" due to public anger surrounding an indictment.  ... This, however, is the most unlikely of scenarios.
• 
8.) Could Clinton be prosecuted after she leaves office?
• 
Probably, but expect a legal challenge.  Here's why: if Clinton is indicted after being sworn in and thereafter invokes constitutional immunity, she could be prosecuted after leaving office only if the statute of limitations have not expired.
• 
9.) Could Clinton be impeached over this?
• 
Historically, no.  Presidents can only be impeached for actions committed during their presidency. 
• 
10.) Will congressional investigations of Clinton continue after she takes office, assuming she wins election?
• 
If Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives, various chairmen are vowing to pursue multiple investigations of Clinton.
• 
Clinton could end up mired in scandal from the outset of her presidency...
      A suspicious wind in the rigging  (JWR 10/28/2016)
• 
Some of the assurances that all is well on the old ship of state have been caught in what looks suspiciously like the rigging.
• 
... it seems to be a law of the cosmos that votes are always flipped from Republican to Democrat...
• 
Election officials put the glitches, if glitches they are, to "user error," and say "the machines are fine," as apparently they are if you're of the Hillary persuasion
• 
Voting machines have shortened election night; votes are far more quickly counted now that a machine, sometimes a computer, does the counting.
• 
Who would accuse a computer of acting up?
• 
Nevertheless, the famous boast of Earl Long, the late governor of Louisiana, that he could make voting machines play "Home on the Range" becomes more credible with every election.
• 
Fraud doesn't happen as often as losers say it does, but it happens more often than the winners say.
• 
The expansion of absentee voting, including early voting, offers new opportunities for manipulation.
• 
Convenience easily trumps citizenship in an era when a lot of things are just too much trouble to do well.
• 
No machine, early or late, makes voting as much fun as it was with paper ballots.
• 
In some states voters marked their favorite not with an X in a little box, but by scratching out the names of all other candidates.
• 
Nothing was as satisfying as scratching through the names of despised politicians with the stub of an Eberhard Faber No.  2.  I always went home with a smile on my face.
      Dr.  Keith Ablow: Why are Americans obsessed with sex [now more than ever]?  (Fox 10/28/2016)
• 
... it's really the American viewers, readers and broadcasters who are addicted to sex, and that the sexual behaviors of our candidates merely fuel our insatiable appetites for salacious material.
• 
Once sex becomes the focus of news reports ... everything else blurs for readers, listeners and viewers — including matters of domestic and foreign policy.
• 
Freud was right; the sex drive can eclipse all others.  We get lost in the darkness of the id, the domain of animal instinct.  We seem unable to find our way to the light of higher-order thinking.
• 
I believe the answer to "Why now?" resides in the convergence of forces that threaten our sense of being alive, as animal beings, inside bodies that experience sensations and are possessed of minds that register emotions — some of them quite primitive.
• 
The forces that threaten to disembody us include technologies like the internet, which encourages us to communicate electronically — often using fictional personas like those we craft for Facebook — instead of face-to-face or by voice.
• 
We can add to these disembodying forces the increasing use of marijuana (despite its usefulness for some medical conditions) and heroin and Ecstasy and magic mushrooms, which anesthetize millions of Americans on a routine basis.
• 
We can also add the overprescribing of psychiatric medications — which can have the unintended consequence of shutting down true, if uncomfortable, insights — without accompanying psychotherapy.
• 
We can even throw in the use by millions of people, whether one thinks it a gift or a scourge, of every manner of erasing the face of aging through plastic surgery and "fillers" and Botox. 
• 
It seems we may be taking the most direct path to our bodies and to reality by having lots of sex or talking about having lots of sex or talking about other people touching each other or having sex with one another.
• 
This would be mostly an academic issue for scholars were it not an immediate issue for Americans in this presidential election.
• 
Because while we unconsciously insulate ourselves against evaporating into the internet by grounding ourselves in erotic news stories, the economy can unravel.
• 
And while we debate who touched whom and when and where and if at all, our enemies can be plotting to blow us up.
• 
And while we talk about a candidate's genitals, we might miss the fact that the candidate has been talking about bringing us back to reality in more productive ways — like getting us back to work, restoring the physical borders that define our nation, delivering lifesaving health care to our ailing and dying veterans and arming our military against radical Islamic terrorism.
• 
As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to watch all that happen, instead of watching adult entertainment that masquerades as news.
      Rep.  Brian Babin: The safety of US citizens must come before criminal aliens  (Fox 10/27/2016)
• 
Last year, Jean Jacques brutally murder Casey Chadwick, a 25 year-old young woman in Connecticut.
• 
Jacques had been released from prison a year earlier after serving seventeen years for attempted murder.
• 
Rather than being deported by the federal government – as he was in the U.S.  illegally – Jacques was simply put back on the streets in the U.S.  because his native Haiti refused to take him back.
• 
Casey and hundreds of others have had their lives taken by criminal aliens, and thousands more have been victims of rape, molestation, assault and theft.
• 
There is absolutely no reason that criminal aliens — those who are non-citizens with criminal convictions — should be put back onto American streets, yet that is exactly what is happening by the thousands each and every year.
• 
... testified that the 30,558 criminal aliens that were released in 2014 had committed a total of 79,059 crimes.  However, the Boston Globe uncovered that number to be more than 92,000 crimes.
• 
While this discrepancy is significant, it is bigger than just a number.  There is a victim for each one of these crimes, leaving many loved ones asking why.
• 
Hundreds of Americans are robbed, assaulted, raped or killed each year by criminal aliens who should be deported rather than released back onto our streets.
• 
A major factor involved in the release of criminal aliens is that many foreign governments refuse to take their criminal aliens back — even after they've been given deportation orders in the United States.
• 
... the bill would withhold foreign aid from uncooperative countries and prevent travel visas from being issued to citizens from those countries that refuse to take back their criminal aliens.
• 
Casey Chadwick would be alive and well today had the Obama Administration simply followed the law.  Jean Jacques should have been repatriated by his native Haiti, but wasn't.
• 
The stories of Casey and other victims demand that we understand the serious threat posed by criminal aliens and take every action to see them removed from the United States. 
• 
Deporting criminal aliens should be a no-brainer.  We have absolutely no obligation to let these convicted criminals back onto U.S.  streets.
• 
Thousands of avoidable tragedies are allowed to happen because liberal politicians in Washington refuse to see the safety and security of the American people as their first duty.
      John Stossel: The ruling class, this election and you  (Fox 10/26/2016)
• 
America is often described as a society without the Old World's aristocracy.  Yet we still have people who feel entitled to boss the rest of us around.
• 
The "elite" media, the political class, Hollywood and university professors think their opinions are obviously correct, so they must educate us peasants.
• 
OK, so they don't call us "peasants" anymore.  Now we are "deplorables" — conservatives or libertarians.  Or Trump supporters.
• 
The elite have a lot of influence over how we see things.
• 
I don't like Donald Trump.  I used to.  I once found him refreshing and honest.  Now I think he's a mean bully.
• 
I think that partly because he mocked a disabled person.  I saw it on TV.  He waved his arms around to mimic a New York Times reporter with a disability — but wait!
• 
It turns out that Trump used the same gestures and tone of speech to mock Ted Cruz and a general he didn't' like.
• 
It's not nice, but it doesn't appear directed at a disability.
• 
Another reason I don't like Trump is that he supported the Iraq war — and then lied about that.
• 
Media pooh-bahs told me Trump pushed for the war years ago on The Howard Stern Show.
• 
But then I listened to what Trump actually said.
• 
"Are you for invading Iraq?" Stern asked.  Trump replied, "Yeah, I guess ... so."
• 
Later, on Neil Cavuto's show, Trump said, "Perhaps (Bush) shouldn't be doing it yet, and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations."
• 
I wouldn't call that "support" — the way NBC's debate moderator and many others have.
• 
I was stunned by how thoroughly the media have distorted Trump's position.
• 
That's a privilege you get when you're part of the media elite: You get to steer the masses' thinking.
• 
At the second debate, we all know that Trump walked over to Hillary Clinton's podium, as if he was "stalking Ms.  Clinton like prey," said The New York Times.
• 
... Clinton ... said Trump would "literally stalk me around the stage, and I would just feel this presence behind me.  I thought, 'Whoa, this is really weird.'"
• 
But it was a lie.  Watch the video.  Clinton walked over to Trump's podium.
• 
Did the mainstream media tell you that?  No.  The ruling class has its themes, and it sticks to them.
• 
When Clinton wore white to a debate, the Times called the color an "emblem of hope" and a Philadelphia Inquirer writer used words like "soft and strong ... a dream come true."
• 
But when Melania Trump wore white, that same writer called it a "scary statement," as if Melania Trump's white symbolized white supremacy, "another reminder that in the G.O.P.  white is always right."
• 
The ruling class decide which ideas are acceptable, which scientific theories to believe, what speech is permitted.
• 
"Talent is subjective, which means that it's pretty easy to find an excuse not to call back the guy who voted for George W.  Bush."
• 
Years ago, the ruling class was the Church.  Priests said the universe revolved around Earth.  Galileo was arrested because he disagreed.
• 
Today, college lefties, mainstream media, Hollywood and the Washington establishment have replaced the Church, but they are closed-minded dogmatists, too.
• 
We are lucky that now we have a lot of information at our fingertips.  We don't need to rely on the ruling class telling us what to believe.  We can make up our own minds. 
• 
See related Running for President (Mike Lester, 08/23/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Elizabeth Warren is the 'nasty' hypocrite  (Fox 10/25/2016)
• 
Progressive heroine Massachusetts Sen.  Elizabeth Warren has jumped on the bandwagon of liberal ladies attacking Donald Trump for calling Hillary Clinton a "nasty" woman during the final debate.
• 
"Get this Donald: nasty women are smart, nasty women are tough, and nasty women vote."
• 
"What kind of a man tries to hurt someone else, or get others to hurt someone else ... A nasty little bully."
• 
On Nov.  8, we nasty woman are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever."
• 
Of course, while Warren — like all Clinton surrogates in the aftermath of the final debate — is behaving as if calling someone nasty is the moral equivalent of drowning puppies for fun, she had no problem using the word herself in reference to Trump.
• 
"What kind of a man tries to hurt someone else, or get others to hurt someone else," Warren said at a Clinton rally in Cleveland in September.  "A nasty little bully who can't win in a fair fight."
• 
... Warren went even further, calling Trump "a man with a dark and ugly soul."
• 
Apparently in Warren's mind, calling Hillary Clinton a nasty woman is beyond the pale, yet calling Trump a nasty bully with a "dark and ugly" soul is just totally fine.
• 
Warren and the rest of Team Clinton know full well there is nothing objectively immoral about calling someone "nasty."
• 
They are seizing on Trump's comments solely because Clinton is a woman and a Democrat, and want her supporters to believe Trump's subtext was in fact "you are nasty because you are a liberal woman."
• 
When people criticized Obama for being a socialist or un-American, his defenders argued, they were really criticizing him for being black.
• 
This is of course utter hogwash.  Questioning Obama's far-Leftist sympathies was not a racial dog-whistle — many were and still are concerned about his ideological worldview.
• 
Likewise, calling Clinton a "nasty woman" is not a misogynistic dog-whistle, but merely a reflection of the fact that she is by most accounts and available evidence a particularly unpleasant person who is willing to attain power by any means necessary.
      Cal Thomas: Democratic dirty tricks in the 2016 presidential campaign  (Fox 10/25/2016)
• 
... show Democratic activists, allegedly hired by the party, describing tactics they use to deceive the public.
• 
... national director at Americans United for Change, tells of hiring people to demonstrate and even start fights at Donald Trump rallies.
• 
The objective was to encourage the media to treat the disturbances as spontaneous responses to Trump's rally rhetoric, which some lefties called "hate speech."
• 
The equally predictable response from the left was that the videos must have been edited.
• 
Democratic Party operatives and Hillary Clinton deny any knowledge of such tactics.  Do you really expect them to admit it?
• 
... these tactics are straight from the mind of the late "Rules for Radicals" author and community organizer, Saul Alinsky, a Hillary Clinton pen pal.
• 
... Robert Creamer, an Alinskyite from Chicago, an experienced community organizer and a man who, according to Breitbart News, visited the White House 340 times and on 42 of those occasions met with President Obama.
• 
Creamer admits to being the brains behind hiring and paying for Trump disruptors.  He was also sentenced to five months in prison for bank fraud and a tax violation.
• 
While in prison ... Creamer authored a book titled "Stand Up Straight!  How Progressives Can Win."
• 
In it, he instructs his fellow lefties how to handle conservatives: "In general our strategic goal with people who have become conservative activists is not to convert them — that isn't going to happen.  It is to demoralize them — to ‘deactivate' them.  We need to deflate their enthusiasm, to make them lose their ardor and above all their self-confidence...  [A] way to demoralize conservative activists is to surround them with the echo chamber of our positions and assumptions.  We need to make them feel that they are not mainstream, to make them feel isolated...  We must isolate them ideologically ... [and] use the progressive echo chamber...  By defeating them and isolating them ideologically, we demoralize conservative activists directly.  Then they begin to quarrel among themselves or blame each other for defeat in isolation, and that demoralizes them further."*
• 
George Soros has long funded various groups who engage in similar tactics of disinformation, even violent behavior.
• 
Neither the mainstream media, nor Republicans, have sufficiently exposed these dirty tricks and their intent to swing elections toward the Democratic candidate.
• 
Federal authorities — from the compromised FBI, to higher ups in the Justice Department — won't do anything about it either, mostly because they back Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy.
      Team Obama's new overtime rule is dehumanizing, economically harmful and must be stopped  (Fox 10/22/2016)
• 
According to the new rule, salaried workers earning below $47,476 per year must be paid time-and-a-half for work done in excess of forty hours per week.
• 
The rule promises more pay for working long hours, more money for lower-income employees and struggling families, and fewer hours for the same pay!
• 
Doesn't that sound wonderful?
• 
Unfortunately, that isn't how it will work out in reality.
• 
... salaried employees enjoy being salaried and treated like adults.  They are given tasks to do, and they decide how and when to do them.  Nobody looks over their shoulders with a stopwatch telling them how long they have to drink coffee.
• 
Sure, they have some weeks that are very busy and which require long hours, but if they want to come in late for a few days in a row, leave early, or take an extra week off during the slow season, they get that flexibility too.
• 
President Obama's new rule will make it illegal ... to pay for work product, and instead it mandates that we pay only for time.
• 
If we are compelled to pay for time, we have to track time precisely.
• 
... every employee must start punching a clock while every minute of his day is scrutinized.
• 
... plan to cut staff salaries by the amount of overtime we expect to pay during the year.
• 
If staff work overtime every week, they'll receive the same salary as before, but if they work fewer hours, they'll receive less money.
• 
Because this rule affects only employees who are paid less than $47,476 per year, effective December 1, we'll have a two-tier employment system: lower-paid, second-class employees who lose their freedom and flexibility while being treated like children, and higher-paid, first-class employees who continue to enjoy all the benefits of a salary structure.
• 
President Obama talks often about wanting to reduce "inequality" in this country, but he successfully found a way to create more inequality while hurting employees and their families. 
      Memo to the mainstream media: There's nothing revolutionary in Trump’s election results answer  (Fox 10/21/2016)
• 
The third and final presidential debate highlighted Hillary Clinton's support for partial-birth abortion, "open borders" (her words), and "free" college for all students whose families make up to $125,000.
• 
Yet Donald Trump is the extremist, in the eyes of the elite media, because he wouldn't pledge to support the outcome of the election in advance.
• 
Such pledges, of course, are useless.
• 
Moreover, it is hardly unprecedented for a candidate not to accept the election's outcome.
• 
Al Gore fought for weeks to try to wrestle the 2000 election away from George W.  Bush, who was declared the winner on election night.  Gore didn't concede the race until the Supreme Court ruled against him.
• 
This very month, almost 16 years later, Gore was still implying that he won, with Hillary Clinton sitting behind him and nodding approvingly as he spoke...
• 
So-called media elites are conveniently overlooking such matters.
• 
Even more significantly, however, they seem blissfully ignorant of the fact that the peaceful transition of power under the Constitution relies on the sitting president accepting the outcome of the election — and leaving office.
• 
Who cares if Donald Trump is declared the loser and thinks he won?  He would be powerless to do much of anything about it, as was Gore.
• 
It's not like Trump could call in the Air Force, or the Army.  It is the current president, the commander-in-chief, who is in a position to jeopardize the peaceful transition of power — not the losing candidate.
• 
Shockingly, media elites don't seem to understand this matter of basic civics.
• 
Nor do they seem to realize that our presidential election results haven't always been fair or worthy of unconditional acceptance, particularly in advance.
• 
With such precedent in mind, and with the Democratic Party now openly opposed to such basic notions as requiring identification for voters, maybe Trump is better off not validating the election results in advance.
• 
There's nothing at all revolutionary about that.
      WikiLeaks reveals Obama’s line in the sand.  You won’t believe what it is  (Fox 10/19/2016)
• 
It turns out that Barack Obama does indeed have a line in the sand – and it's the WikiLeaks dumps that are battering Hillary Clinton's campaign, and damage to his legacy.
• 
... Joe Biden said that the U.S.  would launch a "secret" cyber counter-attack against Russia in retaliation for their hacking into the DNC and other individual email accounts.
• 
If that is the sum total of Obama's retaliatory repertoire, it is no wonder the Russians are acting with impunity around the globe.
• 
... President Obama is moved to confront Russia not over hundreds of thousands being slaughtered in Syria – not because of the barrel bombs or chlorine gas – nor over Russia's takeover of Crimea from Ukraine, with whom we have a security treaty.
• 
He is not inspired by Russia selling a missile defense system to Iran over U.S.  opposition, guaranteeing the security of Tehran's inevitable nuclear program.
• 
He is unmoved by Russian threats to shoot down our airplanes and their attacks on U.S.  allies in Syria.
• 
None of those insults and aggressions has moved our president.  Instead, he is teed off that the Russians may be the source of embarrassing email leaks – leaks that confirm, for instance, that Obama lied when he said he didn't know anything about Hillary Clinton's private email server. 
• 
Well, everyone has a tipping point.
• 
There are skeptics who doubt that Russia has anything to do with the steady drip, drip of WikiLeaks revelations.
• 
The blame was thrown on Moscow almost immediately after the initial dump of emails that showed the DNC in cahoots with the Clinton camp.
• 
With brilliant sleight-of-hand, operatives in the Clinton camp hinted the leaks came from Russia, and deftly turned the spotlight to an absurd narrative involving Trump's tenuous ties to Vladimir Putin.
• 
They suggested, then as now, that Trump and Putin were working hand-in-glove to subvert U.S.  democracy.
• 
They give Trump far too much credit.  Not only does he appear to have no real connection to the Russian government, he has also been astonishingly unable to capitalize on the leaks, so caught up is he in distracting and unnecessary confrontations.
• 
It could well be the Russians who are behind the torrent of embarrassing emails.
• 
Hillary Clinton in 2011 angered Putin by accusing him of perpetrating fraud in Russia's parliamentary elections.
• 
How satisfying it must be for Putin to reveal information that shows Mrs.  Clinton trying to rig our elections. 
• 
Hillary Clinton's message to voters: Yes, I may have said and done terrible things but because Putin is behind these leaks, you should vote for me anyway.
• 
As a campaign theme, that's certainly tops "Stronger Together."
      The strange reason why Hillary and Trump never talk about our national debt  (Fox 10/18/2016)
• 
For American politicians, serious discussion of the national debt is strictly off-limits.
• 
"Serious discussion" means three things:
• 
1.  Admitting that a $20 trillion national debt is a problem. 
• 
2.  Defining the problem as a threat to American sovereignty. 
• 
3.  Proposing a policy plan to solve this existential problem.
• 
We voters find it hard to acknowledge that the national debt is our debt, acquired in our name, but not really for the benefit of all.
• 
It's like waking up one morning to find that your identity has been stolen, your checking account looted, and a bunch of mortgages taken out in your name.
• 
Who bought what with my money?! 
• 
Today, every baby born in the USA enters the world owing more than $60,000.  That's each citizen's share of the current national debt.
• 
Almost none of our elected leaders ask us to question this.  Candidates see no upside to making the debt a campaign issue.
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They see only this downside — that fixing the debt requires change and sacrifice.  And what politician thinks offering sacrifice is good for a vote?
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The thing is, with the government now borrowing one of every seven dollars it spends, the debt piling up will crowd out investment and force interest rates up.
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The electorate will feel the pain.  Soon.
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Yet more stupefying is the $5 trillion increase in the U.S.  GDP since 2001.
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Sounds good, right?  Until we note that the national debt rose $10 trillion during that same period.
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Since the beginning of current century, we've borrowed and spent $2 for every $1 we've earned.
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So far, thanks to a widespread belief among both domestic and foreign investors that the full faith and credit of the United States makes buying our debt a very low risk, the Treasury has been able to keep the yield on its securities low.
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Should the bough break and the nation default on its debt, the rest of the world will likely offer a bailout contingent on the surrender of some degree of our sovereignty to an international political body.  Think Ireland, think Greece.
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We will face imposed austerity and who knows what other foreign demands for national behavior modification.
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By definition, terrorism is terrifying.  But it isn't an existential threat to American sovereignty.
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It's not some "lone wolf" with a pressure cooker that will bring us down.
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But it is our own unwillingness to manage, much less eliminate, our national debt that very well could.
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We are already mortgaging our children's future.  Should the debt we create today be our legacy?
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Forcing our kids to pay for our spending is no way for adults to behave.
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So isn't it time that candidates start treating voters like adults by pulling back the curtain on the national debt and proposing plans for cutting spending and increasing revenue?
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The politicians won't do it on their own.  We must demand from them a sustainable, responsible federal government. 
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We must, of course, go further.  Our culture of entitlements will have to be transformed into a genuine social safety net, in which seriously means-tested programs provide only for the neediest among us.
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Each reduction in our debt burden increases the odds of our continued sovereignty while also creating economic growth, greater prosperity, and increased — not diminished — opportunity for our children and grandchildren.
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Actually, parents have been sacrificing for their children since the beginning of parents and children.
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And the idea of responsible, patriotic national fiscal stewardship is not new.
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For at least the first three-quarters of our existence as a nation, we managed to live within our means.  Doing so is in our American DNA.
      Cal Thomas: The one thing Trump should do at the final debate  (Fox 10/18/2016)
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Today's "journalists" will disagree, but as numerous surveys have shown, the public trust in what is collectively called the media has sunk to an all-time low.
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Only the media think they don't have to change and can continue to sell a product more and more people refuse to buy.
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In what may be unprecedented, The New York Times allowed Hillary to edit her own quotes.
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... the top fear of American voters is corruption in government.
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If true, why do so many intend to vote for Hillary, perhaps the most corrupt politician ever to seek the presidency?
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Three years ago, Hillary told ... that the flow of Syrian refugees into Jordan had put Jordan's security at risk.
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About the thousands of Syrians pouring into Jordan, she said, "...they can't possibly vet all those refugees so they don't know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees."
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She wants to increase the number of Syrian refugees entering the U.S.  by many times the current rate.
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If they pose a security threat to Jordan, why wouldn't they pose a threat to America?
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Even FBI director James Comey says he can't guarantee proper vetting for so many refugees and other immigrants, many of whom lack the most rudimentary forms of identification and verifiable work history.
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... Donald Trump honed his attack against the media, the establishment and the Clintons: "The establishment and their media neighbors wield control over this nation...  Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, rapist, xenophobe, and morally deformed.  They will attack you.  They will slander you.  They will seek to destroy your career and your family ... (and) your reputation.  They will lie (and) do whatever is necessary."
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"The Clintons are criminals ... and the establishment that protects them has engaged in a massive cover-up of widespread criminal activity at the State Department and the Clinton Foundation in order to keep the Clintons in power.  Never in history have we seen such a cover-up as this."
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He's right and this should be his line of attack in the third and final debate Wednesday night.
      Is America collapsing like the Roman Empire?  (Fox 10/18/2016)
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Anyone spending this election season in the Eternal City, as I am doing, is bound sooner or later to think about the Colosseum.
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After all, we Americans have one candidate running for Empress and another running for Gladiator.  Can't we feed them both to the lions?  That's what many voters wish.
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Just as in the ancient arena so today the line between entertainment and politics has disappeared and both have become blood sports.
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Somewhere between the orgy of attention to sex and corruption and the spectacle of the debates a sinking feeling has set in: America is Rome 2.0, in decline and headed for a fall.
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Just think about what Rome had and what we have.
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Morals out of a bacchanalia?  Check.  Abuse of public office for private purposes?  Check.  Bread (welfare) and circuses (reality TV) for the masses?  Check.
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Oh the times, oh the customs!  Where is Cicero when we need him?
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Ever since the founding of the Republic Americans have compared themselves to Rome.
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But it was often to an idealized version of Rome, all marble statues and high-flown rhetoric, never mind the tenements or the slaves.
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... we can't be Rome because in Rome women, not men, had big hair and office-seekers burned incriminating letters before others could read them.
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But seriously, just because we have two flawed candidates running for president it doesn't mean that we've reached the end of the line.
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Unlike the Roman Republic, we are not faced with a choice between Pompey and Caesar.  Those two towering egotists – well, alright, we do have that in common with Rome – squared off in the middle of the first century B.C.  to hijack the republic for themselves.  Their bitter conflict caused a civil war that destroyed them both.
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Then came another clash of titans, this time Mark Antony versus Octavian.  Octavian won and restored peace to Rome, but only at the price of turning the republic into an empire.
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We are nowhere near that point.  The barbarians are not at the gate.
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Whoever wins the election, the country will go on to debate its differences peacefully and politically.  The loser will get a TV show or a foundation and the winner is likely to face a Congress reawakened to the exercise of its powers.
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There is, however, one way in which the United States is like Rome and that is, we are a country in translation.
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... we are living through a series of revolutions that will transform America no less thoroughly than Greek intellectuals and German warriors transformed ancient Rome.
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We cannot stop these changes any more than the Romans could stop the changes in their world.  We can and will disagree about how to respond to them.  Indeed, debating that response is the Number One task facing our society.
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One thing is for sure, though, and it's that we need to do more than simply cling to the past.  We need to learn from it and then make our own future.
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So, relax, America.  We're having a bad election and we're making a spectacle of ourselves before the world.  The world is a lot less than puritanical than we are anyhow.
      Immigrant: I don't understand why some Americans hate America  (10/18/2016)
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I was especially moved by a letter I received from a legal immigrant from India.  He asks a very important question in his letter:
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I am a first generation Naturalized American who was born in India.  I am neither white (without white privilege), nor black or Hispanic (not a victim either), I am just a person who came to a land of opportunity with a dream.
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I have traveled some in this world and to the best of my knowledge I have not known of any other country where some of the people desecrate their flag, disavow their National Anthem or tear down their own country.
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If I am wrong please straighten me out.  BUT if I am right, then please address how do we expect any other country to respect ours when we (under the "excuse" of freedom of speech) do not respect it ourselves.
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When I became a US citizen, I took an oath denouncing my allegiance to my old country and even agreed to take up arms against my former country if asked to by the USA.
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I have three comments for your consideration:
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1) If they (the desecrators) dislike our country so much then by the same freedoms that are granted to us through our constitution and bill of rights they are free to denounce their citizenship and go embrace and live in a country that they think is better than ours.  They are free to run and embrace that country's flag and anthem, but I am sorry I would appreciate them not doing it on our soil.  In America fly the American flag with pride and no other!!!
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2) Every immigrant like myself that came here to this wonderful land of opportunity seeking a better future, should leave the policies, laws, traditions and attitudes of their former countries behind and assimilate into our culture, traditions, language, laws and attitudes.  After all if their old country's ideas, policies, traditions and laws were so good then why did they leave and come here in the first place?  Go home!
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3) I believe immigrants come here either because they admire us and the opportunities we offer or to rape and abuse our country for all that they can pillage.  I am sorry but we must block the latter kind.  I believe that Mr.  Trump has the right idea.  As for those who were born in this country, wow, what can I say?  They were blessed to be born into opportunity but many unfortunately could not admire the beauty of the forest because they were blinded by the tree in front of them.
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I am just a man who loves my country and all that it stands for.  May God bless the USA."
      America's quiet catastrophe: The collapse of work for men  (Fox 10/17/2016)
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Work rates — officially, the employment to population ratio — have collapsed for men and women alike since the turn of the century, and the shocking truth is that for adult men they are now actually lower than they were in 1940 — at the tail end of the Great Depression.
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... every unemployed prime age man in America has three counterparts neither working nor looking for a job.
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Today some 7 million prime age men are neither working nor looking for work: nearly one in eight.
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Over-represented in this un-working army are: the less-educated; the never-married; and African-Americans.
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(Immigrants, interestingly enough, have above-average work rates and labor force participation rates, no matter what ethnicity.)
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The collapse of work for men appears to be at the center of many of America's current social and economic woes — slower economic growth; widening income and wealth gaps; increasing family fragility; stalling social mobility; and rising distrust and dis-satisfaction with our system.
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If we look just at men of "prime working age" — the critical group between the ages of 25 and 55 — work rates in 2015 were two percentage points lower than they were in 1940
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In fact, if work rates for men were only as high today as in 1965 — a time when we enjoyed true "full employment" — nearly 10 million more men would have paying jobs today.
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Washington's unemployment numbers are supposed to gauge the health of our labor markets, but they cannot help but mislead.
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They were devised in a bygone era when there were only two alternatives for an able bodied man: 1) to work, or 2) to be looking for work if you are not employed.
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Nowadays, thanks to our increased general affluence and our modern welfare state, there is a "third way" — the work-less life, neither working nor looking for it — and for two generations, this has been the fastest growing contingent among prime working age American men.
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It is true that all rich democracies have witnessed some "flight from work" by prime age males over the past half century.
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Alas — the record for the United States is the very worst of the group.
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Today even sclerotic France and dysfunctional Greece have substantially smaller shares of their prime age men checked out of the labor force.
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America, unfortunately, has been the "winner" in this particular race to the bottom.
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It is a shame, and a scandal, that our talking and deciding classes have somehow managed to overlook this steadily gathering crisis.
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We need to shine a public spotlight on it, and start to focus on remedies and solutions. 
      Visions  (JWR 10/13/2016)
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Too many of us are reduced to being watchers, not actors.
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The worst of it is that, in the end, there is no end in sight.
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Of course there would be a modern word for this endless emotional boredom: anomie, or the absence of any emotion at all.
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Depression, the shrinks call it, but it is something much more: a soul-sickness that doesn't even recognize the existence of the soul.
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Consider German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's essay "On the Vanity of Existence."
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He wrote, "we take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something — in which case distance and difficulties make our goal look as if it would satisfy us (an illusion that fades when we reach it) — or when engaged in purely intellectual activity, in which case we are really stepping out of life so as to regard it from outside, like spectators at a play.  Even sensual pleasure itself consists of a continual striving and ceases as soon as the goal is reached.
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Not valuing our own lives, how can we be expected to value the lives of those so far below us in the economic and social scale?  Which is really the essential question about abortion.
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It's not as if God had created each of these souls, inviolable and untouchable, and that to destroy one of them is to destroy the whole world in which they live, breathe, see and experience life.
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Ignore the holy and we ignore all.
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Much better to just give up and succumb to the spiritlessness of our age.  Treat the abstraction called life as just another profit and loss statement.
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Demand that outfits like Planned Parenthood have some moral justification for abortion.  Then ask only what it would cost our own souls to collaborate in such an ungodly undertaking.
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And so the various states in this ever fluid union would find themselves forbidden to steer federal funds away from groups like Planned Parenthood merely because what they do is morally abhorrent.  Namely, performing abortions and trafficking in fetal tissue.
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The wages of sin, it turns out, may not be death but eternal, meaningless, so-called life.
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Forgotten is the old inner knowledge that, if we but will it, it is no dream.  But reality.
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Which is all too real if only we dare open our eyes, awaken from our coma and wrestle with the angel who's been at our side the whole night long.
      Medieval America  (JWR 10/13/2016)
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Pessimists often compare today's troubled America to a tottering late Rome or an insolvent and descending British Empire.
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But medieval Europe (roughly the years 500 to 1450) is the more apt comparison.
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The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if haphazard, human achievement — along with endemic insecurity, superstition and two, rather than three, classes.
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... medieval speech codes were designed to ensure that no one questioned the authority of church doctrine.  Culturally or politically incorrect literature of the classical past, from Aristophanes to Petronius, was censored as either subversive or hurtful.
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Career-wise, it was suicidal for, say, a medieval professor of science at the University of Padua to doubt the orthodoxy that the sun revolved around the earth.
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Similarly, at Berkeley or Princeton, few now dare to commit the heresy of expressing uncertainty about whether man-caused global warming poses an immediate, existential threat to human civilization.
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The shrinking middle classes struggle to service trillions of dollars in consumer and student debt to big banks — in the manner of medieval peasants.
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In the medieval world, impoverished serfs pledged loyalty to barons in exchange for their food and housing on the manor.
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In the modern world, progressive government is the bastion that distributes entitlements on the expectation that the masses show their political fealty at election time.
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In medieval Europe, widespread literacy disappeared.  Superstition reigned in place of reason.
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The ruling cliques of the medieval court were full of insider knaves and scoundrels, plots and intrigue.
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Compare the current scandals, lies and hypocrisies of our Beltway cloister in Washington.
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With ancient borders long forgotten, medieval elites relied on massive walls, moats and keeps to stay safe — sort of similar to what we see with the present-day gated estates of Malibu and Silicon Valley.
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For their roads and water, isolated medieval fiefdoms relied on the crumbling ancient infrastructure of long-gone Rome.
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In 21st-century America, we rely on — but could never again build — structures such as the Hoover Dam.
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Medieval mass entertainment — puppeteering, mimes, jugglers, acrobats — was far different than the sort of entertainment that troubadours and bards performed for the lords.  In our age, think of the gulf between the symphony and reality TV, quiz shows and the NFL.
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There is one great difference, however, between the medieval and modern worlds.
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People living in the first millennium believed in transcendence and a soul, and sought to keep alive culture until civilization returned.
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People living in the second millennium increasingly live for their appetites without worry about what follows — with little awareness of what has been lost and so not a clue about how to recapture it.
      Newt Gingrich: 'Treason' and the danger of dishonesty  (Fox 10/13/2016)
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In my speech to the Republican National Convention in July, I recited a list of terror attacks that had occurred in the previous 37 days.  It went on for two whole minutes.
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This week, German special forces arrested a Syrian refugee who authorities said was on the verge of committing an attack similar to those we saw in Paris and Brussels.
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The foiled attack was one positive outcome, but it is again worth remembering the cascade of recent attacks in which our enemies have succeeded.
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Consider the list of attacks just since my speech to the Republican National Convention in July.
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Only a few days after that speech, an attacker pledging allegiance to ISIS blew himself up outside of a concert venue in Germany, wounding 12. 
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Two days later, in Normandy, France, ISIS attackers slit the throat of an 85-year-old priest and took nuns and parishioners hostage.
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In August, we saw the first ISIS attack in Russia when men armed with axes and guns attacked traffic police in Moscow.
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In Strasbourg, France, a Jewish man was stabbed by an attacker shouting "Allahu Akbar."
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In Toulouse, France, an Algerian attacker entered a police station and stabbed an officer in the neck.
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In Germany, an attacker at a music festival screamed "Allahu Akbar" while stabbing and critically wounding an older married couple.
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In Australia, a man screamed "Allahu Akbar" while stabbing a 21-year-old British backpacker to death, and fatally wounded a man who intervened to try to save her.
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In Roanoke, Virginia, a Muslim man attacked and critically wounded a couple as they entered their apartment building, and authorities said they believed the attack was ISIS-inspired .
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In September, an Afghan immigrant perpetrated multiple bombings in New York and New Jersey, wounding 29 people.
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The same week, an immigrant from Turkey shot and killed 5 people in a mall near Seattle, Washington.
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And finally, just last week, a man stabbed two police offices in Brussels, Belgium in an attack authorities described as terror-related.
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Consider it honestly: How many of these incidents had you heard about?  How many of those you'd heard about would you have remembered?
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Our amnesia about these horrific attacks is a symptom of our failure to be honest about the nature of the threat we face.
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Our officials and our media elites behave as though they are isolated incidents, when in fact they are part of a clear and totalitarian ideology that is spreading across the planet.
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... the real treachery is the willful blindness that prevents us from dealing with radical Islamic terrorism for what it is.
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Without being honest about the threat and a major shift in strategy, the danger will only get worse.
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"At some point there's going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we've never seen before," Comey said.  "We saw the future of this threat in Brussels and Paris."
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He added that future attacks will be on "an order of magnitude greater."
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You've just read the list of terror attacks in the last 3 months.
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An "order of magnitude greater" would be ten times that many, and ten times as deadly.
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Such is the danger of continued dishonesty.
      Gregg Jarrett: Sad and infuriating – FBI director’s tortured interpretation of the law  (Fox 10/13/2016)
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As evidence mounts that the Director of the FBI subverted justice, damaged the reputation of the Bureau and squandered the support of his agents, calls for his resignation will surely escalate.
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... career FBI agents and attorneys who dedicated themselves to the year-long probe unanimously believed she should have been criminally charged. 
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More than 100 agents and analysts were assigned to the case.  They all thought Clinton committed crimes.
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And maybe Comey believed it, too.  But he chose to ignore both the evidence and the law.
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It is sad and confounding and infuriating, all at the same time.
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... Comey exhibited an astonishing ignorance of the law.  He laid out a case of gross negligence constituting a crime, defined it with the words "extremely careless" and then promptly proceeded to ignore the law. 
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The FBI, as the nation's most prominent law enforcement agency, is badly damaged.  Its reputation tarnished.  Its image corrupted. 
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James Comey is to blame for that.  It will serve as an indelible, ugly stain on his legacy.
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See related Hillary's Private Server (Mike Lester, 07/06/2016) cartoon from Government picture album
      The New York Times abandoned its integrity just to bash Donald Trump  (NYP 10/11/2016)
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There is apparently nothing wrong with America that can't be blamed on Donald Trump.
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He is single-handedly destroying the Republican Party, trashing presidential debates and spoiling the reputation of locker-room talk.
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And — breaking news alert!  — Trump is even changing journalism.
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His habit of saying things that nobody ever said before is forcing reporters to unleash their partisan views instead of just giving the facts.
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Some of these charges may be true, but the one about Trump changing journalism is demonstrably false.
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All the more so because it comes from the editor of the New York Times, who happens to be the actual guilty party.
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Trump didn't change the Times — Baquet did.  He's the one who authorized reporters to abandon the paper's standards when covering Trump and express their personal political opinions.
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Or, as Baquet said ... the struggle for fairness is over.  "I think that Trump has ended that struggle," Baquet boasted.  "I think we now say stuff.  We fact-check him.  We write it more powerfully that it's false."
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Fact-checking, of course, is often in the eye of the beholder, and quickly morphs into opinion when there is no restraint or neutral standard.
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The result is the paper's relentless, daily assault on Trump, to the advantage of Hillary Clinton.
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This is not a mere continuation of the old liberal bias that infected the Times, the Washington Post and the broadcast networks for years.
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This is a malignant strain of conformity that strips away any pretense of fairness in favor of strident partisanship.
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... declared that most reporters saw Trump "as an abnormal and potentially dangerous candidate," and concluded they had a duty to be "true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history's judgment."
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It is not incidental that his examples all involve allegedly dishonest Republicans, and none involves dishonest Democrats.
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And once standards are gone, they are gone forever, meaning anyone wanting to work at the Times will face a political litmus test.
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As the editor, Baquet should be outraged that his staff secretly compromised the paper's integrity.
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But as the editor who eliminated the Times' standards, he's getting the biased paper he wanted.
      Words Versus Deeds  (JWR 10/11/2016)
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Donald Trump's gutter talk about women shows yet again that he is bad news.
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The problem is that Hillary Clinton is far worse.
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... Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State, carrying out the Obama administration's foreign policies, have cost many lives in many places, including the American ambassador and others killed in Benghazi.
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Women have a right to be offended by Trump's words.
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But women have suffered a far worse fate from Secretary Clinton's and President Obama's actions.
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Pulling American troops out of Iraq, despite military advice to the contrary, led to the sudden rise of ISIS and their seizing of many women and young girls as sex slaves.
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A message from one of these women urged the bombing of ISIS.  She said she would rather be dead than live the life of a sex slave.
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Some women who tried to commit suicide and failed have been tortured for trying.
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That is a lot worse than some stupid and gross words by Donald Trump, which even he has had to repudiate.
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Make no mistake about it.  Neither party has a good candidate for President.  The choice is between bad and disastrous.
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Are women more in danger from Trump's words or Hillary's actions?
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Demands that various advocacy organizations reveal the names of all their donors are an obvious attempt to scare off those donors, with harassment by everyone from vandals to rioters to the Internal Revenue Service and other government bureaucrats.
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Without the right to free speech, none of the other rights is safe.  Government officials can get away with all sorts of abuses, if others are not free to talk about those abuses.
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No law has done more damage to the employment prospects of young blacks than the federal minimum wage law.
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You don't get any wage at all when you are unemployed.  And if you are young and unemployed, you don't get any job experience to help you rise up the ladder, when you don't get on the ladder.
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As for safety in the black community, Hillary Clinton has allied herself with those who demonize the police.
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The net result has been a sharp increase in the number of blacks killed by other blacks, as criminal elements take control of the streets when the police are not allowed to.
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Do you choose a President by talk — or by actions and consequences?
      What's at stake in the 2016 elections?  Nothing less than the Constitution  (Fox 10/11/2016)
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... and whether federal judges will adhere to their oath to "... faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me ... under the Constitution and laws of the United States," or dilute, attack and destroy our founding document.
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That the Constitution is on the ballot in the persons of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who hold differing views of it and have pledged to appoint radically different judges to federal benches.
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... Richard Posner, a judge for the U.S.  Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...  claims to see "absolutely no value" in studying the Constitution because "18th-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century."
• 
I suspect if they had seen modern culture with our fixation on Kim Kardashian, they might have retreated to England.
• 
Even the Bill of Rights, says Posner, "do not speak to today."
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Wow.  Freedom of speech, assembly, the press, religion, no warrantless searches and more are outmoded concepts?  Who knew?
• 
Posner continued: "I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries — well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments)."
• 
After receiving severe criticism, Judge Posner apologized for his "careless" remarks, but he still doesn't think the Constitution is relevant for today because, you know, those dead white guys owned slaves and didn't have the internet.
• 
Imagine if such illogic was applied to other creations of the 18th century.  There was much literature and music, in addition to political writings, that came from that era.
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This is the arrogance of some judges who think they know better than the Founders.
• 
It is the choice in this election between a president and the judges he or she will appoint who believe, as late Justice Antonin Scalia did, that the Constitution sets boundaries for limited government in order to guarantee liberty to American citizens, or whether it means only what an unelected judge says it does.
• 
Posner is no fan of Scalia.  In a clever turn of phrase he writes, "Let's not let the dead bury the living."
• 
He continues: "I worry that law professors are too respectful of the Supreme Court, in part perhaps because they don't want to spoil the chances of their students to obtain Supreme Court clerkships.  I think the Supreme Court is at a nadir.  The justices are far too uniform in background, and I don't think there are any real stars among them..."
• 
This election will determine the direction of our courts and whether judges will write laws, or interpret under the Constitution the intent of the legislators who wrote them.
• 
It will also decide whether the Constitution remains a self-authenticating document, protecting our liberties from encroaching government, or something that in the minds of judges like Richard Posner can be shredded along with our liberties.
      Heather MacDonald: The left freaks out over Trump's tape but loves culturally lewd behavior  (Fox 10/09/2016)
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Democrats and their media allies, joined by many Republicans, are calling on Donald Trump to withdraw from the presidential race after a newly released, decade-old tape of a frat-house-level conversation between Trump and television host Billy Bush in 2005, in which Trump boasted of his heavy-handed pursuit of females.
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The response has been swift and apocalyptic.  Hillary Clinton tweeted: "This is horrific.  We cannot allow this man to become president."
• 
Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine told reporters: "It makes me sick to my stomach."
• 
Slate's science editor wrote that "I feel sicker after seeing it than I can remember feeling in a while."
• 
Another Slate columnist writes that Trump and Bush "can't see their female colleagues as anything but collections of f**kable or unf**kable body parts.  They exhibit a complete disregard for women's humanity, agency, and internal lives."
• 
Now why might it be that men regard women as sex objects?
• 
Surely the ravenous purchase by females of stiletto heels, push-up bras, butt-hugging mini-skirts, plunging necklines, false eyelashes, hair extensions, breast implants, butt implants, lip implants, and mascara, rouge, and lipstick to the tune of billions a year has nothing to do with it.
• 
Females would never ever exploit their sexuality to seek attention from men.
• 
How surprising that Trump and Bush noticed Zucker's legs!  As documented in the video, she is wearing a skimpy purple dress, with an extremely short hem cut on the bias, a low neckline and fully exposed back.  She is in high heels to accentuate her bare legs.
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But all that bare flesh must simply be because Zucker has a high metabolism and gets exceedingly warm; she would never want to broadcast her sexuality to men or have men notice her.
• 
The fact that she swishes her hips when she walks must just be a quirk of anatomy.
• 
"As if public Donald Trump wasn't bad enough, this video reminds us that there's an aspect of the man that's even worse than what he shows to the public.  You see it in the transformation Trump and his conversation partner Billy Bush undergo when they exit the bus and move from [what they assumed was] a private sphere into a public one.  They are still committing acts of sexual harassment and abusing their power when they ask the actress who greets them to give each of them a hug..."
• 
Isn't this a good thing that Trump in this case at least has obeyed the rules of public behavior? 
• 
If any of these newfound exponents of female modesty felt any comparable nausea at the blatant display of female sexuality and, dare I say it, "pussy," in Beyonce's acclaimed rock video "Formation," say, they kept it to themselves.
• 
Beyonce and her female chorus line rhythmically thrust their butts, crotches, and breasts to the camera, while Beyonce brags of her sexual prowess.
• 
Sounds like a sexual quid pro quo, ripe for a harassment lawsuit.
• 
The "Formation" video, which inspired Beyonce's Super Bowl halftime performance in January (to another universal swoon from the entertainment industry), also shows a very young girl engaging in some precocious twerking, a grotesque travesty of childhood.
• 
No objections to that destruction of the innocence of childhood from the DNC.
• 
President Obama has singled out Beyonce for praise, and the singer is a big Hillary Clinton supporter, to not a word of protest from Clinton regarding her status as a role model for young girls.
• 
Bill Clinton met with Beyonce and her husband, rapper Jay Z, in September.  If Bill or Hillary thinks the lyrics of Jay Z's "Big Pimpin‘" "horrific," in Hillary's words, they are not letting on.
• 
The Washington Post primly headlined its scoop on Trump's bus conversation with Bush: "Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005."
• 
The New York Times' follow-up story also labelled Trump's remarks "lewd."
• 
If either of those paper's critics have ever objected to such lewdness in popular culture, it has escaped attention.
• 
Have they objected to college campus sex weeks, which routinely invite porn stars to offer how-to demonstrations on S & M sex?
• 
Do they squirm with discomfort when campus administrators pass out tips on the use of sex toys to achieve better orgasms?  Not on the record, at least.
• 
Other Hillary Clinton supporters have hardly been shy about exploiting sex to get ahead. 
• 
"I have used sex as a marketing tool and it has worked.  I mean, my TV show is called ‘Inside Amy Schumer.'"
• 
This blushing Victorian violet explains: "My whole life I found friends that are just like me, young girls that were just like me, like we were all whores."
• 
"My best friend would describe me as loyal ... to the boyfriend I stole from her."
• 
Democratic National Convention star, Hillary fan and "Girls" creator Lena Dunham has not exactly set herself up as a model of sexual prudence, either, nor has she shrunk from using her promiscuity as a selling point in the entertainment market.
• 
The sudden onset of Victorian vapors among the liberal intelligentsia and political class at the revelation of Trump's locker-room talk is part and parcel of the left's hypocrisy when it comes to feminism and sexual liberation.
• 
Trump's gratuitous nastiness to men and women alike, kicking people when they are down, unfits him to serve as the premier civic role model for the nation's children.
• 
But the feminists can't have it both ways: declaring that women should be equal to men in all things and then still demand a chivalric deference to female's delicate sensibilities.
• 
It is particularly galling to see the selective resurrection of Victorian values from the same crowd that has been pushing transgender locker rooms on the world, in an effort to destroy the last shred of girls' innate sexual modesty.
• 
This opportunistic, on-again, off-again appearance of traditional sexual values characterizes the campus-rape myth as well.
• 
Needless to say, actual sexual assault is both criminal and intolerable.
• 
But college co-eds insist on the prerogative of maximal promiscuity at the same time that they revert to the role of helpless damsel in distress, when, after drinking themselves blotto to lower their sexual inhibitions, they regret a boozy hook-up and declare themselves raped.
• 
Following the release of the studio bus tape, Trump said in his defense that Bill Clinton "has said far worse to me on the golf course."
• 
That may be the most credible thing that Trump has ever uttered.
• 
But both Republicans and Democrats are fatally compromised in their responses to the Trump tapes, deliberately released right before the make-or-break second presidential debate.
• 
... there is a huge difference between the reality TV star Trump bragging about his libido on a studio bus and Bill Clinton exploiting the power of the presidency to seduce a young intern.
• 
... Democrats are the most shameless in their outrage over the Trump braggadocio, having dismissed Bill Clinton's White House and gubernatorial escapades for years, and standing as the party of maximal sexual liberation, unlike the Republicans.
• 
The default norm of sexual modesty, coupled with the chivalric ideal that gentlemen should treat females like ladies, used to be the most effective defense against such high-testosterone behavior.
• 
Feminism, however, has declared both modesty and chivalry sexist, leaving females to improvise a response to the inevitable excesses of the male sex drive, when they are not trying to leverage it to their own advantage.
• 
... it stands merely as a reminder of how enduring the stance of offended female virtue is, even in the age of crude sexual exhibitionism.
      Obama’s tragic admission: He’s learned nothing as president  (NYP 10/04/2016)
• 
News flash: President Obama didn't learn anything in eight years in the White House.  And he's proud of it.
• 
"If you go back and you read speeches I made when I was running for the US Senate in 2003, or if you go back further and you look at statements I made when I was on the Harvard Law Review, my worldview is pretty consistent."
• 
The comment was a point of pride, which makes it doubly tragic.
• 
Never mind that the world is on fire, that America is polarized, angry and scared.
• 
Or that ObamaCare is a sick patient, that the economy is growing at a snail's pace and that many cities are racial war zones.
• 
It's not Obama's fault.  None of it.  He would do it all again.
• 
... Obama is fixated on his legacy.  A large part of his effort on the way out the door is explaining what he did, and insisting that what he did was right.  Always.
• 
There's no news there, but there is some valuable insight from the ways he defends the indefensible.
• 
... the president says his secret sauce was that he "trusted my judgment" but didn't "trust the noise out there."
• 
... he said, he concluded his critics were "not even trying to be fair-minded in their assessments or recommendations," and he found that liberating because he could ignore them.
• 
... he expressed no regret.  He was right and everybody else was wrong.
• 
It's a remarkable notion, yet plainly a trend when government is the largest special interest, one that uses and abuses its power to look out for itself.
• 
Especially under liberals, it only admits failure to demand more power.
• 
Consider that way back in the reign of George W.  Bush, it was universally accepted that a president ought to be held accountable for national problems.
• 
But Obama and his apologists cleverly reversed the dynamic.
• 
Now the American public is to blame when things go wrong.
• 
It's because people are "deplorables" or some other ignorant form of life that leads them to resist wise choices government makes for them.
• 
Recall that during the 2008 campaign ... he said that white working-class people in Pennsylvania and places like it were falling behind economically and "they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them."
• 
That's the most quoted part of his remarks, but the rest of it was equally snobbish: Those same people, he said, also cling to "anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
• 
Imagine if Obama had listened to those people, instead of shutting them out as noise.
• 
Imagine if he had seen their problems as legitimate, instead of seeing them as backwoods bigots.
• 
But he didn't, and so he leaves the country more bitterly divided than when he began.
• 
... Trump's rise through his focus on immigration and trade are a big part of Obama's legacy. 
      Rep.  Kinzinger: Syria is not your political football, Mr.  Obama  (Fox 09/30/2016)
• 
Last week, President Obama spoke at the ‘Leader's Summit on Refugees' and read a letter from a young boy named Alex.
• 
The letter was touching, innocent, genuine, and an example for us all.
• 
However, the president took it and turned it into a political moment to say that we need to be inviting more refugees to America. 
• 
The president made an appealing, compassionate speech that pulled at the heartstrings of everyone there...
• 
But in typical fashion, rather than look at the root of the problem in Syria, the president found an opportunity. 
• 
His eagerness to push his own agenda, while innocent kids are being murdered in Syria by a brutal dictator that the President has empowered, truly sickens me.
• 
... the crux of the problem in Syria is that the president has utterly, grotesquely, and gravely FAILED to lead.
• 
He has failed to show strength when Russian planes conduct airstrikes on medical facilities and aid convoys.
• 
He has continually failed to understand he is being played like a fiddle by Vladimir Putin when he looks to work with the Russian dictator on a resolution to the conflict that his airstrikes continue to exacerbate. 
• 
It's embarrassing and it has done severe damage to our standing in the world.
• 
Our enemies no longer fear us, our allies don't trust us, and our own people have begun to wonder what we even stand for anymore.
• 
The president's failure to lead, to stand up strong, to assert himself as the leader of the free world has ultimately led to the devastation we see in Syria.
• 
As commander in chief to the strongest nation in the world, it is the president's job to be our voice in the global community.
• 
Yet, he has continued to sit on the sidelines and disengage.
• 
Nearly half a million Syrians have died in the last FIVE years and through it all, the president has done nothing.
• 
Empty rhetoric and a few ceasefires, which have all failed and were utter shams to begin with, does not equate to a strategy or plan of action. 
• 
It is beyond time to wake up and realize that if the president continues to sit back and allow Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin to murder these innocent Syrians, his legacy will be remembered for allowing this genocide in Syria. 
• 
If we fail to act, fail to lead, fail to do something – this Syrian Civil War will be the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century and more than likely the biggest shame on our president and world leaders.
• 
See related Unbelievably Small... (Mike Lester, 09/13/2014) cartoon from World picture album
      Judge Napolitano: The one essential word that was missing from the first debate  (Fox 09/29/2016)
• 
In this weekly column and in my on-air work at Fox News, I have characterized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a crook and as the "Queen of Deception."
• 
I have argued that there is enough credible evidence in the public domain to indict, prosecute and convict her of espionage, perjury, misleading Congress, public corruption, providing material assistance to terrorist organizations and obstruction of justice.
• 
I can point to five times when she lied under oath.
• 
And I know of American intelligence agents who firmly believe that Americans died because Clinton failed to keep state secrets secure.
• 
She refused to use government-secured email devices because she wanted to keep her behavior hidden from the public and from the president.
• 
Some of that behavior had to do with using the power of the government to enrich her family's foundation.
• 
I have argued that there is strong, credible evidence to demonstrate that she exercised her official behavior as secretary of state in accordance with the financial needs of her family's foundation.
• 
She refused to see some foreign dignitaries until they gave money to the foundation.
• 
She had her close personal aide, Huma Abedin, employed by the foundation while she was employed by the State Department.
• 
She even permitted Russian President Vladimir Putin to gain control of a Utah uranium mine in return for the payment by an intermediary of $145 million to her family's foundation.
• 
She conspired with a dozen members of Congress and with President Barack Obama to fight the secret war to topple Libyan strongman and American ally Col.  Moammar Gadhafi.
• 
She permitted the sale of arms to groups in Libya that were masquerading as anti-Gadhafi militias but — according to the CIA — were actually terrorist organizations.
• 
She rejected the advice of the CIA and thereby provided material aid to terrorist organizations — a felony under U.S.  law.
• 
The result of her secret war was the destruction of all order and culture in Libya, the institution of mob rule and the assassination of the American ambassador.
      It's judgment day for the EPA's clean power plan, America  (Fox 09/27/2016)
• 
EPA's head, Gina McCarthy, has publicly stated that the alleged environmental benefits of the plan were not its real rationale. 
• 
At a March 22 congressional hearing, one congressman stated: "I don't understand — if it doesn't have an impact on climate change around the world, why are we subjecting our hard working taxpayers and men and women in the coal fields to something that has no benefit?"
• 
McCarthy's answer: "We see it as having had enormous benefit in showing sort of domestic leadership as well as garnering support around the country for the agreement we reached in Paris."
• 
But demonstrating leadership is not the law's goal; the underlying statute, after all, is the Clean Air Act, not the Clean Air Politics Act.
• 
It's also an incredibly expensive goal, costing the country tens of billions of dollars annually.
• 
And it's at this point that, on the issue of costs and benefits, EPA launches into its song-and-dance routine: it didn't have to do a cost-benefit analysis, says EPA, but it did one, but it's not the one it used to justify what it did, and the numbers are fine anyway. 
• 
The Clean Power Plan's alleged benefits, moreover, won't even be for the U.S.; they're global benefits, even though they're paid for by U.S.  consumers.
• 
This is contrary to the Clean Air Act's focus on protecting "the Nation's air resources" for "its population."
• 
If you think all this is nit-picking about a plan essential to the planet's survival, remember Gina McCarthy's words — it's not about the planet, it's about "showing leadership."
      Cal Thomas: Why I support Trump [after initially being against him]  (Fox 09/27/2016)
• 
Now that all of my inside-the-Beltway, elitist, morally superior friends and colleagues have weighed in with their self-righteous denunciations of Donald Trump, it's my turn.
• 
After initially opposing his candidacy for president, I have come around to another point of view.
• 
The election of Hillary Clinton will perpetuate and probably worsen everything many people hate about our bloated and dysfunctional government, collectively and derisively known as "Washington."
• 
The election of Donald Trump will offer an opportunity — perhaps the last for decades — to "fire" or at least isolate the elites, returning the country to its constitutional boundaries.
• 
If Hillary Clinton wins in November, government will grow bigger and more expensive with all of her "investment" ideas, many of which have been tried before and failed.
• 
Under President Hillary Clinton, what's to stop secular progressives from exacting revenge on churches and pastors who preach a different gospel than the one they favor?
• 
Donald Trump is addressing the legitimate concerns of a large number of Americans who increasingly feel ignored by their government.
• 
These concerns include anemic economic growth.
• 
These forgotten Americans are against open borders, which the president seemed to champion in his final speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
• 
Many are tired of fighting wars we don't win and fighting terrorism with no clear strategy, all the while admitting more "refugees" from countries where terrorism is a way of death.
• 
They are weary of the denigration of law enforcement.
• 
Hardworking people are tired of being told they are not paying enough in taxes to a government that only wastes it.
• 
The ignored are tired of being branded racists.
• 
Christians are tired of being called homophobes and Islamophobes and told their beliefs are inferior to those who want to destroy the country and undermine values that were once widely held.
• 
Choosing a president is always a roll of the dice (to use a Trump casino metaphor).
• 
We know what we will get with Hillary Clinton, including corruption at the highest level.
• 
Those foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation will undoubtedly expect something in return.
• 
With Trump we don't know for sure what we'll get, beyond promises he has made and some contradictory positions he has taken.
• 
We can only hope that good people will serve and surround him, including running mate Mike Pence and the policy wonk Newt Gingrich.
• 
Only one candidate for president is capable of overturning the "money changers" in Washington.
      If Trump talks about the economy at Hofstra he'll win the presidency  (Fox 09/26/2016)
• 
I'm a small businessman.  I'm at ground zero.  I'm living the real-world results of Obama's economic policies every day.
• 
It's a disaster out here.  The middle class is destroyed, shattered, annihilated.  Small business owners are struggling to survive.
• 
America and capitalism are hanging by a thread.
• 
Obama is lying.  Hillary is lying.  The media is lying.
• 
Inflation isn't zero.  Inflation is raging.  My electric bill...  my grocery bill...  my kid's college bills...  and of course my health insurance bill are all through the roof.
• 
Government is committing fraud.  To make the claim that inflation is zero, they removed everything that matters from the inflation index.
• 
We're fighting for survival, while Wall Street gives out million dollar bonus checks.
• 
Small businessmen and women are the heroes of the business world...  and the economic engine of America.
• 
Yet we are punished with the highest taxes of our lifetimes, raging electric bills (due to Democrat's obsession with green energy), unpayable health insurance bills (due to ObamaCare), record IRS audits...  all at the same time that sales are dramatically down.  It's a perfect storm.
• 
Meanwhile there are 22 million government employees.  They create no jobs.  They create no economic growth.
• 
Most of them are good people.  But they get guaranteed jobs for life, guaranteed salaries far higher than the average American worker, free or dramatically reduced cadillac healthcare packages, early retirement and obscene bloated pensions for life.
• 
Taxpayers like me get stuck with the bill.  I can never retire.  I'll work until the day I die because I have to pay all these bills.
• 
Over 90 million working age Americans aren't working.  Where are they all?
• 
They are on welfare, food stamps and disability.  Or they are in their early 60's and they've opted for early Social Security and Medicare.
• 
They'll never work again.  Who's paying this bill?
• 
Obama's policies have created a glut of horrible, crappy, low wage jobs meant for entry-level young adults, high school drop-outs and illegal aliens.
• 
We've lost millions of good jobs.  And gained millions of bartender, waiter and low wage retail jobs.
• 
Of course there are 200,000 new jobs each month.  Because of ObamaCare it now takes two or even three part-time jobs to replace what used to be one full-time, high-paying, middle class job.
• 
That's why the jobs figures are complete and utter fantasy.
• 
Our national debt is approaching $20 trillion.  The policies of Obama have buried our children in debt.  The quality of our kids' future life is destroyed beyond repair.
• 
Paint the REAL picture, Donald.
• 
Tell it like it is — with no political correctness.  The American people know the truth.  They know what they're hearing from Obama, Hillary and the media is a lie.
• 
Explain how you will turn it around for one specific group of Americans — those who want work, not welfare.
• 
Be sure American voters understand you'll create an economy that works for working people, not welfare addicts.
• 
It's time we had a president who turns the tables — the system should be tilted in favor of the taxpayers, not the freeloaders.
• 
Tell the American people that you are the first president on the side of working men and women...  the middle class...  small business, not big business...  the taxpayers.
• 
Do this on Monday night, Donald...  and you're the next president of the United States.
      Team Obama launches a shocking broadside against religious faith  (Fox 09/24/2016)
• 
"The phrases ‘religious liberty' and ‘religious freedom' will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance." — Those were the word uttered by one Mr.  Castro.
• 
Not Fidel.
• 
Rather, one Martin Castro, the chairman of the U.S.  Commission on Civil Rights, who launched a broadside recently against religious faith, degrading the vision of the Founding Fathers that made this country the envy of the world.
• 
Here are the words that flowed from President Adams' pen.  "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion .  .  .  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."*
• 
George Washington expressed similar thoughts in his Farewell Address.  "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.  In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness."*
• 
Our Founding Fathers would have cautioned against attempts to "subvert these great pillars" of religion and morality.
• 
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French historian and admirer of American democracy, introduced the Continent to the workings of the American upstarts.
• 
"The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other."
• 
Commissioner Castro has another vision.  In the letter addressed to the president, the vice president, and the Speaker of the House, he wrote, "Religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon these civil rights."_
• 
Castro's America would not be recognized by James Madison, who argued that religious conviction ought to be placed ahead of – not behind – the agenda of the State.
• 
In his "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments of 1785," the architect of our Constitution wrote:
• 
"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to Him.  This duty is precedent, both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society."*
• 
Not so long ago, America projected its global power to protect religious freedoms.  Throughout the Cold War we strove to help brave believers behind the Iron Curtain to keep the embers of religion from being totally extinguished by atheistic Communist dictatorships.
• 
We demanded of our chief international nemesis, the USSR, that any negotiations on nuclear arms reduction must be linked to human rights — including freedom of religion.
• 
Eventually, Gorbachev relented, the Berlin Wall came down, and the war against religion came to an end.
• 
Respect for religion and religious values were at the core of our Founding Fathers' vision and an inspiration to endangered religious people the world over.
• 
We can only hope that the next head of America's Civil Rights Commission will protect — not slander — people who dare set their moral compass by the words of G-d.
      Judge Napolitano: Loss of liberty does not make you safer, America  (Fox 09/22/2016)
• 
The clash in American history between liberty and safety is as old as the republic itself.
• 
As far back as 1798, notwithstanding the lofty goals and individualistic values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the same generation — in some cases the same human beings — that wrote in the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished speech critical of the government.
• 
Similarly, the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process has been ignored by those in government charged with enforcing it when they deal with a criminal defendant whom they perceive the public hates or fears.
• 
... it is in times of fear — whether generated by outside forces or by the government itself — when we need to be most vigilant about protecting our liberties. 
• 
... these liberties are natural rights, integral to all rational people and not subject to the government's whim.
• 
I can sacrifice my liberties, and you can sacrifice yours, but I cannot sacrifice yours; neither can a majority in Congress sacrifice yours or mine.
• 
The idea that sacrificing liberty actually enhances safety enjoys widespread acceptance but is erroneous.
• 
The loss of liberty gives folks the false impression that the government is doing something — anything — to keep us safe.
• 
That impression is a false one because in fact it is making us less safe, since a government intent on monitoring our every move and communication loses sight of the moves and communications of the bad guys.
• 
As well, liberty lost is rarely returned. 
• 
The Constitution both establishes the federal government and confines it.
• 
It presents intentional obstacles in the path of the government.  Without those obstacles, we might be safe from domestic harm, but who would keep us safe from the government?
• 
Who would want to live here if we had no meaningful, enforceable guarantees of personal liberties? 
• 
When our liberties are subject to the needs of the police, we will end up in a police state. 
• 
What does a police state look like?  It looks like the Holocaust and communism.
• 
Everyone who works in government has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.  Hence, it is distressing to hear lawmakers calling for the abolition of due process for certain hateful and hurtful defendants.
• 
Due process — fairness from the government, the right to silence, the right to counsel and the right to a jury trial with the full panoply of constitutional requirements and protections — is vital to our personal liberties and to our free society as we have known it.
• 
The whole purpose of the guarantee of due process is to insulate our liberties from subjective government interference by requiring it in all instances when the government wants life, liberty or property — hence the clear language of the Fifth Amendment.
• 
Without due process for those we hate and fear — even those whose guilt is obvious — we will all lose our freedoms.
      Chelsea bombing is proof PC police stuck in pre-9/11 mindset  (NYP 09/20/2016)
• 
Some 15 long years after the horrors of 9/11, much of America remains trapped in a 9/10 mindset.
• 
The father of alleged bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami called law enforcement authorities in 2014 and said his son was a terrorist.
• 
But when the father recanted his charge, the bureau apparently closed the case.
• 
Yet we now know that Rahami had visited Pakistan and Afghanistan several times for extended periods before and after 2014.
• 
One trip lasted for 13 months ... and another involved a stay in Quetta, Pakistan, a notorious hotbed of the Taliban and other terror groups that is so dangerous, the Pakistan army avoids it.
• 
The feds missed other signs, too.  Rahami posted radical Islamic writings on a personal website
• 
Imagine if agents had followed his digital trail and uncovered his Islamist leanings.  What if they knew he praised the Boston Marathon bombers — who also turned pressure cookers into bombs?
• 
The questions are fair given the previous cases in which people who turned out to be terrorists had been flagged, but dropped off the radar, only to resurface with lethal attacks.
• 
The discovery that authorities had failed to connect the many dots of suspicion about the perpetrators of 9/11 led to numerous pieces of legislation and repeated vows that it would never happen again.
• 
But it's still happening, again and again.
• 
Simple errors and incompetence cannot be ruled out, but it is clear that political correctness is handcuffing law enforcement.
• 
While it is wrong and illegal to stereotype all Muslims as terrorists, that standard need not hamper legitimate investigations, especially when signs of radicalization are obvious.
• 
As others have noted, the American Constitution is not a suicide pact.
• 
Law enforcement is not required to close its eyes to evil.
• 
To do so, to give in to false claims of Islamophobia, trades one mistake for another.
• 
And too many innocent Americans have paid for that mistake with their lives.  How many more must die from political correctness?
      You must be vigilant: How to protect yourself in the face of terror  (Fox 09/20/2016)
• 
... federal law enforcement is stretched to the breaking point, working literally a thousand cases of Islamic State supporters.
• 
In New York City proper, the epicenter of the latest attack an intelligence program that was once the envy of law enforcement and intelligence officials worldwide has been hamstrung by activists and grievance-mongers who seek to undermine effective counterterror provisions.
• 
In major cities law enforcement have repeatedly been targeted in ambushes, as occurred in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
• 
Even the government itself says you have a responsibility for your safety.  "If you see Something, say Something," they urge, with calls to report, "suspicious packages."
• 
But the guidance usually ends there.  What are you supposed to see?  What qualifies as suspicious?
• 
Americans must develop better "situational awareness." Too many Americans have their faces buried in Smartphone apps and games.
• 
When you are out in public take a moment to see what's around you.
• 
To begin with, develop a baseline of your environment.
• 
Without an understanding of what "normal" is for your location ... you won't be able to tell what "suspicious" looks like.
• 
We stop and look both ways before we cross the road because we realize we are entering a potentially dangerous environment.  This is second nature and no one considers it a burden.
• 
We should similarly stop and look whenever our environment changes.
• 
When we walk into a new building, or exit onto the street.
• 
Whenever our train stops at a new stop.
• 
Your environment has changed as new people get on, and some get off.  That means it requires a new look.
• 
... ask the question, "Why"?
• 
"Why is that man wearing a winter coat when everyone else is in short sleeves?"
• 
"Why did that woman have a bag when she entered and now she doesn't?"
• 
There might be an obvious answer that puts you at ease, but remember it's not your job to answer the question, only ask it.
• 
Don't explain away or rationalize behaviors.
• 
Call attention to the behavior if appropriate ("is that your bag?"), move away from the area, or find law enforcement.
• 
By asking the question "why?" you'll able to explain what raised your suspicions and not feel hampered by political correctness or accusations about your character.
• 
From the passengers on Flight 93 to the off-duty officer who ended the knife attack in St.  Cloud, to the numerous occasions in between, it has been every day Americans, and not the government, who have successfully averted jihadist terror.
• 
You owe it to those heroes, yourself, your family and your fellow Americans to be vigilant, maintain situational awareness and be uncowed in attempts to silence you from speaking up. 
• 
      Liberals denounce the media for not derailing Trump's candidacy  (Fox 09/20/2016)
• 
The liberal media are freaking out over the possibility that Donald Trump might win the presidency.
• 
They are denouncing their profession, decrying what they see as a press corps that coddles Trump and castigates Hillary Clinton, and demanding a change before it is too late. 
• 
Some folks on the left are so convinced that Trump would be a disaster, and so mystified why roughly half the country doesn't view him with the same disdain, that they are lashing out at the media.
• 
I would pose this question: Why do these pundits think they're so much smarter than everyone else that they can clearly see Trump's flaws but others are blinded by lousy media coverage?
• 
I'd also pose this question: Can anyone seriously say there hasn't been an avalanche of negative coverage about Trump ... and on and on?
• 
... it's not like Americans haven't had sustained exposure to Trump's strengths and weaknesses for more than 15 months.
• 
Perhaps the most vociferous plea comes from Nick Kristof, the liberal, Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist...
• 
"...Is it journalistic malpractice to quote each side and leave it to readers to reach their own conclusions, even if one side seems to fabricate facts or make ludicrous comments?..."
• 
"We owe it to our readers to signal when we're writing about a crackpot.  Even if he's a presidential candidate.  No, especially when he's a presidential candidate."
• 
And have journalists really "created a narrative" about Clinton that has made people distrust her?  Isn't this a problem that has been building in the quarter-century since the days of Whitewater and cattle futures, since she testified before a grand jury as first lady?
• 
Some on the left make their argument in more apocalyptic terms.
• 
"...  This is how elections are titled toward despots and undisciplined strongmen.  They're legitimized and humanized despite their long menu of unprecedented gaffes, lies and treachery."
• 
There is plenty of room for debate about the quality and thoroughness of Trump's coverage.
• 
But if the media get blamed for his recent surge, don't they also get credit for his high negatives?
• 
The media need to be aggressive in holding both candidates accountable.
• 
But they can't be blamed for the fact that tens of millions of American voters now favor the outsider candidate that many commentators, on the left and the right, detest. 
      Greg Gutfeld: Five more lessons from another terror attack  (Fox 09/20/2016)
• 
What's truly intriguing about the attacks over the weekend, wasn't the attacks themselves — but the responses to them.
• 
FIRST, CONCLUSION JUMPING IS FINE, AS LONG AS IT'S MEDIA APPROVED.
• 
But then usually, after we find a link to terror (the St.  Cloud terrorist asks victims if they're Muslim; the Chelsea bomber had traveled to the Middle East a number of times prior), everyone pretends they always knew it was terror.
• 
By the way, it appears the bombs all had timers.  Was it wrong to immediately assume they were bombs, when they could have been clocks?
• 
SECOND, THE BEST RESPONSE, WAS THE HOLY ONE.
• 
Meaning, an off- duty cop filled a terrorist full of holes.
• 
Without a gun, a terrorist stabs people without interruption.
• 
When a gun appears, the terrorist is dead.
• 
The lesson?  Every arena is better served by turning soft to hard.
• 
Instead of spending time thinking about how to fight terror, why not take steps to prevent it?
• 
Anti-gun celebrities are lucky they weren't at that mall to see their luxurious gun control beliefs go up in smoke.
• 
THIRD, WE SHRUGGED.
• 
... it appears we don't take this stuff seriously, especially when no one dies.  We've gotten used to these things.
• 
FOUR: THEIR FAILURE MUST STILL BE SEEN AS SUCCESS.
• 
Someone wanted people to die, and will continue wanting people to die.  So relaxing one's guard because the bomber was sloppy is pure stupidity.  The bombs will only get better, and the terrorists more savvy.
• 
You need to look at terrorism as any kind of typical organism that is shaped by interactions with an environment.
• 
What we perceive as failure is merely knowledge the organism ingests to improve itself.
• 
FIVE: As always, my problem with news coverage is with the mindless repetition of details — which elevates the infamy of the fiend responsible.
      Three teror attacks this weekend but Obama, Clinton stick with PC script about migrant terror threat  (Fox 09/19/2016)
• 
The recent Islamic terror attacks in Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey underscore the obvious danger of President Obama and Hillary Clinton's desire to increase the number of Muslim migrants entering the United States.
• 
In the span of 48 hours, the nation experienced three Islamic terror attacks...
• 
The evidence that first or second generation Muslims constitute a veritable fifth column and pose an existential threat to Western civilization and Western people is overwhelming.
• 
The Minnesota attacker ... was a 22-year-old Kenyan-born Somali.  Afghan-born Ahmad Khan Rahami, thought to be behind the bombings in New York and New Jersey, was apprehended after a shootout with police Monday.
• 
The U.S.  has yet again suffered at the hands of militant Islam, and yet again the progressive powers that be would apparently rather stick their heads further into the sand than face the reality of the threat.
• 
Adan and Rahami are just the latest foreign-born Muslims to be involved in terror on U.S.  soil.
• 
But rather than show concern for protecting the safety of the American people, progressive politicians and law enforcement seem concerned only with protecting their multicultural fantasy.
• 
... President Obama claimed that "at this point we see no connection between [the incident in Minnesota] and what happened in New York and New Jersey."
• 
But to most people, the connection is obvious.  Both suspects were radicalized Muslims and both suspects were migrants.
• 
The numbing regularity with which Islamic terrorist attacks in the West is now joined like clockwork by a "move along, nothing to see here folks" response from the multiculturalist elite.
• 
The evidence that first or second generation Muslims from unstable parts of the globe constitute a present danger to Western societies is overwhelming.
• 
Nearly every noteworthy militant Islamic attack upon U.S.  soil in recent years has been carried out by either a Muslim migrant or the child of Muslim migrants.
• 
"The challenge we're all talking about is that, we can only query against that [data] which we have collected."
• 
"If someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home but there would be nothing show up because we have no record on it."
• 
"We are extremely fortunate and grateful that no one was killed," Obama said Monday morning.
• 
But Obama's thanksgiving rings resoundingly hollow in the face of his immigration policies, and his continued refusal to face the reality of global, militant Islam.
• 
One can only wonder how many more Westerners need to die before the progressive powers that be abandon the notion that importing tens of thousands of Muslim migrants from war-torn nations is a good idea.
• 
If Obama and Clinton truly cared about protecting American lives, they wouldn't allow en masse into the U.S.  those who pose such a clear threat to American lives.
      Obama cracks jokes while jihadists lay siege to America  (Fox 09/19/2016)
• 
Islamic radicals are once again waging jihad on American soil and President Obama is AWOL.
• 
There have been attacks in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota and a charity run for Marines.  Among the victims — an eight year old child and a 15-year-old girl. 
• 
And the only reason we're not talking about massive casualties is because of alert citizens and the incompetence of the jihadist.
• 
America is under siege and yet, our commander-in-chief remains silent. 
• 
On Saturday night — just moments after the bombings — the president was bashing Donald Trump at the Congressional Black Caucus gala and cracking jokes about the Islamic State.
• 
The president was cracking jokes while New Yorkers were digging shrapnel out of their bodies. 
• 
The White House seems to be treating the horrific events of this past weekend as if it was simply a normal day in America.
• 
Not only has President Obama not defeated ISIS — but now they are here — living among us — and more than willing to blow us up in the name of Allah.
• 
But instead of calling out the president's fecklessness — the mainstream media attacked Donald Trump — for having the gall to call the bomb a bomb.
• 
Mr.  Trump is the only person who had the courage to call for a temporary ban on immigration from places that are hotbeds of radical extremism.
• 
But the mainstream media called him Islamophobic. 
• 
What part of "they want to kill us all" does the media not comprehend?
• 
Hillary Clinton told a press gaggle there are millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslims.
• 
That's nice to know.  But we're concerned about the ones that want to blow us up. 
• 
On Election Day you need to answer this one question — who do you trust to protect you and your family from the Islamic radicals?
• 
Gary Johnson — the pot-head?  Jill Stein — tree-hugger?  The lady who had to be shoved head first into a van?  Or Donald Trump?
• 
Think long and hard — because the safety of your loved ones is on the line.
      Edward Snowden isn’t a patriot — and doesn’t deserve a pardon  (NYP 09/18/2016)
• 
Despite a push from the American wing of the anti-American movement to get traitor Edward Snowden a pardon, nobody holding important power is buying it.
• 
Not the president, not the Congress and neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump.
• 
They all demand that Snowden come in from the Russian cold to face criminal charges under the Espionage Act, making this a rare moment of national political unity.
• 
Even a crack in the wall would give fuel to an idea that is extremely dangerous to America's national security.
• 
... he was a disgruntled employee whose leaks of military programs helped America's enemies.
• 
"Snowden is not a whistleblower.  ... his conduct put American lives at risk ... and the policy of the Obama administration is that Mr.  Snowden should return to the United States and face the very serious charges."
• 
The spark for the sudden interest is Oliver Stone's movie lionizing Snowden.
• 
The crackpot caucus, including George Soros, Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and so-called human-rights groups, is using the film to demand the pardon and turn Snowden into a hero.
• 
The head of the American Civil Liberties Union claimed that cases like this one "are precisely why the presidential pardon power exists," while an Amnesty International official said, "We will need more Edward Snowdens."
• 
Ah, no on both counts.  The vast majority of presidential pardons are granted only after conviction and after the applicant has served most, if not all, of his prison sentence. 
• 
And the last thing we need are more Snowdens.  Letting him off without paying a price would encourage more treasonous behavior.
• 
... Snowden was charged in 2013 with theft, "unauthorized communication of national defense information" and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person."
• 
... the claims of Snowden and his confederates that he performed a public service are laughable.
• 
Unless, of course, he meant public service to Russia, China, Iran and Islamic State, the beneficiaries of his disclosures.
      Gingrich: Hillary’s dishonest, deplorable strategy to shame and suppress Trump supporters  (Fox 09/14/2016)
• 
Hillary Clinton broadened her personal attack campaign from its focus on Donald Trump to include the tens of millions of Americans who support him, claiming, "You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.  [...] The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it."
• 
The media saw the remarks as a gaffe because our elites overwhelmingly agree with Hillary about the "deplorables" in the rest of America — and they believe that in politics, as the saying goes, a gaffe is when someone inadvertently tells the truth.
• 
The Democratic nominee's slander of tens of millions of Americans was part of a deliberate strategy to shame and suppress her opponent's supporters.
• 
That strategy relies on allies in the commanding heights of culture and the media to echo her charges and make it too painful for voters to support Trump in public.
• 
Hillary might have been indelicately explicit in attacking those who disagree with her as racist and xenophobic, but she hardly invented the tactic.
• 
Her remarks Saturday reflected the attitude that most of the modern left has taken toward its opponents since long before the Trump campaign began.
• 
Anyone who doesn't agree with the left's prescriptions or who challenges its assumptions gets labeled a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, or in some cases, a science-denier.
• 
... the reckless, ad-hominem attacks are not a sign of confidence about the argument, but of weakness and insecurity.
• 
... the left has done such a terrible job at a practical level that they can't have a discussion about policies in the real world.
• 
So instead of debating, they shout down opponents with ugly accusations.
• 
In fact, more Americans have been killed in Chicago since 2001 than have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
• 
Trump has pledged to restore safety to our cities, and one of his top advisors has actually done it: Mayor Giuliani cut the rate of violent crime by 56 percent in New York with effective policing.
• 
On national security, Trump points out a bipartisan failure to secure the border, properly screen the people coming into the U.S., or develop a strategy to win the war with Islamic supremacism 15 years after 9/11.
• 
Hillary has no good answer for these failures, and she is deeply implicated in them — so she suggests that any criticism is a mark of Islamophobia.
• 
In Clinton's case, the charges are especially galling considering the amount of money her family has taken from violently anti-women and anti-gay regimes.
• 
... it is why they lie to Americans knowingly about the threat of Islamic supremacism.
• 
If they didn't lie, they'd lose.
• 
Hillary's dishonesty, which is rampant and complete, arises from this basic necessity.
      Hillary collapse coverage reveals absurdity of biased media  (NYP 09/14/2016)
• 
It is said that history turns on small hinges, and now maybe the presidential race does, too.
• 
For hinges don't get much smaller than the 20-second video of Hillary Clinton collapsing and being lifted into her security vehicle.
• 
Without it, Americans would still be clueless about Clinton's serious health issues.
• 
Because they were scooped by the video, an army of journalists is now under pressure to report facts instead of covering them up.
• 
Most important, voters got fresh proof that Clinton's first instinct is to lie, and then lie again.
• 
Despite her unshakable reputation for being dishonest and untrustworthy, Clinton nonetheless managed to snooker most mainstream outlets into believing that her coughing fits were just allergies.
• 
Those organizations were so gullible that they created a protective circle around her. 
• 
... the press corps closed their minds and treated dissenters like pariahs to coerce conformity.
• 
They were like jackals, tearing away at a colleague's reputation out of partisan allegiance.
• 
... others added their voices to the Clinton chorus, demonizing any who mentioned her coughing fits as cranks, nut jobs and conspiracy theorists.
• 
In fact, the deniers were suckers.  They were buying into the Clinton scam that the world is out to get her.  They are her useful idiots.
• 
Guilty of malpractice, they participated in a shameful episode fueled by the media's determination to defeat Donald Trump.
• 
They don't love Clinton, but their hate for Trump blinds them to their duty.
• 
Because they believe they should pick the president, they didn't want to know the extent of Clinton's health problems, and didn't want anybody else to know, either.
• 
But remember the little video — it is a hinge of hope.  It shows the power of simple facts and the value of the democratization of media.
• 
In this case, it lifted the veil of dishonesty and informed the electorate.
• 
In doing so, it reminded millions of Americans why they don't trust the mainstream media any more than they trust the Clintons.
      Cal Thomas: Hillary's 'deplorables' and the left's contempt for traditional Americans  (Fox 09/13/2016)
• 
Every now and again secular progressives rip off their mask and tell conservatives what they really think of them.
• 
... Hillary Clinton one-upped President Obama, who said of conservatives during the 2008 presidential campaign: "And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
• 
Hillary Clinton said: "You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables." She then said that some of these people were "irredeemable."
• 
How many, then?  One-quarter?  One-third?  Ten percent?  And how does she arrive at such a figure?
• 
This is the contempt in which it seems the left holds traditional Americans.
• 
Anything they say "no" to is to be labeled racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic and nativist.
• 
To the left, anyone who does not share "modern" ideas is to be condemned, even called unAmerican and deplorable.
• 
"Insulting everyday Americans to a group of wealthy donors shows whose priorities Clinton really has in mind and exposes the hypocrisy of a candidate whose stated desire to unite the country is clearly all for show."
• 
Name-calling on both sides prevents us from hearing what solutions to America's manifold domestic and foreign challenges the candidates propose.
• 
Bad language in politics is nothing new.
• 
The 1800 presidential race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who are now held in high regard as statesmen, was the beginning of what we now call negative campaigning.
• 
In addition to the often scurrilous things they said about each other, Adams and Jefferson had surrogates who attempted to outdo them.
• 
... suggested that if Thomas Jefferson were to become president, "We would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution."
• 
... warned that the election of Jefferson would create a nation where "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced."
• 
... wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a 'repulsive pedant' and 'gross hypocrite' who 'behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.'
• 
Deplorable, but redeemed in the minds and hearts of their countrymen; I'm doubtful the same will be said of the current presidential candidates 200 years from now.
      Greg Gutfeld: The next  (Fox 09/11/2016)
• 
We were splashed with the cold water realization that an ideology exists that threatens our existence.
• 
Islamists weren't "over there" any more.  Yes, they were over there — but now, they are over here, and, all around.
• 
Sure, we knew they existed before 9/11, but we hardly paid attention, even when they hit the WTC the first time. 
• 
My belief system is predicated on the goal of preserving our country.  I don't want to see this place go down the tubes.
• 
And I don't want a bunch of lonely losers blowing us up in the name of some god.
• 
... I'm aware that I am lucky to live in this country.  I realize that America is not the rule, but the exception, on this brutal planet.
• 
There are so many parts of the world that are steeped in misery.
• 
This is why so many people are dying to come here — this is the land of the lucky.
• 
... I have no right to deny a decent person a wish to come and live here.
• 
There is absolutely no explanation for you being where you are born, other than your good, or bad, luck.
• 
You didn't choose your parents either.  So if you got two of them, and they turned out well — you're especially lucky.
• 
It's no achievement on your or my part, however.  It's all a gift.
• 
... I am not a bouncer for America - I can't tell people who are not as lucky as me "sorry, dude, that's the breaks — go back to your hellhole and watch your children die."
• 
That's akin to a lottery winner announcing that only lottery winners get to play the lottery.  Only worse.
• 
So everything above is entirely correct, if — and only if — radical Islam did not exist.
• 
Radical Islam is the deadly skunk at the garden party — ruining any potential for an open border.
• 
An open border is akin to leaving our door wide open in a forest of hungry tigers.
• 
So as the lucky man, I can't just say, "come on in," knowing all of our luck will run out if you happen to be an Islamist who wants to end this world.
• 
... I know that as much as I want the tired and weary to come here, there's a predator hiding among them.  We need to sift.
• 
"Tired and weary" — we understand that phrase.  The world is nothing but billions of the "tired and weary."
• 
But what if people who come here under the guise of being "tired and weary" bring values and beliefs that serve to create only more exhaustion and pain?
• 
And, ultimately, our destruction
• 
Yes, bring us your tired and weary, but embrace our values.
• 
Radical Islam is a predator whose goal is to disable the host, dismantle its culture (or what's left of it), and not simply punish the nonbelievers, but also fellow Muslims through enforcement of an archaic brutal system.
• 
It's a mistake to cast immigration issue as a Mexico thing.
• 
No: it's about the spread of jihadism.  Even if ISIS dies, a new strain of hate will replace it.  And it will be Islamist, and it will be more refined, and more adept at targeting us. 
• 
The next big attack will exceed the casualties of 9/11 by a factor of ten.  Technological progress affects all arenas — including the purveyors of death.  Drones, plus anthrax, over a stadium, equals unimaginable horror.
• 
Who would do such a thing?  The same people who pulled off 9/11.  Now they just have better tools.
• 
The environment that we consider lucky to be living in, must be preserved — or ultimately whatever brings such luck will be destroyed.
      What the Benghazi attack taught me about Hillary Clinton  (Fox 09/11/2016)
• 
On this, the fourth anniversary of the Benghazi tragedy, I would like to offer a different explanation for Benghazi's relevance to the presidential election than is usually found in the press.
• 
Just as the Constitution makes national security the President's highest priority, U.S.  law mandates the secretary of state to develop and implement policies and programs "to provide for the security ... of all United States personnel on official duty abroad."
• 
And the Benghazi record is clear: Secretary Clinton failed to provide adequate security for U.S.  government personnel assigned to Benghazi and Tripoli.
• 
U.S.  law also requires the secretary of state to ensure that all U.S.  government personnel assigned to a diplomatic post abroad be located at one site.
• 
When asked about security at Benghazi on Sept.  11, Mrs.  Clinton has repeatedly asserted her lack of responsibility.
• 
More recently, she stated that "[I]t was not my ball to carry." But the law says otherwise.  Sound familiar?
• 
Her decision to allow the Benghazi consulate to be separate from the CIA annex divided scarce resources in a progressively deteriorating security environment.
• 
Notably, one of the primary goals of Ambassador Stevens' fatal visit was to begin consolidating our Benghazi personnel into one facility.
• 
There are no punitive measures for breaching these two laws.  Mrs.  Clinton will not have to appear before judge and jury to account for her failures.
• 
Is this why she felt these laws could be ignored?
• 
Because she is now the Democratic presidential candidate, only the American electorate will have the opportunity to hold her accountable.
• 
Candidate Clinton and her campaign point to her record as secretary of state as a positive qualification for the presidency.
• 
However, the record shows that Secretary Clinton persuaded the president to overthrow Qaddafi and advocated maintaining a diplomatic presence in Benghazi after the Libyan revolution.
• 
And then she abandoned her diplomats by ignoring her security obligations.
• 
Either she could not correlate the increased tempo of attacks in Libya with the safety of our diplomats, demonstrating fatal incompetence, or she was grossly negligent.
• 
If Mrs.  Clinton was unable to fulfill her security obligations to the federal employees she was legally obligated to protect as secretary of state, how can we trust her with the security of our entire country?
• 
I won't.
      Newt Gingrich: 9/11 anniversary — 15 years of strategic defeat, dishonesty and  (Fox on/0/2016)
• 
"I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat."
• 
That was Winston Churchill's description of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's surrender to Hitler in the Munich Agreement of 1938.
• 
Yet Churchill's words also apply to where the United States is today.
• 
The problem has been the approach of a bipartisan Washington political elite that has squandered 15 years, thousands of lives, many thousands wounded, and trillions of dollars with no coherent strategy, no honest assessment of the challenge, and no willingness to learn from failure and develop new strategies and new institutions.
• 
Since September 11, 2001, we have moved from righteous anger and clarity of purpose against the forces of terrorism in the immediate aftermath of the attacks to now sending $1,700,000,000 in cash to the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.
• 
Fifteen years ago this week, terrorists killed 2,977 Americans in the worst surprise attack on our homeland since Pearl Harbor, 70 years earlier.  In fact, 574 more Americans were killed on 9/11 than on December 7, 1941.
• 
It was a huge, tragic, and deeply emotional shock.  And yet the 9/11 attack was not the beginning of our war with Islamic supremacism.
• 
By 2001, we had been at war with the Iranian dictatorship (still to this day listed by the State Department as the leading state sponsor of terrorism) for 32 years, when Iranians seized the American embassy in Tehran.
• 
From an American perspective, that war had continued in Lebanon in the 1980s and in Saudi Arabia, East Africa and Yemen in the 1990s.
• 
In 2001, the terrorist war came to American soil with shocking results.
• 
... President Bush asserted "on September 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country."
• 
President Bush described a huge goal.  "Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there.  It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated."
• 
"Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war?  We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network."
• 
Bush went on to warn that "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have seen.  ...Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.  Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.  From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."
• 
President Bush wisely warned that "the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows."
• 
Four months later, in his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush described North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "Axis of Evil".
• 
Bush warned that "the United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
• 
And that was the high water mark of the response to 9/11.
• 
Just this week, North Korea had its fifth nuclear test.  Last week North Korea launched three missiles in direct violation of United Nations Resolutions.
• 
We now know that while deceiving the Congress and the American people, the Obama Administration has sent $1,700,000,000 to what even the State Department says is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, the Iranian dictatorship.
• 
Iraq, at great cost in American lives, wounds and money, has degenerated into a mess dominated by Iran and by ISIS.
• 
How did we go from brave words to defeat, dishonesty, and humiliation? 
• 
Tragically, after heroic leadership in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 ... and after delivering exactly the right words to Congress, the Bush administration failed to plan for how big, how hard, and how long the fight with Islamic supremacists would be.
• 
Almost immediately, the lawyers began imposing rules and regulations.
• 
The State Department began pushing back against an honest, clear statement of who was attacking us.
• 
President Bush had warned that "you are with us or you are against us," but the State Department rapidly began to offer an alternative in which you could be a little with us and a little against us.
• 
Instead of a brief campaign Americans have been sucked into endless conflict.
• 
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have failed to define the scale of the threat, the determination of our enemies, and the very real dangers we face.
• 
Since the bipartisan establishment can't even define the threat, it certainly can't define a strategy for success.
• 
As our enemies grow stronger and smarter, we slide from defeat to humiliation.
• 
As our enemies watch us accept humiliation, they grow bolder and more daring.
• 
There is a remarkable parallelism to Iranian ships crowding our navy and Russian planes crowding our air force.
• 
None of this is a surprise.
      I'm not just saying 'no' to Hillary Clinton  (INN 09/08/2016)
• 
Yes, I'm voting for Donald Trump.
• 
If anyone had told me two years ago that I'd be making that statement, I would have done a Jon Stewart eye roll and stare. 
• 
What?  The guy from reality TV?  The "You're fired" guy with the funny hair and New York accent?  That guy?!
• 
But things have happened in the last few years that have made me ... decide that this is not only our best but our only choice.
• 
First of all, there is President Barack Hussein Obama.  ... "This president has done more to delegitimize and undermine Israel's position in the world than any other president."
• 
"As Secretary of State, Hillary led the international negotiations that paved the way for the Iran deal."
• 
I continue to wonder why American Jews — who often declare, "Never again!" — don't seem to grasp the enormity of Clinton's responsibility for the creation of this existential threat to six of the world's remaining 16 million Jews.
• 
How can I be sure Donald Trump will be better for Israel?  I can't.  But at least he gives me hope.
• 
Whatever you say about Trump, he isn't in this for either wealth or fame, both of which he has in abundant supply.
• 
Most of all, when I look at these two candidates I see a clear choice between a successful entrepreneur and a corrupt politician; a family man honest about his failings and a hypocrite involved in a sham marriage.
• 
A person with a vision (agree with it or not) for America, and someone willing to endanger her entire country's national security with a private email server simply to hide the truth about her words, actions and beliefs.
• 
"Who else in American politics would be so audacious as to have one spouse accept money from foreign governments and businesses while the other charted American foreign policy?"
• 
I believe that Donald Trump is sincere in the vision he has for America, and that he will do his best to achieve it.
• 
Some people find that vision appalling.  But I have a different take.
• 
Take border walls.  As an Israeli whose family almost died in the 2002 Passover massacre in Netanya, a direct result of the disastrous Oslo "peace accords" pushed by Bill Clinton, I can testify to the wonderful power of walls.
• 
When we began building ours in 2003 — over universal condemnation — our casualties from suicide bombings, from a peak of 220 dead in 2002 and 142 in 2003, dwindled until in 2015 there were... none.
• 
Radical Islamists have taken the worst in their religion and made it their creed, infecting some of their coreligionists with an ideology that turns them into rabid killers.
• 
This virulent ideology can strike at anyone, any time.
• 
What is wrong, then, with advocating a careful vetting of all those from affected areas?
• 
Likewise, what is wrong with stopping the illegal arrival en masse of Mexican criminals who are not vetted at all?
• 
Clinton's promise to continue Obama's mass amnesty plans, along with her even vaguer plans to "protect our borders," is simply irresponsible.
• 
Given power, she will do to America what Angela Merkel has done to Europe, destroying its people's peace and security and leaving them helpless to barbarous daily attacks by a mass of people who appreciate neither generosity nor kindness.
• 
Would I have preferred that another candidate ... espouse Trump's agenda?  You bet!
• 
But as it is, as an adult, I have no choice but to deal with reality.
• 
And the reality I see is that Trump is the best bet in this particular election for those who love both Israel and America.
      Dr.  Keith Ablow: Hillary Clinton — Inside the mind of a shameless liar  (Fox 09/08/2016)
• 
Recently, it has been reported that Hillary Clinton is using psychologists to prepare for her debates with Donald Trump.
• 
Donald Trump wears his psyche on his sleeve.
• 
Hillary Clinton is the one whose psychological make up would seem to leave her vulnerable.
• 
Her penchant for lying is a problem, but the really big problem is that she seems unable to determine when her lies are registering with audiences as clearly untrue.
• 
At the core, people who lie transparently do so because they lack empathy — the ability to intuit and vicariously experience what others are thinking and feeling.
• 
Locked behind walls of narcissism or arrogance or imperiousness, consumed with the pursuit of power, they can't tell convincing lies because they can't truly resonate with how their words and mannerisms are being received.
• 
We have in Ms.  Clinton, if you will, an empress with no clothes.  Everyone knows her cover ups are transparent — except, seemingly, Secretary Clinton, herself.
• 
All that Donald Trump needs to do, in order to expose Ms.  Clinton as a liar is to ask her to repeat her defenses related to her use of a personal email server when she was Secretary of State, her mingling of State Department business with Clinton Foundation business and her having abandoned Ambassador Chris Stephens, Foreign Service Office Sean Smith and two former Navy Seals to die at Benghazi.
• 
Tens of millions of Americans watching will feel, in their hearts, that she is a liar.
• 
As a forensic psychiatrist I have seen this psychological paradigm before — in those with sociopathy.
• 
Not infrequently, criminals attempt to hide their crimes with lies that are so obviously untrue that they leave investigators shaking their heads and chuckling.
• 
The criminals cannot tell that their lies are ineffective, because they are too insensitive to the feelings of others.
• 
"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.  Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill some Americans?  What difference at this point does it make?"
• 
That's really the best Secretary Clinton could do.
• 
As a compulsive liar intent only on maintaining power, she doesn't know that she is fast becoming the Empress with no clothes.
• 
And only she believes others cannot see.
      After a decade of confusion our troops deserve a commander in chief who is worthy of them  (Fox 09/07/2016)
• 
Our next commander in chief will assume command of a military whose budgetary strains have reduced its ability to train and fight as they should.
• 
The veteran population has seen the sacrifices made for battlefield gains over the last 15 years squandered away.
• 
And just as troubling has been our inability to take care of those who were lucky enough to come home at all.
• 
This is a national disgrace, it's no secret, and yet it still is allowed to fester.
• 
And while we are still counting the cost of our forever wars in both blood and coin, our men and women in uniform will always be willing to undertake any mission that the American people and our commander in chief ask of them.
• 
They deserve to know he or she will unfailingly support them and more importantly, has the capacity to ensure those sacrifices will not be in vain.
• 
Our pattern of following up initial battlefield successes with our intransigent bureaucracy and political gamesmanship is why, after 14 years, we see an Iraq and Afghanistan with little to show for our efforts and sacrifices.
• 
We've had over a decade of confusion from the White House to the Pentagon to the Battlefield.
• 
We've had no coherent strategy.  We've had no clear end-state.
• 
We've had no consistent guidance, and in a vacuum of clarity, when our leadership has no real idea of what it is we are realistically trying to accomplish, they start to take less risk, and "success" becomes "don't screw up".
• 
So... they tighten the Rules of Engagement, they deny air support, they confuse a soldier's reality with that of a policeman, they listen to the lawyer instead of the warrior.  In turn we hear vague cliches like "advise and assist" and "non-combat roles".
• 
It's why, until recently 75 percent of bombing runs in Iraq and Syria returned without actually dropping their bombs because they're more afraid of bad press than the enemy.
• 
We pretend that 9,000 soldiers in Afghanistan will make a difference when 100,000 was just starting to see progress.
• 
That's madness and maddening to those who have and do serve this nation in the armed forces.
• 
To say this is an unsustainable path for our country, never mind our military is an understatement.
• 
What's the plan to win the war and keep the peace so that my kids aren't fighting on the same battlefields against the kids of the enemy I fought?
• 
What does "winning" even look like?
• 
To allow just one soldier to leave his family and head towards the sound of the guns without those answers is a failure.
• 
It's time they had a commander in chief they deserve.  It's time we had the leader we all deserve.
      Trump, Republicans and the 'Principles' Question  (JWR 09/06/2016)
• 
Almost everything that prevents #NeverTrumpers from voting for Trump also troubled us about the candidate.
• 
We differ on this: We hold that defeating Hillary Clinton, the Democrats and the left is also a principle.  And that it is the greater principle.
• 
But I do not believe that the country will surely survive as the country it was founded to be.  In that regard, we are at the most perilous tipping point of American history.
• 
It is true that the country was threatened with survival in the 1860s, and only a terrible civil war kept it whole.
• 
But with the colossal and awful exception of slavery, neither side challenged the founding principles of America.
• 
That is not the case today.  One side seeks to undo just about every founding principle that made America exceptional.
• 
Important examples include small and limited government; preservation of the power of the states to serve as political and social laboratories; a belief in individual responsibility; a society rooted in Judeo-Christian morality — one composed of people who nearly all affirmed in God and Bible-based moral teachings; and a deep sense of a unifying American identity and destiny.
• 
The left is successfully undoing every one of those founding principles.
• 
In fact, the left and the Democratic Party (which are now indistinguishable) boast of their aim to do so.  As then-Senator Barack Obama accurately prophesied in 2008.
• 
"We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
• 
And for the first time in American history, a man calling himself a socialist won the great majority of young people's votes in the Democratic presidential primaries.
• 
Therefore, with another four years of Democrat-left rule — meaning a nearly permanent left-wing Supreme Court and left-wing-controlled lower courts; the further erosion of federalism; an exponential growth in the power of the federal government; further leftist control of education; and the de-Americanization of America in part by effectively eliminating its borders, in part by substituting multiculturalism for American identity and in part by giving millions of illegal immigrants citizenship — America will not be America.
• 
We conservatives who will vote for Trump understand that he is the only vehicle we have to prevent this.
• 
We recognize that though there are some fine individuals who hold left-wing views, leftism is a terminal cancer in the American bloodstream and soul.
• 
So our first and greatest principle is to destroy this cancer before it destroys us.
• 
We therefore see voting for Donald Trump as political chemotherapy needed to prevent our demise.
• 
And at this time that is, by far, the greatest principle.
      The NY Times has Duranty's Syndrome on Islam  (INN 09/02/2016)
• 
... "the role of Islam is minimized by the New York Times".
• 
... it seems that the recent history of the Middle East is only a succession of betrayed hopes, neo-colonialism, ethnic fault lines, migrations.
• 
No mention of radical Islam and its project of conquest.
• 
... "the decline and fall of the New York Times", the bible of liberal intelligentsia, the object of worship of American journalism.
• 
The New York Times was immediately ready to back Obama's efforts of a "rapprochement with the Islamic world", by drawing attention to the speech in Cairo in June 2009 modeled on cultural relativism and political correctness.
• 
Not once has Obama spelled the words "Islamic extremism" or "jihadism".
• 
Yet Obama's speech on Islam was music to the ears of the Times, which in an editorial titled "The Cairo Speech" magnified the naivete of Obama.
• 
During the seizure of power by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 2011, the New York Times published op-eds of apologists of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• 
Let us not forget the praise that Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times in an article he wrote about the Islamic veil.
• 
Or those enthusiastic over the project (failed) to build a mosque at Ground Zero.
• 
... the Times portrayed the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood, Yusuf Qaradawi, as "committed to pluralism and democracy".
• 
Alice in Wonderland?
• 
Qaradawi is a virulent anti-Semite who asked Allah to wipe out the Jewish people.
• 
Moreover, the Qatari imam has worked to undermine the democratic principle of freedom of speech and to defend the Iranian fatwa that called for the death of Salman Rushdie, alsopromoting a "day of rage" against Muhammad cartoons printed in Denmark.
• 
Qaradawi also defended the practice of female genital mutilation and Muslim teachings that call for the death penalty for those who leave Islam.
• 
In January 2015, the Times censored the cover of Charlie Hebdo, the one printed after the massacre with Muhammad in tears with the sign "Je Suis Charlie".
• 
A decision justified by the editor, Dean Baquet, who said that "the images of the Prophet offend Muslims".
• 
A few months after Charlie Hebdo, the New York Times published the work of the artist Niki Johnson, titled "Eggs Benedict" and exhibited at the Milwaukee Art Museum: seventeen thousand different colored condoms that make up the face of the Pope Emeritus, Joseph Ratzinger.
• 
An imam ridiculed by Charlie Hebdo triggers self-censorship at the New York Times, while a Pope made of condoms?  No, that's "art".
• 
The New York Times supported the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States with unsigned editorials such as "A safer world, thanks to the Iran deal".
• 
It is the same New York Times that, contrary to all the evidence, said for weeks that al Qaeda had nothing to do with the terrorist attack in Benghazi.
• 
"There is no evidence that al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups have played a role in the assault", the New York Times wrote.
• 
The animosity of the Times towards Israel is sinister.
• 
During the Third Intifada, the newspaper's headlines described Palestinian Arab terrorists as Israel's victims and often indulged in a shameful moral equivalence.
• 
The fawning of the Times when it comes to dictatorships is an old story.
• 
Herbert Matthews of the New York Times silenced many Communist crimes in the Spanish Civil War, such as the massacres of thousands of priests and Catholic nuns.
• 
After the Second World War, the New York Times sent Matthews to Cuba, where he praised the Gulag of Fidel Castro, calling him as a leader who "has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice".
• 
And how can we forget Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times in the ‘30s, who deliberately silenced the persecution of six million peasants by Stalin.
• 
Duranty called these reports "exaggerations" or "malicious propaganda", or even "pure nonsense".
• 
These articles gained Duranty a Pulitzer "for fairness" and also the gratitude of Stalin, who said him: "You really did a good job here".
• 
Oh yes, they always do a very good job!
      'Gross injustice': Of 10,000 Syrian refugees to the US, 56 are Christian  (Fox 09/02/2016)
• 
Of the 10,801 refugees accepted in fiscal 2016 from the war-torn country, 56 are Christians, or .5 percent.
• 
A total of 10,722 were Muslims, and 17 were Yazidis.
• 
The numbers are disproportionate to the Christian population in Syria, estimated last year by the U.S.  government to make up roughly 10 percent of the population.
• 
Since the outbreak of civil war in 2011, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 1 million Christians have fled the country, while many have been targeted and slaughtered by the Islamic State.
• 
"In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims," Kerry said at the State Department.
• 
"[The Obama administration has] not prioritized Christians and it appears they have actually deprioritized them, put them back of the line and made them an afterthought."
• 
"This is de facto discrimination and a gross injustice."
• 
Christians in the main United Nations refugee camp in Jordan are subject to persecution, they say, and so flee the camps.
• 
"The Christians don't reside in those camps because it is too dangerous."
• 
"They are preyed upon by other residents from the Sunni community and there is infiltration by ISIS and criminal gangs."
• 
"They are raped, abducted into slavery and they are abducted for ransom.  It is extremely dangerous, there is not a single Christian in the Jordanian camps for Syrian refugees."
• 
"We must not only recognize what's happening as genocide, but also take action to relieve it."
• 
So it's all words and no actions, it's just lip service on the issue of the genocide."
• 
"This Christian community is dying.  I fear that there will be no Christians left when the dust settles."
• 
See related Iraqi Christians (Glenn McCoy, 08/08/2014) cartoon from World picture album
      The sacred right of jerkhood  (JWR 09/02/2016)
• 
Marketing is mostly hype.  You're not supposed to believe much of it, and nobody plays the hype game better than the occasional intelligent professional athlete.
• 
Even some of the dumb ones are pretty good at it.
• 
Mr.  Kaepernick is trying to work sitting down, especially when the band strikes up the national anthem.
• 
He's in the twilight of a brief and moderately successful career, and he's trying to keep the marketing going by stoking a little controversy on the sports pages, where legends go to die.
• 
His not standing up for the "Star-Spangled Banner" upsets a lot of people, which is the point of his exercise.
• 
He's learning that nothing recedes like success, and holds to the show-biz gospel that bad publicity is better than no pub at all. 
• 
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.  To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.  There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."
• 
He'll keep stepping over the bodies until there's "significant change and I feel like that flag represents what it's supposed to represent in this country.  Then I'll stand."
• 
He was raised by white foster parents, and if he has said very much nice about them it has escaped wide notice.  White lives don't matter, but you never know.
• 
Football fans, like all fans, generally do not support snide snubbery of either flag or anthem.
• 
Angry football fans have resorted to burning Mr.  K's jersey.
• 
This, too, is a tribute to his marketing skills because fans have to buy the jersey to burn it, and he gets a cut of the proceeds.
• 
Indeed, the greater glory of America is that better men than he have died to preserve and protect the All-American right of men like Colin Kaepernick to be a jerk.
      Why Democrats aren't serious about overcriminalization  (Fox 09/02/2016)
• 
Easy.  The status quo leaves unbelievable power in the hands of federal prosecutors, who, under a Democratic president, would answer to Democratic political appointees.
• 
No, they want more.  The Democratic platform declares support for "stronger criminal laws" in the financial arena, which in practice usually means ever-broader and ever-vaguer laws that empower federal prosecutors to decide which conduct deserves to be punished without making meaningful improvements to the financial system.
• 
Calls for criminal investigation of political adversaries are nothing new, of course (Republicans demanded prosecution of Hillary Clinton for reckless mishandling of national security secrets), but they don't typically involve prosecuting the hallmarks of a free society – disagreement and debate – as federal crimes.
• 
... famously warned about "the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted."
• 
But whereas Jackson sought to prevent his generation of Democratic officials from politicizing and personalizing law enforcement, this generation apparently took his warning as inspiration.
• 
If the temptation is not resisted, Jackson said, unscrupulous prosecutors could target individuals and groups for the supposed "crime" of disagreeing with the majority.
      Did Hillary engineer Weiner's downfall?  (Fox 09/01/2016)
• 
Who, other than the man himself, worked to expose Anthony Weiner?
• 
... back to the question of who "outed" Weiner — my bet is on Hillary Clinton or a surrogate.
• 
... Hillary and others on her team surely recognized how dangerous Weiner could be if Mrs.  Clinton were to become president.
• 
It's one thing to have the dog licking his paws or whatever in the dog house; it's quite another to let him out on an extendo-leash.
• 
How convenient; the immoral hussy coming onto Weiner and busting up his marriage is a Trump fan who opposes gun control.
• 
I may be wrong, but roasting Weiner as we come down the campaign's home stretch – and during a week when many Americans are on summer vacation – seems just too convenient to have been accidental.
• 
Huma knows better than most that where the Clintons are concerned, there are no accidents; there is only politics.
      Trump immigration speech: A president was born on Wednesday  (Fox 09/01/2016)
• 
America, we were introduced to our next president on Wednesday night.  He's not a politician.  He is one of a kind.  He is an American.
• 
Nothing gets me too excited.  I don't believe politicians.  Nor do I believe in politicians.  I don't fall for theatrical political productions.  I don't believe rhetoric or propaganda.
• 
Trump stated his case and never gave an inch to the president of Mexico.  Trump turned a vision — that was mocked and ripped to shreds for a year now — into a reality.  Who now believes that if Trump is elected a wall won't be built?
• 
As a conservative, I've waited a lifetime for this speech.  Why?  Because it was a speech that didn't back down by even one inch.
• 
It was a speech aimed at Americans, for Americans, delivered by a proud American, who values American exceptionalism.
• 
It was a speech that restores law and order.
• 
A speech that always put American citizens, workers and taxpayers first.
• 
A speech that recognized the right to safety and security for American citizens.
• 
A speech that recognizes that a foreigner here illegally does not have the same rights as an American-born citizen.
• 
A speech that pointed out that foreigners here illegally should not be treated better than our veterans.
• 
A speech that recognized that American citizens have every right to choose who comes into our country.  And that we should proudly choose immigrants with skills, self-sufficiency and a respect for our common values.
• 
It was a speech that recognized that illegal immigrants do not qualify for welfare, food stamps and other entitlements — and our government has a right, for the first time ever, to prioritize the deportation of illegal foreigners for abusing the welfare system.
• 
It was a speech that recognized that foreigners in American prisons for violent crimes and felonies should and will be deported immediately — and that no country can refuse to take them back.
• 
It was a speech that recognized our right to practice "extreme vetting" on anyone who wants to come into America — and that we can choose to exclude those who don't share or respect our values, customs, laws and Constitution.  Some people just won't be allowed in.
• 
It was also a speech that recognized that the federal government must shut off all funding to Sanctuary cities.
• 
After all that's our taxpayer money being given to political leaders who are choosing to break the law.
• 
FINALLY, an adult has decided to just say "NO."
• 
I've waited a lifetime to hear that we have a right to build a wall, to protect and secure our borders and keep the bad guys out.
• 
He never backed down to pressure from the corrupt mainstream media, billionaire titans, Wall Street moguls, Silicon Valley tech gurus, lawyers, lobbyists, liberals, the GOP establishment, Ivy League know-it-all intellectuals.
• 
He gave no quarter to any of them.  He changed nothing to appeal to them. 
• 
Trump is a blunt force, all-American, laser-guided middle finger to everything and everyone in Washington, D.C.
• 
And that, my fellow Americans, sounds like the dream of a lifetime to me.
      Trump calls for an oath to America  (JWR 09/01/2016)
• 
Loyalty oaths have been tried in the past, but eventually were struck down by the courts as either too vague, or an unconstitutional violation of free speech.
• 
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested something different.  He wants to screen people coming into America to see if they share American values.
• 
Trump says he would exclude not only people who sympathize with terrorists and believe in Sharia law, but those "who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred."
• 
"Millions of Americans are here because their ancestors signed 'declarations of intention' similar to what Trump is suggesting."
• 
... found the declaration of intention Albert Einstein signed in 1936.  He became a U.S.  citizen four years later. 
• 
Here is what it said: "I will, before being admitted to citizenship, renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty.  ... I am not an anarchist; I am not a polygamist nor a believer in the practice of polygamy."
• 
A century ago ... "anarchist" was the equivalent of today's terrorist.
• 
"Since Sharia law allows and even proposes polygamy as an act of justice, U.S.  law excluded Muslims who embraced it.  There were to be no divided loyalties."
• 
Diversity has replaced unity and hyphenated identifiers now divide races and ethnic groups.
• 
"Out of many, one" is fading as our national motto.  Out of one, many, is rapidly becoming our new one.
• 
Who will love America if we don't?  Who will sacrifice their lives for freedom if not us?  We had better realize America is something special, or risk losing it.
• 
There is nothing wrong and much right about what Trump proposes for people who want to become citizens of this country.
• 
He is no more a bigot than those who wrote the oath taken by Albert Einstein and many others.
      Bill and Hillary Clinton have made a mockery of America’s foundation system  (Fox 09/01/2016)
• 
Here is what a foundation should do: Collect money, distribute grants, and judge the work of its recipients.
• 
Here is what a foundation should not do: Give access to high-level government officials in exchange for gifts.
• 
That is the simple and damning case against the Clinton Foundation.  By now, it is clear that the Foundation operated as a vast and corrupt market for influence.
• 
With winks and nods, Bill and Hillary Clinton sold access to the Secretary of State's office.
• 
And because donors were giving to a "Foundation," all parties could quietly look the other way. 
• 
Let us call this what it is: graft masquerading as non-profit work.
• 
... Bill and Hillary Clinton have made a mockery of America's foundation system — and tarnished the reputations of the non-profits who received grants from them.
• 
They must clean house immediately.  Remove the current leadership of the Foundation, and cut ties with the entire Clinton family, including their daughter Chelsea.
• 
By this point, though, most of us know not to expect much from the Clintons.  They are simply too accustomed to doing whatever is best for them, and then working overtime to avoid consequences.  ... They do everything, in other words, except take responsibility. 
• 
But Americans — and, I suspect, the Clintons themselves — know that where there's smoke, there's fire.
• 
Our country's system of private-sector foundation giving is something to be cherished.
• 
The Clintons have slandered this system by using it as a front for their political ambitions.
      Abstract Immigrants in an Abstract World  (JWR 08/31/2016)
• 
Why would a country with the world's largest Jewish population, outside of Israel, admit large numbers of immigrants from countries where hatred of Jews has been taught to their people from earliest childhood?
• 
This question is ultimately not about Muslims and Jews.
• 
It is about discussing immigrants in the abstract, rather than in terms of the specific concrete realities of particular immigrants in particular circumstances at a particular time and place — that time being now and that place being the United States of America.
• 
A hundred years ago, when immigration from other parts of the world was a major issue, there was a government study which provided voluminous statistics on how immigrants from various countries performed in American society — economically, educationally and in terms of social pathology.
• 
Today, it would not be considered right — that is, not politically correct — even to ask such questions about immigrants, especially if immigrants were broken down by country of origin.
• 
Insipid statements about how "we are all descendants of immigrants" blithely ignore the fact that millions of Americans are descendants of legal immigrants who were not allowed into the country until they met medical and other criteria.
• 
Today people flood across the border with whatever diseases they bring, and are dispersed to various communities around the country by the federal government, without even a notice to local authorities as to what history of diseases, or crimes, these immigrants bring — much less what risks of terrorism they bring.
• 
Such high-handedness is neither incidental nor accidental.
• 
It is part of a much wider pattern, extending beyond immigration, and extending beyond the United States to many European countries, where narrow elites imagine themselves so superior to the rest of us that it is both their right and their duty to impose their notions on us.
• 
Any problems, or even disasters, that particular immigrants may cause are unlikely to be caused within the gated communities or other upscale enclaves where the elites live.
• 
However much educational standards or behavioral standards may suffer in schools when immigrant children from a poorer background flood in, that is not likely to affect the elite's children in pricey private schools.
• 
European countries have gone much further down this road, and their elites have been even more immune to hard facts about the disasters they have created.  Rapes of women on the streets of Germany by male refugees from the Middle East have been ignored or downplayed by authorities.
• 
Recurrent terrorist attacks across Europe from the same source have not caused any reconsideration of "hate speech" laws that can be invoked against anyone who warns of the dangers.
• 
American elites who say that we should learn from other countries almost always mean that we should imitate what they have done.
• 
But what we need to learn most of all is not to repeat their mistakes.
      A Gem in Chicago  (JWR 08/30/2016)
• 
We have gotten so used to seeing college presidents and other academic "leaders" caving in to so many outrageous demands from little gangs of bullying students that it is a long overdue surprise to see a sign that at least one major university has shown some backbone.
• 
"Free speech is at risk at the very institution where it should be assured: the university."
• 
"Invited speakers are disinvited because a segment of a university community deems them offensive, while other orators are shouted down for similar reasons."
• 
Demands have been made that assigned readings in some courses be eliminated because they "might make some students uncomfortable."
• 
Worst of all, such demands "have been supported by university administrators."
• 
"Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn, without fear of censorship.  Civility and mutual respect are vital to all of us, and freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others."
• 
The uniqueness of the University of Chicago is not something new.
• 
Back in the 1960s, as campus riots spread across the country, and academic administrators caved in to even the most outrageous demands, dozens of disruptive students were simply expelled from the University of Chicago and dozens more were put on probation.
• 
... "our faculty united behind the expulsion of a large number of young barbarians."
• 
But such faculty support required a sense of mission, beyond a quiet life on campus in which to pursue one's own career.
• 
One of the many name-calling responses to people who do not go along with political correctness is to use the all-purpose smear, "racism."
• 
But the first time I saw a white professor at a white university with a black secretary, it was Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago in 1960 — four years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• 
Years earlier, the first black tenured professor at an elite white university was Allison Davis at the University of Chicago.
• 
But who cares about facts in these politically correct times?
      On Hillary Clinton as a Model for Young Girls  (JWR 08/30/2016)
• 
Given that the former secretary of state used her office to enrich herself and her husband; given that she so willfully compromised national security by setting up her own private email server in order to avoid congressional and public oversight; given that she has repeatedly lied about these actions; given that she lied to the mothers and fathers of the men killed by terrorists in Benghazi; and given that she has a long history of lying ... the notion of Clinton as a model for America's girls and young women is nothing, if not depressing.
• 
Viewing themselves as world citizens, liberals value national identity far less than conservatives do.
• 
Conservatives affirm national identity and solidarity ("e pluribus unum"), but not gender, race or class identity and solidarity.
• 
Most conservative women are not impressed with the idea of "female solidarity." They regard it as intellectually and morally foolish.
• 
And all conservatives — male and female — regard "racial solidarity" as just another term for racism.
• 
We all understand that sometimes we feel compelled to vote for someone we may not admire because the cause is more important than the individual.
• 
Parents who want their daughters to regard Hillary Clinton as a model are telling their daughters that gender solidarity is more important than moral character.
• 
The country will pay a terrible price for this message.
      American ingrates  (INN 08/30/2016)
• 
He sat, he later explained, because America is an "oppressive" society.
• 
For mostly riding the bench as a second-stringer, he makes $12 million a year.
• 
Where can I get me some of that oppression?
• 
How about you, Mr.  and Mrs.  Working-Class America who barely make it paycheck to paycheck only to watch millionaires trample the country?
• 
Some people, it appears, can afford to suffer and feel oppressed.
• 
The rest of us do not have the time or the luxury.  We are too busy scrambling for the next dollar.
• 
We are too busy at work, at play, raising families, and – dare I say this – behaving patriotically.
• 
Shocker alert – some Americans are grateful for America.
• 
So are the millions who infiltrate our borders, who come here, I assume, to be oppressed.
• 
Yes, that was Kaepenick's main beef – "police brutality."
• 
Never mind, I suppose, the hundreds of cops on duty throughout the stadium who, in the event of an attack, would rush to save Kaepernick's sorry hide.
• 
When you're in trouble and dial 9-1-1, they're the ones who come running.  Black Lives Matter won't show up and neither will Hillary or Huma Abedin.
• 
Only Israel shares the same liberties and opportunities in a region where such qualities are rare.
• 
So rare that these millionaires and billionaires would be stoned to death for so much nudity and vulgarity if they tried putting it across in any of the 57 Muslim countries.
• 
For their gay pride, they would not last a minute in, say, Saudi Arabia, or Gaza, or Ramallah.
• 
In Ramallah, two Israeli kids were hacked to death by Arabs simply because they made a wrong turn.
• 
Yes, that's how it is when it's too late for the IDF or American cops to rush to the rescue.
• 
But for the VMA Awards, where Beyonce' and others performed lewd and half-nude, everyone felt safe.
• 
That's because a thousand cops were on hand to make sure these rich, spoiled, pampered, ungrateful brats could live another day to hate the police.
      Where there's smoke there's fire  (JWR 08/30/2016)
• 
Hillary Clinton said, "My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces.  I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right to keep Americans safe and protect our interests abroad." She added, "I know there's a lot of smoke, and there's no fire."
• 
Can there be smoke without fire?  I asked an expert.  #My son, Jay Thomas, has spent most of his professional life as a firefighter.
• 
He tells me: "Very simply put, where there is smoke there is, or was, fire.  Smoke is a byproduct of combustion.  There are three stages of fire: smoldering, incipient and free burning.  Each one (emits) smoke."
• 
"The phrase 'where there's smoke there's fire' means that if something looks wrong then it probably is wrong — just like if you see smoke there probably is a fire somewhere.  ... When the signs of trouble are there, then that means that trouble is probably there as well."
• 
Clear enough?  The Clintons have been lighting and trying to put out "fires" started by the combustible material of their shifting ethics and morals at least since Bill was governor of Arkansas. 
• 
In the end, will it matter?  If we care too little about ethics and morals in our leaders, it shows we do not hold these virtues in high regard.
• 
That says at least as much about us, as it does about them.  And that's not blowing smoke.
      Does the death penalty deter?  (JWR 08/30/2016)
• 
All penalties have some deterrent effect, and the more severe the penalty, the more it deters.
• 
Let a parking meter expire, and you risk a $20 ticket; park in a handicapped spot, and risk a $200 ticket.  Which violation are you less likely to commit?
• 
It doesn't take a social-science degree to grasp the real-world difference between facing vs.  not facing a potential death sentence.
• 
Criminals grasp it too.
• 
... we do know for sure that when the cost of a crime goes up, the frequency of that crime goes down.
• 
Raise the price of any behavior, and fewer people will do it.
• 
The deterrent power of punishment is axiomatic; criminal law would be meaningless without it.
• 
Still, a penalty cannot deter if it is never imposed.
• 
The politics of capital punishment are complicated and emotional, but human nature doesn't change.
• 
Granted, incentives and disincentives are never foolproof.
• 
Granted, there will always be cases in which deterrents don't deter.
• 
On the whole, however, when the death penalty is on the books and consistently enforced, a significant number of homicides will be prevented.
• 
Criminals may be evil and pitiless, but criminality isn't a synonym for stupidity.
• 
When murder is punished with death, fewer criminals will murder.
• 
When murder is punished with nothing worse than prison, more criminals will be emboldened to kill.
• 
In the never-ending debate over capital punishment, that is always what the choice comes down to.
      NFL's Kaepernick insults Americans, law enforcement officers everywhere  (Fox 08/29/2016)
• 
Kaepernick's comments weren't just an insult to the over one million Americans — many thousands of whom were African-American — who have given their lives in defense of the United States from wars as far back as the American Revolution to the more recent conflicts in the Middle East.
• 
Kaepernick also turned his back on the thousands of police officers — again, a tremendous number of whom were African-American - who have died defending their communities and upholding the rule of law at home. 
• 
No one should question whether or not Kaepernick had a right to sit, stand, or protest the National Anthem, no matter his motivation.
• 
We are blessed to live in a country where an act perceived by most as an ugly display of disrespect is protected by the very system of government prompting the protest.
• 
Many celebrities — and yes, even a backup quarterback on one of the worst teams in the NFL qualifies as a celebrity nowadays — use their status within pop culture to advance their beliefs and opinions, often without acknowledging differing perspectives. 
• 
This is nothing new.
• 
But if Colin Kaepernick were truly interested in being a part of the solution — a meaningful interlocutor offering not just hyperbole but considered rhetoric — he may have thought to open this dialogue with a sense of mutual understanding and respect and not by boldly thumbing his nose at both the American flag as well as the men and women of all races who have given their lives defending an American ideal — imperfect in practice, yet exceptional nonetheless — and one far greater than themselves.
      Why 2016 is the year of the angry white male  (Fox 08/24/2016)
• 
Ultra-liberal Democrats and the mainstream media (I know, I repeat myself) cannot understand why white voters, particularly white men, are so angry.
• 
Well, I'm going to share with you the raw, politically incorrect truth.  It's an indictment of a president and system practicing reverse racism and overt discrimination — in plain sight for all to see.
• 
First, there is no doubt that blacks, minorities, and people of color had it rough for many decades.  Women, especially in the workplace, had the system tilted against them.
• 
We get it.  And during the past hundred years, especially the last sixty, the vast majority of us fought hard to eliminate it.
• 
No one can deny the terrible things done to blacks: slavery; discrimination in jobs and housing; poll taxes; and "Whites Only" signs in front of bathrooms, pools, water fountains, and restaurant counters.  The list of wrongs and grievances is long and real.
• 
But that was then, and this is now.  And two wrongs don't make a right.
• 
The sorry truth is that the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction.
• 
It has gotten to a point where virtually every action, law, and utterance out of our nation's first black president's mouth is intended to denigrate or damage the predominantly white middle class.
• 
Or haven't you noticed?
• 
... under Obama, America is in the middle of a massive suicide epidemic.  Who is committing all this suicide?  White middle-aged Americans.
• 
In other words, the white middle class and "angry white males" are so unhappy they are killing themselves.
• 
We should be worried about "White Lives Matter." But, of course, then we would be called "racist."
• 
Do liberals think an entire race has suffered a dramatic increase in depression and suicide because life is so easy and great for white people?  Because we have such fantastic advantages?  Because great jobs, perfect relationships, and wealth just appear out of thin air or fall out of trees for white people?
• 
Or could this depression, anger, and suicide be the result of no jobs or only menial, crappy, low-wage jobs; or a dramatic drop in our incomes and assets; or dramatic increases in taxes, health insurance, electric bills, grocery bills, and college bills — all of which has made it virtually impossible to provide for our families.
• 
The fact is that our own government is destroying the middle class and killing the American Dream of upward mobility.
• 
The predominantly white middle class has been sacrificed to give welfare and free health care to everyone else.
• 
And to add insult to injury, "everyone else" doesn't just mean other, less fortunate fellow citizens who most of us want to help; it also means every illegal alien who can walk across the border, many of whom hate us and the whole concept of America.
• 
Result?  We're killing ourselves.  That might have something to do with it.
• 
Ironically, the crux of the liberal argument is that white people have all the money, power, and high-paying jobs and own all the businesses.
• 
Yet when laws and policies are passed to redistribute their money to those who are poor and dependent, liberal politicians, intellectuals, and the media refuse to admit these policies are nothing more than reverse racism and discrimination.
• 
These policies are a sign of ignorance and stupidity, especially as to how an economy works.  A study of every socialist country in world history shows that "fairness, equality, and social justice" leads to devastating widespread poverty and shared misery.
• 
The only thing every country basing its economy on diversity, social justice, and affirmative action has succeeded in is making the powerful, political elites filthy rich and making everyone else poor.
• 
No one is lifted up, everyone is torn down, and the middle class, not the wealthy, are the ones who suffer.  Sound like what is happening right now in America?
• 
Obama has succeeded in destroying America's middle class, just like every other country that ever tried to legislate equality.  And that middle class happens to be overwhelmingly white.
• 
Obama has spent more, handed out more entitlements, more welfare, more food stamps, and now more debt than any president in history.  Yet the economy is miserable and the only true measurement of economic growth — gross domestic product (GDP) — is near zero.
• 
The result: 63 percent of Americans can't come up with $500 in case of an emergency.
• 
Amazingly, along with driving white and black Americans into bankruptcy and poverty, Obama will have added a world-record $10 trillion to the debt (by the time he leaves office).
• 
That's money that has to be paid back by the middle class for decades to come, thereby guaranteeing a shrinking middle class in crisis long after Obama is gone.
• 
Obama's success in fundamentally changing America looks exactly like the situation in every communist, socialist, and third-world country — inequality, massive poverty, shared misery, and no middle class.
• 
How many Americans are aware that the Obama administration sued major corporations to ban them from using criminal background checks on black job applicants?
• 
... federal agencies can no longer ask prospective job applicants about their criminal history.  Amazingly, what this means is government employees paid with your taxpayer money (often at a higher rate than a similar job in the private sector) will now include convicted criminals. 
• 
Are you aware that the Obama administration has told landlords they have no right to reject a potential tenant based on a criminal record?  Property owners are now obligated by law to rent to known murderers, rapists, drug dealers, pimps, carjackers, and home-invasion robbers.
• 
The administration admitted that this law is to protect criminals because they happen to be predominantly black.
• 
How many Americans realize that Obama's HUD agency is forcing cities and towns across America to build high- density, low-income housing in middle class and wealthy white neighborhoods?
• 
Clearly angry at Trump's promise to build a wall at the Mexican border, he asked Trump, "Why don't you want to build a wall around your inner cities to protect your citizens from American criminals?"
• 
The factual answer to that question is we already have.  It's called "suburbs." America has experienced a "white (and every other racial group with the economic ability) flight" away from inner cities to suburbs for decades.
• 
Decent, law-abiding people of all races with good jobs tend to run away from crime — especially once they start a family.
• 
But to Obama and his liberal friends, this isn't "fair." ... If he can't find a way to force you to live in poor, crime-ridden, inner city neighborhoods, he'll just create them in your neighborhood!
• 
This policy not only creates fairness and equality by putting poor people into wealthy neighborhoods without working for it; it also destroys the property values of middle-class, predominantly white homeowners.
• 
Like whites, black middle-class Americans have followed the same route.  For the most part, middle-class blacks have left the inner cities.  They move to suburbs to escape crime, filth, drugs, and poverty and to give their kids a chance at success.
• 
But Obama wants there to be no escape.  He's bringing the devil to you.  To your neighborhood, your block, perhaps next door.  He's putting drug dealers on your corner.
• 
Poor and nonworking Americans were handed a massive new entitlement program: "welfare in the form of free medical." As with every government program, middle-class Americans (predominantly white) got the bill.
• 
Obama has passed the most dramatic tax increases along with the most onerous business regulations in history.  Who were they aimed at?  Predominantly white small business owners and middle-class Americans.
• 
Obama has left the borders wide open, allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to pour into America, all of whom expect cradle-to-grave entitlements.
• 
Don't forget, Obama has also fast-tracked the importation of about one million Muslims into America during his two terms.
• 
Well over 90 percent of these new Muslim immigrants are on food stamps, while almost 70 percent are on welfare.  These stats are according to Obama's own Labor Department.
• 
More illegals cross the border into Texas than babies born to native-born mothers in Texas each week.
• 
... illegal immigrants cost hundreds of billions of dollars in welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and other entitlements — far more than native-born Americans, both percentage-wise and dollar-wise.
• 
Obama just cut $2.6 billion from veterans, while allocating $4.5 billion to the importation and relocation of Syrian migrants.
• 
So why would a US president choose to cut money from vets in favor of fast-tracking Syrian migrants into our country?
• 
Vets, who happen to be in the predominantly white middle class, are getting shafted to pay for Muslim immigration.
• 
Perhaps the hundreds of billions spent on all other illegal immigrants is the reason there were no funds for VA hospitals and courageous heroes were put on fictitious waiting lists to die.  Those heroes happened to be predominantly white middle-class citizens.
• 
In Obama's last budget as president, he demands nearly $18,000 for every illegal child or teenager from Central America who enters the country in 2016 (he expects over 75,000).
• 
That's $3,000 more than the average American senior citizen collects on Social Security, even though they were legally born in America, worked their entire lives, and paid into the system.
• 
So native-born Americans are getting out monies they already put in, and still they get less than someone who comes here illegally.
• 
Keep in mind that many (if not most) of these children and teens might very well collect welfare for life.  What does that cost the middle class?
• 
If you can't see that this is a purposeful attack on the predominantly white middle class, you're blind, deaf, or very dumb.
• 
One out of every five illegals has a criminal record (not including the crime of coming into the country).
• 
Here's the most remarkable stat of all: 30 percent of all criminals in federal, state, and local prisons in the United States are illegal immigrants.
• 
The Obama administration is currently arguing in front of the US Supreme Court that Obama has the power to use executive action to instantly award Social Security to millions of immigrants illegally in the United States.
• 
Now let's move on to legal immigrants.  ... the Obama administration issued twice as many green cards to immigrants from Muslim nations as European nations...
• 
Why is Obama choosing this ratio?  Because this is how you "fundamentally change America," "overwhelm the system," and destroy capitalism, replacing it with socialism for a citizenry dependent on government entitlements to survive.
• 
The bonus is bringing in unskilled, uneducated, and dependent immigrants who will forever more vote Democrat to keep the freebies coming.
• 
As the country, health care, and school systems are all overwhelmed by massive costs for illegal immigration, and the debt rises to unimaginable levels, who pays for it all?  American taxpayers.
• 
And who are they?  The small business owners and middle-class Americans who spend their lives paying into the system and take almost nothing out.
• 
Middle-class Americans don't realize the immigration scam isn't just about working stiffs.  The cannon is aimed squarely at college-educated white-collar Americans, too.  It's called H-1B visas.
• 
This is precisely why college grads with massive student loan debt are living in all-time record numbers in their parents' basement.
• 
The sad truth about Silicon Valley is that they fear Trump because they don't want to pay real wages to American white-collar college grads.
• 
Guest worker programs have devastated the predominantly white middle and upper classes.
• 
We've been replaced by desperate foreigners willing to work for slave wages to get to (and stay in) America.  They can never ask for a raise for fear of losing their H-1B visa.
• 
You want to know why we are angry white males?  The H-1B program has resulted in massive job losses and a decade of wage deflation.
• 
... we're talking about American white-collar young adults who played by all the rules, graduated from good colleges, studied high technology, amassed massive student debt, and are being victimized by cheap legal foreign labor.
• 
... business owners and middle-class taxpayers who pay into the system (made up of predominantly white taxpayers) are bled dry to give their children a proper education, while we're also forced to pay for a terrible free education for the children of the poor, who pay no taxes and pay nothing into the system.
• 
Since they pay nothing for it, it is easy for the vested political and corrupt union interests to get them to vote for higher and higher education spending even with that system continually failing even their children.
• 
Do you know what a president does when his policies have so badly damaged the economy, ruined health care, killed all decent middle-class jobs, destroyed GDP, and run up $9 trillion in new debt...
• 
Obama attempts to appease the masses of oblivious voters by changing the faces and images on the front and back of five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills to celebrate "social justice and diversity."
• 
... the reality is that Obama and his socialist cabal have proven an economy can not be run based on diversity and social justice.  Basing our currency on diversity and social justice won't help either.
• 
Not only is Obama demanding criminal backgrounds not be considered in hiring, but he no longer wants them to be called criminals.
• 
... The term "criminal" might offend.  Along with this directive came a pamphlet referring to convicted criminals as "justice-involved individuals."
• 
You can't make this up.  Obama thinks a criminal is just someone "involved with justice."
• 
Folks, it really is this bad.  Yes, we are angry.  And we have every right and reason to be.
• 
Sadly, it's a full-scale attack coming from all directions and it's getting worse.
      The real reason why liberals hate ID requirements for voting  (Fox 08/23/2016)
• 
Are civil rights groups who sued the state contending that poor and minority people are so inept that they can't apply for an identification card?
• 
If that is their position, how are they able to apply for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program) benefits, which require a photo ID?
• 
Why is voting the one category in which you don't have to prove your citizenship and legal residence?
• 
You must have a photo ID if you are 25 or under and wish to purchase alcohol or cigarettes.  Store signs say so.  Want to open a bank account?  Photo ID required.  Here are the rest of the categories: applying for welfare, Medicaid and Social Security (presumably poor people take advantage of one or more of these programs); unemployment benefits (ditto); rent/buy a house, or apply for a mortgage; drive/buy/rent a car; get on an airplane; get married; buy a gun; adopt a pet; rent a hotel room; apply for a hunting or fishing license; buy a cellphone; visit a casino; pick up a prescription (or buy restricted over-the-counter medications); donate blood; apply for a license to hold a demonstration; buy an "M"-rated video game; purchase nail polish at CVS.
• 
Again, why is voting placed in a separate category?  Why are liberal groups determined to repeal laws requiring proof of citizenship and residence?
• 
The answer is found in a definition of the word fraud: "deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage."
• 
Since many poor people are receiving government benefits, they are responsive to Democrats' claims that Republicans want to cut them off, so they had better vote early and vote often, as the saying goes, or else.
• 
They need a reliable voting bloc and keeping the poor dependent on government is a modern form of slavery that is cynical in the extreme.
      American journalism is collapsing before our eyes  (NYP 08/21/2016)
• 
Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president.
• 
But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.
• 
The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.
• 
Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.
• 
Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang suffers the daily beating that Trump does.
• 
The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.
• 
By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media's reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards.
• 
The traditional ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable leads to demands that government solve every problem.
• 
Any reporter who agrees with Clinton about Trump has no business covering either candidate.
• 
That's the whole point of standards — they are designed to guide decisions not just in easy cases, but in all cases, to preserve trust.
• 
Now its only standard is a double standard, one that it proudly confesses.  Shame would be more appropriate.
      What Republican turncoats forget  (JWR 08/22/2016)
• 
I asked a successful businessman the other day what he thought about Donald Trump.  He turned his thumb down.  Wow.  Are you going to vote for Hillary?  I asked with trepidation.  "Of course not," he replied almost insulted by the question.  "I understand the concept of a binary decision."
• 
I got a similar response when I asked oil magnate T.  Boone Pickens whether he would vote for Mr.  Trump.  He looked at me with a quizzical look on his face and replied: "Well who else is there to vote for?"
• 
Right.  Who else is there?  Yet amazingly a caucus of lifelong Republican politicos in Washington are announcing to the world with defiance and self-righteousness that they will vote for Hillary Clinton.
• 
They are mostly former Romney and Bush operatives.  They lost and now they want people to believe that their anti-Trumpism is an act of heroism and principle. 
• 
I certainly don't mean to disparage conservatives who say they won't vote for Mr.  Trump.
• 
But to actively support Hillary is to put the other team's jersey on and then run a lap around the stadium.
• 
"It is clear from history that the House and the Senate always move in the same party direction as the White House, and with the same magnitude.  That means the presidential candidate is like a boat that congressional candidates are riding on.  It's really stupid to torpedo that boat."
• 
... if Obama/Hillary win a third straight presidential race, there won't be a conservative movement left to rebuild.
• 
... for President Obama to win effectively a third term will be a voter validation of all of the destructive policies of the last eight years.
• 
Do the "never Trumpers" want to facilitate that?
• 
Do they want to hand the left its greatest victory for liberal governance of all time?
• 
If they do, they, not Trump, are the unforgivable betrayers of conservative principles.
      Obama, the Worst President Ever, Except Maybe for Hillary  (JWR 08/19/2016)
• 
President Obama set out to fundamentally transform America (read: systematically destroy America as founded).
• 
Measured in terms of accomplishing this goal, Obama has been one of the most successful presidents in history.
• 
Measured in terms of doing what is best for America, Obama undeniably ranks among the worst.
• 
President Obama couldn't be more of a menace to this nation's interests if he were trying to be — and thus, coupled with his stated intentions, it is reasonable to assume he is and irresponsible to downplay the suspicion.
• 
In every subcategory of domestic and foreign policy, Obama has damaged America.
• 
He has turned everything upside down.
• 
Wrong is right.  Bad is good.  Strength is weakness.  Culturally sound is culturally taboo. 
• 
Economic decline is economic growth.  Deliberately exploding the national debt is reducing the deficit.
• 
Destroying health care, qualitatively and quantitatively — and as a matter of cost and choice — is progress.
• 
Demonizing victims of terrorism and excusing terrorists is enlightened.
• 
Opening our borders to those with hostile intent toward Americans and America is compassion.
• 
Releasing coldblooded terrorist killers helps show the world how wonderful we are.
• 
Facilitating the world's evilest regime's acquiring nuclear weapons and capital to fund terrorism is a triumph of diplomacy and world peace.
• 
Fostering a war on law enforcement is an achievement for justice.
• 
Repeatedly apologizing for America here and on foreign soil is commendable. 
• 
Squandering billions of dollars on environmental boondoggles proves good intentions.
• 
Undermining our military readiness and managing our national decline atones for our alleged misdeeds.
• 
Converting NASA for Muslim outreach beats getting a man on Mars.
• 
Waging war on religious liberty releases us from the clutches of those crazy Christians.
• 
Dividing Americans on the basis of race, gender, religion and income is uniting America.
• 
Everything Obama has done is fairly and necessarily imputable to Clinton because she participated in and ratified his policies and actions and promises to do worse.
• 
On top of all this, Clinton is the most opportunistically ambitious, double-dealing, corrupt fraud in the modern era.
      Setting John Hinckley free is a dangerous decision  (Fox 08/15/2016)
• 
In the annals of American criminals, John Hinckley Jr.  ranks as one of the most heinous.
• 
It was bad enough that Hinckley escaped punishment for his actions when he was found "not guilty by reason of insanity" in his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981.  Now, U.S.  District Judge Paul L.  Friedman of Washington has compounded the injustice by ordering Hinckley released from a government psychiatric hospital. 
• 
You're a free man, Mr.  Hinckley.  Have a nice day. 
• 
Let's not forget what he did. 
• 
On March 30, 1981, Hinckley was lying-in-wait outside the Washington Hilton Hotel armed with a fully loaded .22 caliber Rohm RG-14 revolver with exploding "Devastator" bullets.
• 
As President Reagan emerged, Hinckley fired six shots in rapid succession.
• 
Police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy were shot in the back and chest, respectively.
• 
Press Secretary James Brady was shot in the head, critically wounded.  He suffered severe brain damage. 
• 
Hinckley's final bullet ricocheted off the President's waiting limousine, penetrating his chest and lodging a mere fraction of an inch from his heart.
• 
He was rushed to a nearby hospital, perilously close to death.  After two hours of surgery, the bullet was removed and the President's life was saved.
• 
It was pure luck that that Hinckley's bullet stopped just shy of tearing into President Reagan's heart.
• 
The course of history might well have changed dramatically had Hinckley succeeded. 
• 
The case against Hinckley was clear and strong.
• 
But Hinckley, like O.  J.  Simpson, was armed with money.  Specifically, his parents' oil wealth.  They hired a top criminal defense team that argued insanity.
• 
Which, considering the evidence, should have been a joke. 
• 
But back in 1982, the legal framework of the insanity defense favored the accused.
• 
Once invoked, the burden shifted to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hinckley was not insane.  It was completely backwards and inimical to common sense.
• 
He left an extensive paper trail proving his elaborate planning and premeditation to commit murder.  He penned letters and notes outlining his intended design to kill the President.  He admitted its wrongfulness.  His actions were both clear-headed and deliberate.  Hinckley's planning was careful and cautious.  Cold and calculating.  The very definition of sanity.
• 
Did Hinckley suffer from a mental illness and/or personality disorder?  Maybe.
• 
Was it severe and debilitating?  Not for a minute. 
• 
Did he understand right from wrong?  Unmistakably. 
• 
But juries are easily misled, manipulated and fooled by skilled defense attorneys.
• 
More revealing, perhaps, is how Hinckley has behaved during his time at St.  Elizabeth's.
• 
He exchanged letters with serial killer Ted Bundy.
• 
He sought the address of mass murderer, Charles Manson.
• 
He continued his obsession over actress Jodi Foster, smuggling her photos and other materials into his room.
• 
Judge Friedman assures us that Hinckley's doctors are persuaded that his "psychotic symptoms, delusional thinking or violent tendencies" are in remission.
• 
We are supposed to be comforted by that?  Look up "remission" in any medical treatise and you'll learn it can be a temporary decrease in the manifestation of a disease.
• 
Judge Friedman, in his 103 page opinion, seems to accept as faith the doctors' conclusion that their patient "presents no danger to himself or to others in the reasonable future".
• 
As opposed to what?  The unreasonable future?  What does that even mean?  Now?  Tomorrow?  Next week or next month?
• 
There are some actions which are so evil, the perpetrator should never be set free.  Under any circumstances.  This case is one of them.
      Nationalism Is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing  (JWR 08/12/2016)
• 
"Nationalism" is deemed to be bad stuff, maybe even akin to Nazism.
• 
An elite globalist may scoff at the arbitrariness of national border and style himself "a citizen of the world," as Barack Obama described himself before a massive crowd in Berlin in 2008.
• 
But most people don't think of themselves that way.  Nation-states inspire loyalties in a way the United Nations or the European Union have failed to do.
• 
Nationalism, properly understood, can be a positive force, welding otherwise disparate people together to build a decent society, secure a competent government and rally to defend themselves against attack.
• 
Each nation has developed its own particular culture, its own manners and mores, its own rules, written and unspoken.
• 
An intelligent nationalist can respect the strengths of other nations, while preferring his own.
• 
... as nations grow more prosperous, their elites become more globalist in outlook, and consider nationalism as blind prejudice or even racism.
• 
But ... "having a shared sense of identity, norms and history" — e.g., nationalism — "generally promotes trust."
• 
"Nationalists feel a bond with their own country, and they believe that this bond imposes moral obligations both ways."
• 
"Citizens have a duty to love and serve their country, and governments are duty bound to protect their own people."
• 
This is a principle that Donald Trump, in between off-the-cuff gaffes and self-harming diversions, affirms.
• 
Nations have boundaries and owe greater duties to their citizens than to foreigners.
• 
They have no obligation to open their borders entirely.
• 
It is not racist ... to bar those "whom they perceive as having values that are incompatible with their own, or who (they believe) engage in behaviors they find abhorrent, or whom they perceive to be a threat to something they hold dear."
• 
... called for "a responsible nationalism" which recognize government's responsibility "to maximize the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good."
      All Americans deserve safety  (Fox 08/11/2016)
• 
Stealing a car is wrong.  Running from police is wrong.  But neither should be a death sentence.
• 
If the investigation confirms accusations that the police shot unlawfully, the officers responsible must be held accountable under the law.
• 
In the first week of August, there were 78 shootings in Chicago.
• 
That level of violence isn't perpetrated by the police.  It's what the police are trying to fight.
• 
And although many Americans seem to have grown numb to violent crime in our inner cities, it is worth reminding ourselves that it merits an equal level of concern, attention and outrage.
• 
So far in Chicago this year, 396 people have been murdered and more than 2,000 shot.
• 
That is a 43 percent increase in murders over the same period in 2015, and a 48 percent increase in shootings.
• 
That level of violence is unacceptable in an American city.  And alarmingly, Chicago is not alone.
• 
In a study of 56 major cities in the U.S., homicides are up 17 percent on average.
• 
Every American has the right to live in safety.  To secure our communities is the first and most important responsibility of government.
• 
We are failing in our obligation to secure city neighborhoods for the people who live there — grandparents, children, single moms and families who simply want to live and work in safety.
• 
For those Americans who live in our violent inner cities, the Democrats have only one answer: gun control.
• 
Of course, Chicago already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country.  They haven't stopped the violence.
• 
Donald Trump and Republicans have an opportunity and an obligation to offer an alternative future to Americans living in the inner city.
• 
They should begin with the policies we know have worked in the past to restore safety.
• 
The practical policing methods pioneered by Bill Bratton in New York City made it the safest large city in America.  Over the past 23 years, murder has dropped in New York by 83 percent.  And the success of Bratton's methods have been replicated in other cities throughout the country.
• 
Of course, more aggressive policing will mean more police engagements with criminals and other members of the community.
• 
And that will mean an increase in the potential for police to make mistakes or do wrong...
• 
There is not an acceptable level of police misconduct.  And there is not an acceptable level of violent crime.
• 
The right of every single American to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is one of our nation's founding principles.  Without safety and security, these rights can have no real meaning.
      The Decline of Civility  (JWR 08/10/2016)
• 
One of the unavoidable consequences of youth is the tendency to think behavior we see today has always been.
• 
This was the time when the education establishment and liberals launched their agenda that undermined lessons children learned from their parents and the church.
• 
Sex education classes undermined family/church strictures against premarital sex.  Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passe, and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortion.
• 
Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions, often with neither parental knowledge nor parental consent.
• 
Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette are behavioral norms, transmitted mostly by example, word of mouth and religious teachings.  As such, they represent a body of wisdom distilled through the ages by experience and trial and error.
• 
The nation's liberals — along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals and the courts — have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values.
• 
Many people have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes.  Instead, what's moral or immoral is a matter of personal convenience, personal opinion, what feels good or what is or is not criminal.
• 
We no longer condemn or shame self-destructive and rude behavior, such as out-of-wedlock pregnancies, dependency, cheating and lying.  We have replaced what worked with what sounds good.
• 
The abandonment of traditional values has negatively affected the nation as a whole, but blacks have borne the greater burden.
• 
It is the height of dishonesty, as far as blacks are concerned, to blame our problems on slavery, how white people behave and racial discrimination.
• 
If those lies are not exposed, we will continue to look for external solutions when true solutions are internal.
• 
Those of us who are old enough to know better need to expose these lies.
      Hillary cries wolf on Wall Street  (Fox 08/10/2016)
• 
Wall Street's preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, slammed Donald Trump's economic plan on Monday at a rally in St.  Petersburg Florida — for being too favorable to Wall Street.
• 
For every single dollar Donald Trump received from the financial industry through July 21, Hillary Clinton received more than $539.
• 
For Clinton to attack Trump as the candidate of Wall St.  indicates a stunning contempt for the intelligence of the average American voter.
• 
From 2001 until Clinton launched her 2016 campaign, the Clinton's collected more than $153 million in speaking fees, including $7.7 million for at least 39 speeches to large banks...
• 
If Clinton's record as a clear favorite of the Wall Street speaking circuit isn't enough of a hint as to who is the real candidate for Wall Street in this election, the vast sums of money her campaign has raised from Wall St.  donors compared to Trump is a sign as a subtle as an anvil on the head.
• 
... the only one recycling old, tired ideas that will do nothing to help the vast majority of Americans whilst those at the top only continue to grow their fortunes is Clinton.
• 
Clinton is the globalization candidate, and globalization fuels Wall Street's ever-rising profits as it sucks middle and working America dry of wealth and opportunity.
• 
That's why Wall Street millionaires and billionaires are flocking to her corner in droves.
• 
All Clinton could offer is the tired old liberal promise that "we're going to make the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes for a change," despite the fact that America already has the most progressive income tax system in the developed world.
• 
"He's got — I don't know — a dozen or so economic advisers he just named: hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six guys named Steve, apparently," Clinton said in a transparent attempt to portray Trump as the wealthy white man's candidate.
• 
A glance at the Clinton campaign's contributions suggests otherwise.
      The Koran Trumps Mr.  Khan  (INN 04/08/2016)
• 
Of course, we all grieve for any U.S.  soldier who gave the ultimate sacrifice for protecting this country.
• 
However, it is not too late for Mr.  Trump to turn his political misstep in his handling Mr.  Khan into the ultimate political win, and focus America and the world on the true danger: the exact provisions of the Koran that exhort its followers to extreme wanton violence against not only non-Muslims, but Muslims as well.
• 
Mr.  Trump should proffer Mr.  Khan a copy of the Koran that contains the violence-exhorting sections that modern-day Jihadists look to as their inspiration.
• 
Q4:95 states, "Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home)."
• 
Q8:60 advises Muslims "to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know."
• 
Q9:29 instructs Muslims: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
• 
... the Prophet Mohammed undertook no fewer than 19 military expeditions, personally fighting in eight of them.
• 
In the aftermath of the 627 Battle of the Trench, "Mohammed felt free to deal harshly with the Banu Qurayza, executing their men and selling their women and children into slavery."
• 
So, instead of bothering with Mr.  Khan, Mr.  Trump should expose the very cause of Islamic violence: the Koran itself and the modern-day Muslims who want to live as Mohammad lived and murder and pillage and convert "unbelievers" like Mohammad did in the early 600's A.C.E. 
      What's more important?  Trump offending one father or the meltdown of the US economy?  (Fox 08/04/2016)
• 
Folks, this is a combination of pure fraud, censorship, media manipulation and conspiracy to rig a presidential election.
• 
The media hates Donald Trump.  They want to destroy him.
• 
So they choose to downplay or outright ignore any news that hurts Hillary or Obama... and make any news that hurts Trump the biggest blaring neon headlines on earth.
• 
Here's how I wish he'd replied to the Muslim father of the US Army Captain who died on the battlefield in 2004:
• 
"Sir, I know the pain you must be in.  I'm so sorry for your loss.  Your son is a hero.  Thank you and for making the ultimate sacrifice....
• 
"Now let's get back to the dying U.S.  economy, the massive debt, the disaster of ObamaCare bankrupting the middle class, the lack of middle class jobs, our wide open borders allowing in millions of illegal aliens who are taking American jobs and busting our budget with massive spending on welfare, food stamps, education, healthcare, police and prison spending, and the frightening threat of Muslim terrorism..."
• 
"Oh and one more thing... your son was killed by radical Muslim terrorists.  My proposed limits on immigration are intended to keep those killers out of the United States.  We both have the same goal."
• 
This was a brilliant set-up to distract the voters and to destroy Trump's momentum.
• 
Trump fell for it, and it worked (in the short term).
• 
But what's truly amazing is the magnitude of the media conspiracy.  The mainstream media decides what's in the news and what makes headlines...
• 
So they decided this the opinions of this one Muslim father were far more important than thousands of parents whose children have been killed by illegal alien criminals because Obama and Hillary left the border wide open.
• 
Most remarkably the mainstream media decided this one Muslim father... and Trump's reaction to him...is far more important than the meltdown of the entire U.S.  economy and the destruction of the once great American middle class.
• 
Last week the Fed announced something so important, that it should be the talk of the media and the talk of every American.
• 
A simple way to describe 1.2% GDP is "jet engine stall." We're aren't moving, the economy is in quicksand. 
• 
If only this were only about one quarter, this would be worrisome, but not a disaster.  It's not.
• 
Remember Hillary has stated repeatedly she is running for the third term of Obama.
• 
Here are a few more facts that the media doesn't want you to know:
• 
Barack Obama is the only president in the history of America to preside over 7 straight years of GDP growth under 3 percent.
• 
... Obama will become the only president in America's history to never produce a single year of 3% or higher GDP.
• 
The longest previous streak of under 3% GDP in the history of America was four years (1930 to 1933) during the depths of the Great Depression.
• 
For the first time in American history, more businesses are being destroyed each day than are being created.
• 
A record numbers of Americans are not in the workforce (over 94 million).
• 
There are 70 percent more Americans collecting entitlement checks than working in the private sector (148 million "takers" vs.  86 million "makers").
• 
13 of the 23 Obamacare State Co-Op Exchanges have failed (gone bust and broke).  The remaining 10 have losses of over $200 million per year.
• 
20% of U.S.  families don't have a single member who is employed.
• 
More Young Americans now live with their parents than at any time since Great Depression.
• 
There is virtually no mainstream media coverage of the U.S.  economy on verge of collapse, or the middle class being destroyed by ObamaCare, or half the country on welfare and food stamps.
• 
All this destruction was created by Obama and Hillary's policies.
• 
But all the media tells you about is one offensive comment by Trump.
• 
And that my friends is more than a tragedy...
      Morality and the second amendment  (Fox 08/02/2016)
• 
The most fundamental goal of any people — and of any government that is of, by, and for the people — must be to protect civilization. 
• 
Only in a state of civilization, in which personal and property rights are protected from the forces of the metaphorical jungle, can we truly be free. 
• 
For only then can we go to bed secure that, come morning, we'll wake to find ourselves and our loved ones still safe, and the property we labored to acquire still there.
• 
The problem confronting millions of Americans is that they do not live within the geographical borders of civilization.  They are trapped in asphalt jungles, where crime is rampant and police response times are alarmingly long.
• 
What are they to do?  From a moral standpoint, if you are an adult mired in so sorry a condition, you have a duty to protect your loved ones who depend on you, including your spouse and children.  You simply cannot abandon them to the forces of the jungle, no matter how ubiquitous they are. 
• 
Unless you can somehow uproot and move to a safe and civilized place, the answer for you likely is to own a firearm.
• 
The bad guys always manage to get guns anyway, and they know which neighborhoods have been rendered defenseless.
• 
Where gun ownership rights prevail, crime rates are much lower.  Why?  Because crooks, too, engage in cost-benefit analysis, and they'll avoid areas where potential victims are able to defend themselves. 
• 
Having a gun doesn't mean you have to use it — most of the time, merely showing home invaders that you are armed is enough to repel them.
• 
Our right to bear arms isn't about hunting, fishing, or recreation.  It's all about our liberty.
• 
There is a serious movement afoot today to repeal the Second Amendment.
• 
But the liberals and progressives behind this — the ones who are hamstringing our police forces in our major cities, and who are letting criminals cross our borders unfettered — cannot be depended on to put government on our side. 
• 
We don't need them, but we do need the right to bear arms.
      Megyn Kelly and Trump's Muslim ban  (INN 08/02/2016)
• 
Those of us rooting for Trump could only be dismayed by his impoverished response to the Khan family, Muslim Americans whose son, a soldier, fell in combat for our side.
• 
Trump said that as a businessman he too sacrificed.  That was the wrong answer in every way imaginable.
• 
... he fell for the trap, and make no mistake, it was a slick set-up by the Democrats to hoist a speaker, at their convention, who would use his grief to hammer Trump.
• 
The game was to get Trump personally and to send a message against Trump's proposed temporary ban on Muslim immigration.
• 
The plan was to portray Muslims as heroes, not terrorists, and it worked marvelously.
• 
We can only wonder if using grief to score political points is really an honorable thing to do.
• 
Mr.  Khan's grudge against Trump has become a bit too transparent.
• 
We cannot question the son's heroism, but we may have to question the family's motives.
• 
Because of one young man's answer to duty, does this mean the jihad threat is over and it's now safe to get on a plane?
• 
The question remains – what provoked Trump to call for a ban in the first place?
• 
Did it come out of the blue?  Yes it did.  It came from the skies.  We refer to it shorthand – 9/11.
• 
Have we forgotten the thousands killed that day in Manhattan alone September 11, 2001? 
• 
... that was Islamic terrorism, not the first and not the last.
• 
If 9/11 wasn't enough to alert Trump against Muslim immigration, there have been some 40 deadly Islamic attacks on our country since then.
• 
That was 2009 at Fort Hood when Nidal Hassan shot to death 13 unarmed fellow soldiers while shouting praises to Allah...
• 
In 2013 at the Boston Marathon, three dead, later in Chattanooga, Tennessee, five dead, and then in San Bernardino, California, 14 dead, and this year in Orlando, Florida, 49 dead – all dead from the hands of Islamic extremists who came here legally, illegally or overstayed their welcome.
• 
Which is precisely why Trump suggests that we should not be so welcoming.
• 
Yes, the Khans have a point.  Theirs is about a son.  This merits our respect.
• 
Trump's point is about an entire nation at risk.  This speaks to all our sons and daughters. 
      Khan and Smith: How the media are treating two grieving parents  (Fox 08/02/2016)
• 
The Republican nominee is, of course, entitled to defend himself against Khizr Khan, who took the stage at the Democratic convention and denounced him as an anti-Muslim bigot.
• 
But the way in which he has done it has fueled the story. 
• 
There is no question that Khan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, provided a heartbreaking moment in Philadelphia.
• 
Trump had nothing to do with his son's wartime death, of course, but Khan took his proposed temporary ban on Muslim immigrants and used it to question whether the candidate has even read the Constitution (which Trump says he has).
• 
The problem for Trump is that he's in a fight with a Gold Star mother and her husband, who naturally have enormous public sympathy.  (Trump later issued a statement calling Khan's son a "hero" but saying Khan had "no right" to attack him, but the damage was done.)
• 
The media narrative is clear.  And some of Trump's allies aren't helping.  Roger Stone, the informal Trump adviser, tweeted that Khan is "more than an aggrieved father of a Muslim son- he's Muslim Brotherhood agent helping Hillary."
• 
New Hampshire state Rep.  Al Baldasaro, who has called for Clinton to be killed, said this: "Follow the money trail on Mr Khan.  Shame on him for using his Warrior son, who made the Ultimate sacrifice as a pawn."
• 
Every day that Trump is talking about Khizr Khan is a day he's not talking about jobs or taxes.
• 
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the mainstream media sympathize with Khan's harsh portrait of Trump, but believe that Smith's harsh rendition of Clinton is unfair.
• 
I leave you with this: MSNBC blogger Steve Benen, during the Democratic convention: "Khizr Khan's Words Won't Soon Be Forgotten." He said no speaker topped Khan for "sheer emotional weight and resonance."
• 
Ten days earlier, during the Republican convention, Benen's headline was this: "RNC Manipulates the Pain of a Grieving Mother for Partisan Gain." He called it "probably the lowest point a party has reached in my lifetime."
      What Hillary gets wrong about America's 'moment of reckoning'  (Fox 08/02/2016)
• 
Here's the truth: America's economy is a mess and our social fabric is fraying.
• 
That's why Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton, offers a better way forward.
• 
Powerful computers, the Internet, handheld devices, robots and artificial intelligence are making our lives easier but they are also destroying jobs at an alarming pace.
• 
Politicians have pumped billions into public schools and universities led by faculty obsessed with political correctness and the alleged ills of American capitalism, financed vast entitlements instead of adequate investments in R&D and the infrastructure, and sowed divisions and suspicion among ethnic groups, and between men and women and the prosperous and those genuinely deserving a hand up.
• 
Our High schools churn out students unprepared for college or vocational programs, and many university graduates lack the skills needed to function in a technology-intensive workplace.
• 
All this is exacerbated by competition from Japan, Germany and other northern European countries where job training is better and from China and elsewhere in Asia where labor is much cheaper.
• 
Those pressures are multiplied by Washington's failure to negotiate good international trade agreements and adequately defend Americans against foreign cheating on those agreements.
• 
Suicides and drug abuse are up, fertility has dropped precipitously, millions of recent college graduates are employed at places like Starbucks and living with parents, and home ownership is at a 50 year low.
• 
American society is increasingly polarized between the top 25 percent who manage to obtain a good education, land a high paying job and pay most of the taxes, and those who are stuck in dead end situations and clamor for more government benefits to shore up their diminished circumstances.
• 
Already, the federal debt is on track to double over next 12 years, and Clinton's prescriptions would only slow growth further and hasten the ultimate collapse of the nation's finances.
• 
Donald Trump indicts the tyranny and destructive consequences of political correctness and identity politics.
• 
But no politician can run and win the presidency by promising to cut social programs.
• 
He does promise to do something about bad trade agreements and the high taxes smothering new business startups and investment.
• 
To lower taxes, he would be compelled by Congress to curtail the worst abuses of government benefits programs and thereby restore some individual responsibility to citizens for their successes and failures.
• 
The problem he or any Republican faces running for president is that too many Americans have become dependent on government largess and preferences for employment opportunities.
• 
With each new president, more Americans go on the dole or benefit from some kind of government mandated sinecure and fewer are engaged in productive activities.
• 
This can only end by Americans rejecting Clinton and voting for Trump to take back their dignity, or the country falling into complete dysfunction, decay and ultimate collapse.
      An open letter to Mr.  Khizr Khan  (Fox 08/01/2016)
• 
I wish to offer my sympathy for the death of your son, Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in action in Iraq.
• 
As a former US Army officer, and a veteran of the Gulf War, I can certainly understand the pain and anguish that you and your wife endure every day.
• 
Your son made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, a country that was new to you and your family and one which you openly embraced and certainly love.
• 
When you and your family arrived to America from Pakistan, you assimilated into our country.  You adopted American ways, learned our history and apparently you even acquired a pocket Constitution along the way.  Good for you sir.
• 
But, there are many Muslims in America who not only have no desire to assimilate, but wish to live under Sharia Law.
• 
As you well know, Mr.  Khan, we live in violent times, dangerous times.  Muslim madmen from ISIS and other radical Jihadi groups are on a murder and terror spree across the globe.
• 
Your religion of peace, Islam, is anything but that in 2016.  That is a fact that is confirmed every time a Muslim shoots, bombs, beheads and tortures innocent men, women and children.
• 
This does not mean that every Muslim is a terrorist, but most terrorists, sir, are indeed Muslims.
• 
A Muslim terrorist attack has become the sign of the times.
• 
Unfortunately, Mr.  Obama romanticizes Islam and refuses to accept reality, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people across the world.
• 
Groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda have one goal, the complete destruction of the Judeo-Christian culture, our religions and our way of life.
• 
We don't plan on letting our country be devoured by Muslim maniacs.  We are Americans sir, and not unarmed, socialist European zombies.
• 
Evil must be destroyed before it destroys us.
• 
Strong measures, wartime measures, must be taken to protect this country from those that wish to annihilate us and our way of life.
• 
Mr.  Trump's plan to temporarily halt immigration from Muslim countries that are known to either support terrorism or harbor terrorist groups is not only pragmatic, but indeed it is constitutional.  It is the constitutional duty of the president of the United States to protect this nation.
• 
Mr.  Trump understands the threat to his nation...  The threat, sir, is from radical Islam.
• 
How in God's name are U.S.  immigration authorities supposed to know the true intentions of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and thousands of other sundry Muslims who wish to arrive on our shores?
• 
Whether you, your wife, the Muslim world and millions of Democrats are offended by Mr.  Trump's realistic view of the world is irrelevant.
• 
The security of this great land supersedes your desires and the desires of others who wish to come here now.
• 
The United States of America has no obligation to open its doors in order to placate foreigners and liberals in our government.
• 
We must live in a world of reality, not a world of denial, delusion and fantasy the Democrats inhabit every waking day of their lives.
• 
Radical Islam is the enemy of everyone on this planet who believes in freedom and justice.
• 
Until it is destroyed, this nation must protect itself from enemies both foreign and domestic.
      The US Military is a Politically Correct Weakling  (07/30/2016)
• 
Practically every 24 hour news cycle, the perfumed princes and princesses in the Pentagon announce some ludicrous bit of social engineering that sounds so compassionate, sensitive, politically correct and trendy, but in actuality is another nail in the coffin of the US Armed Forces.
• 
The left wing social engineers destroying the military are having the time of their lives watching the last bastion of American true patriotism; selflessness and manhood go down the proverbial drain.
• 
The military's life breath is morale, camaraderie, tradition, bravery and sacrifice.
• 
The mission of the US military is simple.  When directed by the President, it is to wage war by sea, land and air and to defeat and destroy the enemies of the United States, violently and rapidly.
• 
The mission of the US military is not to provide white privilege presentations, gender neutrality classes, day care, endless maternity leave, camouflaged breast pumps, lactation stations and gay sensitivity training.
• 
Good people of all ranks are leaving the service because they are at odds with the politically correct policies decimating training, operations and morale.
• 
What does all this social engineering do to the military, it creates a whole force that lacks that indefinable, but instrumental trait called "fighting spirit."
• 
It's not the best military the US has ever had.  It's not even close.
• 
The troops know it.  The leaders, junior, mid-level and senior know it.
• 
Most importantly, our enemies damned well know it. 
      Stop fanning the flames of violence against cops  (Fox 07/29/2016)
• 
Every cop I worked with understands that there is a natural tendency for friction when dealing with enforcement of the law.
• 
You see, the true reality is, no one wants to encounter a police officer unless you really need one. 
• 
I understand this.
• 
I've walked into houses torn apart by domestic violence and abuse as it was happening.
• 
I've had a gun trained on me by drug dealers in neighborhoods where the gang leaders rule the streets.
• 
I've pulled over drunk drivers exhibiting obvious anger and fear.
• 
I have felt the apprehension that comes with showing up where you're not wanted to help bring peace to a tense situation.
• 
But I also understand the apprehension people feel when approached by a police officer.
• 
There is tension and even fear on both sides of that encounter as recent events demonstrate.
• 
That's why I feel the need to challenge my fellow elected officials to get this right.
• 
We must guard ourselves from jumping to conclusions too quickly and understand that behind every situation is a family. 
• 
I know that on both sides of an interaction with law enforcement, there is family that cares about their loved ones.
• 
If for no other reason, that's why those in elected positions – or positions of influence in the media – need to temper their comments.
• 
The rule of law is critical to our success as a nation and is embodied in our Constitution.
• 
It is up to those in uniform to honor and uphold the laws passed by our elected representatives, and that is not an easy job.
• 
Ronald Reagan said it best, "Our unique experience demonstrates that law and freedom must be indivisible partners.  For without law, there can be no freedom, only chaos and disorder, and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression."
• 
The men and women who serve as police across this country engage their fellow citizens every day with one goal: to make their part of the world a little safer and a little better.
• 
They strive to maintain the balance between freedom and the laws that keep our nation stable and at peace.
• 
Unlike other occupations of public service, most of the time police are responding to a situation where the outcome results in taking away someone's liberty via arrest, delivering bad news, or helping the victims of various crimes in the immediate aftermath.
• 
The men and women who serve our communities as police officers are no more perfect than the rest of us.
• 
My challenge to my fellow elected officials – both Republicans and Democrats – is to pause before rushing to judgment and to speak in a way that reduces fear and apprehension.
• 
When a police officer is targeted to be shot and killed, that's an attack on a civilized society as much as it is on the man or woman in the crosshairs.
      Why I would like to see Trump shake up Washington  (Fox 07/27/2016)
• 
Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was too long — 75 minutes — and too loud.
• 
... Trump hit mostly high notes — the country is on the wrong track. 
• 
Crime and violence are serious concerns.  Trump promised to be a "law and order" president, specifics to come.
• 
Many believe race relations have deteriorated since President Obama took office.  The police are under attack.
• 
Poor children are trapped in failing public schools and Democrats won't let them escape.  Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, promise school choice.
• 
Terrorism is on the rise at home and overseas.  Instead of focusing on battle readiness, our depleted military focuses on the inclusion of transgender and women soldiers.
• 
Veterans are not being adequately cared for.
• 
Whether Republicans are united enough to win the election remains to be seen, but the left, the establishment and the media are united in their opposition to Trump.  They claim Trump is playing on fears, but they have fears of their own; fear of losing control of government and their lucrative positions.
• 
Fear is not a bad emotion to arouse if it is based on genuine threats and there are plenty of those, as anyone paying the slightest attention can attest. 
• 
Like the definition of love in the book and film "Love Story," being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry about your failed programs and failed philosophy.
• 
That's because liberalism is not based on results, but on feelings and intentions.
• 
Don't expect a question like this: "Your party has spent huge amounts of money on the poor and yet there are about as many poor people today as when the War on Poverty began half a century ago.  Same with education.  Isn't it time to try something else?"
• 
You won't hear that question because the left thinks the problem is that government isn't taxing, spending and regulating enough.
• 
That attitude has fueled the rise of Donald Trump and some like me, who were once skeptical of him, would like to see Trump shake up Washington, if only to watch the expressions on the smug faces of the left.
      Greg Gutfeld: How to beat ISIS and save Earth  (Fox 07/26/2016)
• 
Every ISIS jihadist must be killed.  ... The only recourse is elimination by our military.
• 
And for our civilians, hardening all soft targets in our lives.
• 
We must prove their fantasy a joke, in front of all Muslims.
• 
The next president should declare war – not on terror (which is like a war on war; it's nonsense) – but against the enemy.  Just name it.
• 
Our forces must be overwhelming, with enough troops to walk through an entire city.  ISIS is a coward by strategy.  Given a choice to fight armed men or blow up a school full of children, ISIS will always do the kids.
• 
Unfortunately, the kind of training we need – which is to instruct citizens how to overcome attacks ("Think like 93" is my motto, based on the heroism of Flight 93 passengers on 9/11) – is in short supply.
• 
We need to start doing terror drills at work, in bars, at school.
• 
If you own a business, you need to protect your employees, with armed security outside and inside too.
• 
Also, this idea that disrupting your life means "the terrorists have won" is pure BS.  Disruption is the only way to beat them.
• 
This "hardening" should be a major at colleges, a vocation as revered as engineering.
• 
Terror is like water; it seeks the most vulnerable path.  As we successfully harden soft targets (planes, airports), Islamists will always find other options.
• 
We can solve this problem if we make it an "industry that solves this problem."
• 
Remember, 9/11 was enabled by a box-cutter: A tool purchased at the local hardware store turned a jetliner into a ballistic missile.
• 
But now, for the "lone wolf" – which is nothing more than a self-activated sleeper cell – it will be knives or guns accompanying a flurry of horror in a cafe or theater.
• 
It's impossible to stop everyone, but that should not stop us from trying.
• 
If they're just establishing an Islamic state to prepare for death, why can't we help?
• 
I bet they're wondering why it's taking us so long to figure this out.
• 
Me too.
      Bill Clinton tries to wash away decades of scandal, power and corruption with a yarn and a smile  (Fox 07/26/2016)
• 
The former president attempted to humanize the unpopular Clinton by painting a pretty love story to mask a career marked by the naked pursuit of power.
• 
While he may have failed to do that, he certainly succeeded in reminding the country of his own misdeeds.
• 
It was indeed astonishing to witness the man with at least ten women who have publicly accused him of an extramarital affair, rape, or sexual assault wax lovingly about his wife.
• 
Then again, she did reportedly help him keep a number of them quiet.
• 
His presidency was tarnished by an affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, about which he lied.
• 
In 2008, close friend to Clinton Jeffrey Epstein, the financier, was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
• 
Epstein reportedly kept a harem of underage girls on a private island — which Clinton visited — and used his private jet, on which Clinton sometimes flew, to traffic them.
• 
When Clinton wasn't trying to spin a marriage marked by affairs and allegations of sexual misconduct into a love story for the ages, he was praising his wife's apparently earth shatteringly impressive accomplishments.
• 
In keeping with the DNC's unofficial theme of race-baiting identity politics, many of those accomplishments of Hillary's that Bill mentioned dealt explicitly with race.
• 
He assured the crowd that Hillary was "totally progressive on economic and social issues," and promised coal workers that, after taking away their livelihoods, she will come "back for you to take you on the ride to America's future." How reassuring.
• 
Perhaps Clinton's most astonishing claim was that Hillary leaves everywhere she goes in a better state than when she found it.
• 
"Drop her anywhere ... and she will have made it better," he said proudly.
• 
Try telling that to the people of Libya.
• 
"She's a natural leader, she's a good organizer and she's the best darn change-maker," Clinton claimed.
• 
But the so-called natural leader let U.S.  personnel perish in Benghazi, and used her position in government to enrich her family's foundation.
• 
The so-called "good organizer" is, in FBI Director James Comey's words, "extremely careless" with sensitive government information and "not sophisticated enough" to understand classified marking.
• 
The so-called "best darn change-maker" left Syria and Libya in shambles.
• 
For their entire personal and political lives, the Clintons have been plagued by scandal.
• 
And all along the way they have been "walking and talking and laughing together," Clinton said.
      Fear of Trump Presidency on Full Display Following RNC  (Fox 07/25/2016)
• 
An animal's response to a perceived mortal threat is fear.  Fear, in turn, triggers the fight or flight response.
• 
Human's behave the same way, although we alone feel threatened by words – particularly of those we disagree with, don't understand or can't control – whether they're directed at us or not.
• 
More and more in our media-centric connected world, we attack in kind.
• 
Judging by the overwhelming number of petty, malicious and downright vicious media attacks – social and traditional – on nearly everyone who spoke at the Republican National Convention (RNC) last week, Donald Trump's candidacy appears to threaten a lot of people.
• 
... much of it amounts to little more than clickable headlines with trivial content or dubious arguments with just enough red meat to rally the masses against the threat of a Trump presidency.
• 
Don't even get me started on the columnist who repeatedly called New Jersey Governor Chris Christie "Big Chicken" in a critique of his speech.  Or another who found a way to write 500 words on Trump's running mate Mike Pence Opens a New Window.  – not about his policies or track record as Governor of Indiana, mind you, but about a five-second clip showing his reaction to something Trump said.  I kid you not.
• 
Meanwhile, media and entertainment elites took to the Twitterverse to demonstrate just how inclusive they are of viewpoints they don't agree with.
• 
And Michael Moore wrote Opens a New Window.  , "First Republican ever to use the word "peace" in any speech.  So I guess that means, war."
• 
I didn't quite understand that, but it still got over a thousand retweets and likes.  Go figure. 
• 
You expect that sort of nonsense from the right-fearing media and entertainers, but Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban unleashed a tweetstorm during Trump's acceptance speech on Thursday.
• 
The childish Twitter tantrum attacked everything from the real estate mogul's mannerisms and character...
• 
You've got to wonder if any of these people realize how revealing their rhetoric is.
• 
They are absolutely terrified of this man and what he represents...
• 
Who knew you could learn so much about what makes people tick, just from their response to a political convention.
• 
It's stunning, really. 
      The parents who didn’t sue Disney taught America a powerful lesson  (NYP 07/23/2016)
• 
Remember the Serenity Prayer?
• 
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."
• 
Maybe we should put it up not just in homes and churches, but over the doors of our courthouses.
• 
Because Americans seem to not know the difference anymore.
• 
When the young woman, whom the district has not yet identified, fell twice during her tryouts, the coaches decided she didn't make the cut.
• 
Which is when her parents decided it was time to consult a lawyer.
• 
It's not clear whether the parents have found a "right to be part of a human pyramid" in the US Constitution, but just the threat of litigation is enough to make even the most inefficient bureaucracy spring into action.
• 
Contrast the actions of the cheerleading parents with those of 2-year-old Lane Graves, the toddler who died when he was attacked by an alligator while playing next to a pond at Disney World last month.
• 
... father Matthew Graves explained, "Melissa and I are broken.  We will forever struggle to comprehend why this happened to our sweet baby, Lane.  As each day passes, the pain gets worse."
• 
Instead of a pursuing legal recourse, though, they decided instead to concentrate their efforts on a charity they have set up in their son's name.
• 
"In addition to the foundation, we will solely be focused on the future health of our family and will not be pursuing a lawsuit against Disney."
• 
It's perfectly possible they have reached an undisclosed settlement with Disney over this tragedy, but it's also possible they simply decided that a lawsuit was not going to change anything, at least not anything important.
• 
Disney has already gone to great lengths to make sure something like this won't happen again — removing hundreds of alligators from its lakes and putting up a lot of warning signs.
• 
The parents of the cheerleader may believe they can change the outcome.
• 
What they will not change is that their daughter was not good enough to make it on her own.
• 
All these frivolous lawsuits do is make an overly litigious society more so.
• 
When everyone runs to court at the drop of a hat (or the drop of a rock on someone's toe), it means that everything is more expensive, that no one can go about their jobs or their lives without fear of lawsuits and that everything costs more.
• 
It also means that our first inclination becomes to blame others for our misfortunes and never to forgive, let alone give anyone else the benefit of the doubt.
• 
And rather than use our legal system to achieve justice, we use it to settle scores.
• 
All this, in turn, will take its toll on our families, our schools and our communities.
• 
"The question I have for each and every one of you is: Do you want to be solution-oriented and a great role model for your kids?  Or do you want to be the opposite of that, and be litigation-oriented?"
• 
For more and more Americans, it seems the answer is the latter.
• 
From life's small nuisances to its great tragedies, it seems that we can no longer accept bad luck as an explanation for things going wrong.  Nor can we imagine taking any personal responsibility for making things better.
• 
Instead stomp our feet and demand that someone "make us whole again."
• 
But God knows that's not what courts are for.
      The dream of Muslim outreach has become a nightmare  (JWR 07/21/2016)
• 
... as with his approach to racial relations, Obama's remedies proved worse than the original illness.
• 
He implicitly blamed America's strained relations with many Middle Eastern countries on his supposedly insensitive predecessor, George W.  Bush.
• 
The new message of the Obama administration was that the Islamic world was understandably hostile because of what America had done rather than what it represented.
• 
Accordingly, all mention of radical Islam, and even the word "terrorism," was airbrushed from the new administration's vocabulary.
• 
Words to describe terrorism or the fight against it were replaced by embarrassing euphemisms like "overseas contingency operations," "man-caused disaster" and "workplace violence."
• 
In apology tours and mythological speeches, Obama exaggerated Islamic history as often as he critiqued America.
• 
He even lectured Christians on their past pathologies dating back to the Crusades.
• 
Yet Obama's outreach was still interpreted by Islamists as guilt and weakness to be exploited rather than magnanimity to be reciprocated.  Terrorist attacks increased.
• 
Careerist toadies in government parroted the party-line message and even tried to outdo their politically correct boss.
• 
Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano focused on returning veterans as terrorist risks.
• 
Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry said that global warming, not the Islamic State, was the real threat.
• 
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the president asked him to make Muslim outreach a top priority for the agency.
• 
CIA Director John Brennan said that jihad "is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam."
• 
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper opined that the Muslim Brotherhood was largely secular.
• 
Obama kept insisting that guns, not Islamic terrorists, were the real danger — even as assassins used bombs from Boston to Paris, knives from California to Oklahoma, and, most recently, a truck to run over innocents in Nice, France.
• 
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies got the message and worried more about charges of "Islamophobia" than preempting deadly terrorist attacks.
• 
Radical Islam never had legitimate grievances against the West.
• 
America and Europe had welcomed in Muslim immigrants — even as Christians were persecuted and driven out of the Middle East.
• 
The real problem is that Islamic terrorism feeds off the self-induced failures of the Middle East.
• 
Jihadists try to convince the Arab street that returning to religious fundamentalism and exporting jihad will empower Muslims to recapture lost primacy over a decadent and guilty West, just as in the mythical glory days of the caliphate.
• 
In truth, religious intolerance, gender apartheid, illiteracy, autocracy, statism, tribalism and religious fundamentalism all guarantee poverty, economic stagnation and scapegoating.
• 
More disturbing, millions of Middle Easterners fled to the safety of Europe and the United States — but on occasion, only to resist assimilation and show ingratitude once they got there.
• 
In short, the dreamy Obama approach to terrorism has proved a nightmare — and it is not over yet.
      Judge Napolitano: What if the fix was in for Hillary at the Obama Justice Department?  (Fox 07/21/2016)
• 
What if the folks who run the Department of Political Justice recently were told that the republic would suffer if Hillary Clinton were indicted for espionage because Donald Trump might succeed Barack Obama in the presidency?
• 
What if espionage is the failure to safeguard state secrets and the evidence that Clinton failed to safeguard them is unambiguous and overwhelming?
• 
What if, when Clinton suggested to the president that the U.S.  wage a secret undeclared war against Libya, the president went along with it as a no-lose proposition?
• 
What if he assumed that if her secret war succeeded he'd get the credit and if her secret war failed she would get the blame?
• 
What if the CIA told her that she was arming not pro-Western militias but anti-American terrorist groups?
• 
What if providing material assistance to terrorist groups is a felony? 
• 
What if she succeeded in toppling the Libyan leader, Col.  Moammar Gadhafi, only to have him replaced by feuding warlords who control anti-Western terrorist groups that not only failed to produce democracy but instead produced destruction, chaos, terror, torture and death?
• 
What if there were terrible secrets that Clinton wanted to keep from the public and for that reason she used private servers and non-government-issued mobile devices?
• 
What if those terrible secrets involved her enabling the unlawful behavior of her husband and his shoddy, unlawful foundation?
• 
What if Mrs.  Clinton made decisions as secretary of state that were intended to enrich her husband and herself and she needed to keep emails about those decisions away from the public?
• 
What if, after the ascendancy of Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primaries, the president warmed up to his former rival?
• 
What if Trump so got under the president's skin that it drove him to embrace Clinton as his chosen successor and as the one Democrat who could prevent a Trump presidency?
• 
What if the president sent word to the Department of Political Justice to exonerate Clinton no matter what evidence was found against her?
• 
What if FBI management began to intimidate FBI agents who had the goods on her?
• 
What if FBI management forced agents to sign highly irregular agreements governing what the agents can tell anyone when it comes to what they learned about Clinton?
• 
What if it is highly irregular for a major FBI criminal investigation to be undertaken without a grand jury?
• 
What if Hillary Clinton has engaged in espionage and public corruption and FBI agents know that she has?
• 
What if they have evidence to prove it but they could not present anything to a grand jury because President Obama wants Clinton, and not Donald Trump, to succeed him in office?
• 
What if this blatant political interference with a criminal investigation is itself a crime?
• 
What do we do about it?
      Dr.  Manny: Why I'm scared of Pokemon GO  (Fox 07/20/2016)
• 
I know that many of you are going to roll your eyes and say "Oh here goes Dr.  Manny, the joy stealer who doesn't want us to have any fun.  Stick to medicine doc, and let us play," but let me tell you why I'm afraid of Pokemon GO.
• 
I find the whole craze silly, stupid and even dangerous.
• 
The American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a statement recently that said video game and online violence is affecting our children more than ever.
• 
It recommended that parents monitor their children's activities when viewing this type of content or playing this type of game.
• 
There are now enough studies reaching the same conclusion about this type of "normalized" violence, and there is proof in the sheer number of children suffering from altered behavior, disrupted sleep patterns and lack of social skills.
• 
While there are specific rating recommendations for games, like "M" for mature, I challenge you to find me a store actually checking customers' IDs before collecting the $60-plus profit of the sale.
• 
While some of you may find that difficult to imagine in such a well-mannered country this, it is a very dangerous reality, and instances of road rage are currently at the highest levels ever recorded.
• 
What's more is that the age group that scored the highest in these instances is the drivers in their early twenties.
• 
This is the same generation that is locked in to social media and online news, and also the driving force behind this Pokemon GO craze.
• 
Do we really need to give this group another reason to be distracted behind the wheel?  Just this week, a Pokemon GO player was in pursuit of a fictional character and crashed his vehicle into a Baltimore patrol car.
• 
So yes, while I know that many of you will say "Oh here goes Dr.  Manny again with the fear-mongering tactics trying to scare the public over a harmless game about Pokemon," I hope that there are a few of you who will heed my caution. 
• 
When I say that I am "afraid" of Pokemon, I am not referencing the little cartoon characters who blow fire and ice, I am talking about the trend of creating artificial realities for people to live in.
• 
We face many challenges in our current world with serious issues that won't be fixed unless we're a part of the solution.
• 
That being said, we should not be "Poke-ing" around in a virtual world where we spend half of our days chasing shadows that are not actually there.
• 
Here is my advice to you: Pay attention to the here and now and work to stay present in this world.
• 
If you do not play, but your children do, take into consideration the content or theories that they are being exposed to, and how living in a virtual world can affect them.
• 
And for those of you so far gone into that world that you can't give it up, try to keep it to just two Pokemon a day and reevaluate how you got to where you are.
      Tech Elites Gang Up on Trump  (Fox 07/19/2016)
• 
... Silicon Valley remains in an ideological and rhetorical bubble that's increasingly disconnected from the realities of mainstream America.
• 
It's no surprise that 145 tech leaders came out against Donald Trump's candidacy for president last week.
• 
... if Silicon Valley leaned any further left, it would fall into the Pacific Ocean.
• 
What is surprising is the depth to which the unicorn generation has become immersed in elitist hypocrisy. 
• 
They do not want Trump mucking up their utopian fantasy.
• 
They don't like his stance on immigration or his non-politically correct rhetoric, which runs counter to the vaunted diversity and inclusion narrative they so strongly believe in.
• 
And that's where the hypocrisy begins.
• 
First things first: I don't have an issue with the tech industry's track record on gender and racial diversity.
• 
I believe it's largely a supply issue.
• 
It's not hyperbole to say that Silicon Valley has been lambasted by the media for its predominant white maleness.
• 
The Rev.  Jesse Jackson has had a field day shaking down Apple, Facebook, Google, HP and others over their disproportionately low percentage of blacks and Hispanics, especially in technical and management jobs.
• 
And the tech industry's reportedly sexist, frat boy culture has spawned an entire lexicon of bro bite terminology such as bro culture, bro bubble and brogrammers.
• 
As I see it, the tech sector does have one real discrimination problem, although it doesn't get nearly the airplay that racial and gender controversies get: Ageism.
• 
The median age across a wide swath of the tech sector is 32 – 10 years younger than that of the U.S.  labor force.
• 
And contrary to the situation with minorities and women, the ageism problem does not appear to be a supply issue.  In fact, federal investigators recently launched an investigation into Google's hiring practices over multiple complaints of age discrimination.
• 
I don't know how these leaders can keep a straight face while calling out Trump on diversity and inclusion.  Talk about duplicity.
• 
Likewise, the letter is strewn with ludicrous statements that simply don't pass the laugh test, including "we believe in a free and open exchange of ideas," and American innovation is "a source of widely-shared prosperity."
• 
In my view, nothing could be further from the truth.
• 
Aside from open source – practiced by a handful of companies and initiatives like Red Hat, Firefox and WordPress – the overwhelming majority of tech products are based on proprietary technology that rakes in revenues and profits.
• 
The most telling sign that these leaders are living in a bubble is that they seem to be completely unaware that the middle class is being squeezed by growing wealth disparity.
• 
Likewise, there's no mention of a world in turmoil over the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, the systemic problems arising from our broken immigration system, or the war that anarchists are waging on the only people who stand between them and the bad guys, law enforcement. 
• 
But they do stand opposed to Trump's "fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline." I've got news for them.  If this is strong and prosperous, we're in big trouble. 
• 
Reminds me of why our forefathers broke from England in the first place: to get away from the self-important, self-appointed elites imposing their will upon us and found a land where each one of us has an equal vote.
• 
Maybe Silicon Valley's leaders should read up on how this democracy thing is supposed to work.
      Cleveland confusion: When nonstop terror bleeds into our media and political culture  (Fox 07/19/2016)
• 
... news has an incredibly short half-life these days.  Big stories flash across the sky like meteors, burn incredibly brightly, and disappear beyond the horizon.
• 
That's in part because of the tsunami of terror and tragedy that has gripped this country, blowing most other news off the screen, until it's replaced by another burst of gunfire.
• 
And yet, with Trump's convention under way, who is still heavily focused on Nice, as awful as that truck attack was?
• 
And who is still heavily focused on Dallas, now that it's been superseded by Baton Rouge?
• 
This is not only because the media have a notoriously short attention span.
• 
It's because the human brain can only process so much tragedy at any one time.
• 
I hate the term the new normal, but that is where we are.
• 
I hate the notion that we're becoming less outraged by each attack, on police or on innocent civilians, because we haven't quite gotten over the one that took place a few days before.
• 
But that is where we are.
      Baton Rouge murders: If killing cops becomes the new normal America is doomed  (Fox 07/17/2016)
• 
But given recent events, what once could be thought of as "routine" in police work must now be considered potentially extraordinary. 
• 
What feelings must resonate within the patrolman who is responding to a call of domestic violence or simple larceny?  Am I the next target?  Is this really a routine call for service or is it an ambush?
• 
No longer can the patrolman simply worry about the reported crime itself but rather he or she must approach these events as though they are potentially walking into the next Dallas or Baton Rouge. 
• 
And that is no way to function as a police officer.  The stress, strain, and uncertainty would be unbearable. 
• 
What we are experiencing right now no longer feels isolated.  It no longer feels extraordinary.  Sadly, this extreme violence against our men and women in blue is beginning to feel routine.
• 
And that is particularly frightening.
      It's the truck's fault — ban all trucks  (INN 07/16/2016)
• 
"It's the truck's fault.  We must ban all trucks.  No, it's not Islam's fault.  It's not Islamic extremism's fault.  To say that this monster was an ‘Islamic Terrorist' would be saying we are war with all of Islam.  We are better than that.  We need to bring in more Muslim refugees."
• 
Obama isn't the Commander-in-Chief, he's the Islamic-Terrorist-Apologist-in-Chief.
• 
In a little less than 8 years, Obama has carefully overseen and carefully tended a massive incubation of Islamic terrorism's base, from which the world may never recover.
• 
First, Obama's Iraq retreat and crowning Iran as hegemon of Iraq served as the perfect Petri dish for ISIS.
• 
Obama has planted the seeds of thousands of Islamic terrorists beyond any stretch of the imagination.
• 
Second, with his Iran Nuke deal, Obama funded the world's leading terror state, Iran, with 150 billion dollars of blood money with which the terror state of Iran will further polarize and terrorize the Sunnis and everyone from the Persian Gulf west to Morocco, and south throughout Africa.
• 
And, an American general just reported there is now a recent massive influx of Islamic terrorism throughout South America.
• 
Third, what's the ideological difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Islamic State of the Levant?  There is none.
• 
They are both neo-fascist terror organizations that want to annihilate Western Civilization, and replace it with their Islamo-Nazi Fascism that uses religion as a veneer to give it its politically-correct First Amendment protection.
• 
The Islamic Republic of Iran is merely the Islamic State with a nuclear bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them. 
• 
When Obama's Iranian Nuke deal achievement fails, we won't have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars.
• 
We will have hundreds of millions of dead people from Iran's nukes.
      Bastille Day bloodbath in Nice proves that gun control advocates are liars  (Fox 07/15/2016)
• 
At least 84 people died Thursday night in Nice, France, when a terrorist plowed a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day.
• 
Their deaths should free all of us, once and for all, from the toxic and seditious lie, spread by the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, that guns — not madmen or radical Islamics — are a threat to civilized people in America, or in France, or anywhere else.
• 
Yet, despite facts like these, President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton may still argue that making America safe has to mean depriving Americans of their Constitutional right to bear arms.
• 
They believe that a government, run by elitists like them, is the answer to mankind's problems.
• 
They think they're that much smarter and that much more deserving of power than the rest of us.
• 
That's why they want people disarmed.  Because weapons can make law abiding people powerful.
• 
That's why they want people taxed until they have little discretionary income.  Because money can make people powerful. 
• 
That's why they insist people spend even their after-tax income to buy things they tell them to — like health insurance — whether people want to, or not.
• 
It's even why Barack Obama wants to tell public schools in every state and every town how kids should use their restrooms.
• 
Because people like Barack and Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton believe that training human beings to do only what they are told to do has to start early.
• 
See, our own reasoning — as free individuals — offends people like Barack and Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, deeply, to their cores.
• 
Their distrust of individual autonomy is visceral, vicious and a threat to freedom everywhere.
• 
President Obama and Secretary Clinton deny and twist reality to pare down the rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
• 
They have been willing, again and again, to use the deaths of innocents to advance their vision of themselves as all-powerful leaders and the rest of us as docile, unreliable, potentially destructive and disarmed children dependent on them and others like them
      Justice Ginsburg regrets her remarks.  Trump should thank her for them  (Fox 07/14/2016)
• 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has come to her senses.
• 
She said Thursday that she regrets her inflammatory critique of Donald Trump and her controversial remarks about Supreme Court business.
• 
... the court is meant to be apolitical and its rulings untarnished by partisan leanings.
• 
That's the way it is meant to be; unhappily it has become all too clear in recent years, as justices especially on the left predictably vote as a block, that the court is highly politicized.
• 
Many Republicans have been searching for a reason to vote for a candidate they view as erratic or insufficiently conservative.
• 
Ginsburg has just delivered the most convincing rationale of all by reminding voters of the importance of who is appointed to the court.
• 
Ginsburg is 83 years old and presumed to be on the cusp of retirement.
• 
(And especially after her recent outbursts which some have attributed to her having one foot out the door.)
• 
Replacements for those justices will determine the philosophical leanings of the bench.
• 
If Hillary Clinton becomes president the country could be under the jurisdiction of a progressive activist court for decades, forever changing the course of the nation.
• 
Under President Obama a balanced court has proved essential to reining in the alarming overreach of the executive branch.
• 
Obama's executive actions on immigration and extra-legal environmental regulations have been stymied only through the court.
• 
Imagine if Hillary's picks had been in charge.
• 
Clinton believes the federal government should expand its already formidable reach.
• 
Issues about states' rights, freedom of religion and freedom of speech, defense of the second amendment guaranteeing the right to bear arms and protection of civil rights will forever be contested in the court of law.
• 
Our country may get to elect a president but it is the Supreme Court that in many ways determines our future.
• 
If Republicans want to see our most critical rights and privileges protected, they have to vote for Donald Trump.  Justice Ginsburg has made that clear.
      The War on Cops  (JWR 07/12/2016)
• 
Chief among those who generate this poisonous atmosphere are career race hustlers like Al Sharpton and racist institutions like the "Black Lives Matter" movement.
• 
All such demagogues need is a situation where there has been a confrontation where someone was white and someone else was black.  The facts don't matter to them.
• 
The same is true of the more upscale, genteel and sophisticated race panderers, including the President of the United States.
• 
During his first year in the White House, Barack Obama chastised a white policeman over his handling of an incident with a black professor at Harvard — after admitting that he didn't know the specific facts.
• 
Nor did he know the specifics when he publicly announced that, if he had a son, that son would look like Trayvon Martin.
• 
Are we to decide who is right and who is wrong on the basis of skin color?
• 
Are we fighting against racism today or do we just want to put it under new management?
• 
... to the race hustlers, black lives don't really matter nearly as much as their chance to get publicity, power, money, votes or whatever else serves their own interests.
• 
The mainstream media play a large, and largely irresponsible, role in the creation and maintenance of a poisonous racial atmosphere that has claimed the lives of policemen around the country.
• 
That same poisoned atmosphere has claimed the lives of even more blacks, who have been victims of violence by thugs and criminals who have had fewer restrictions as the police have pulled back, or have been pulled back, under political pressure.
• 
The media provide the publicity on which career race hustlers thrive.
• 
It is a symbiotic relationship, in which turmoil in the streets gives the media something exciting to attract viewers.
• 
In return, the media give those behind this turmoil millions of dollars' worth of free publicity to spread their poison.
• 
The media have also actively promoted the anti-police propaganda by the way they present the news.
• 
When the police were charged with excessive violence in overcoming Rodney King's resistance to arrest, the jury saw the whole video — and refused to convict the policemen.
• 
That is when people who had seen only what the media showed them rioted after the jury verdict.
• 
How many people have to die in "peaceful demonstrations" before the media admit that those who promote mob disruptions have to know what is likely to happen when you put mobs in the streets at night?
• 
Mob rule is not democracy.
• 
It threatens democracy, as it threatens lives — black or white — and all lives should matter.
      Sheriff David Clarke: It's time to stand up to Black Lives Matter  (Fox 07/11/2016)
• 
Here's a sobering thought for Americans to contemplate as we now deal with the aftermath of the horrific murders of law enforcement officers in the name of Black Lives Matter in Dallas, Texas: this was mission accomplished for Black Lives Matter, not an aberration.
• 
The violence and hate-filled messages pouring out of Black Lives Matter seek exactly this kind of bloody resolution, or revolution, though they cannot admit it in polite society.
• 
Even as celebrities clamor over themselves to demonstrate their fealty to the hate group, they align themselves with one of the most destructive groups to the well-being and justice for black Americans that exist today.
• 
We are as afraid to point out the obvious, that the sniper attack by Micah Johnson in Dallas, who according to Dallas Police Chief David Brown was "upset about Black Lives Matter," is just as tied to this domestic hate group as the Orlando terrorist was to radical Islam.
• 
You see, Black Lives Matter is proving itself to seek only one end – and that is discord, alienation among Americans, rise in hate, and destruction of community bonds.
• 
The relative increase in justice afforded black Americans is of little concern, save as a convenient veneer for their anti-democratic mission.
• 
Black Lives Matter has no more to do with black issues than Students for a Democratic Society had to do with Democracy.
• 
They are means to an end, and they use the black population as sacrifices for their goals.
• 
White America needs to be brave, they need to stand up against this latest attack on the Black community by the likes of Black Lives Matter – to be unafraid to face the condemnation of the powerful but morally reprehensible liberal elites and mainstream media pushing these lies.
• 
Stand by the side of law enforcement, the men and women who are often the only semblance of hope and justice in the crime-ridden inner cities.
• 
If you want to help Black America, this is the strongest and most necessary course of action you can take.
• 
The facts show that even the most basic premise of Black Lives Matter is an utter fabrication: the leading cause of death among black males ages 15 to 25 in American is homicide.
• 
Because of Rudy Guiliani's policies of reducing crime in New York City, tens of thousands of black men, women, and children are alive today that wouldn't have been otherwise.
• 
Stand up to Black Lives Matter.  Show you don't kowtow to the liberal pressure exacted to achieve their political goals on the backs of the suffering of black Americans due to crime and the dissolution of their communities.
• 
It is the hard road to sow in our culture where the right thing is shamed and the wrong thing is held up, but as a law enforcement officer I can tell you this is the time for choosing: law and order, justice, the American way or anarchy, division, hate, and authoritarianism.
• 
Black Lives Matter has shown their hand in Dallas: they choose the latter.
      Obama's toxic mind game with police  (Fox 07/12/2016)
• 
The president's visit to Dallas is mind-bending, because during his presidency he has sown the seeds of hatred for police officers.
• 
That began with his condemnation of Sgt.  James Crowley in Cambridge, Mass., for simply doing his job.
• 
Crowley arrested Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who appeared to be breaking into what turned out to be his own home.
• 
It continued when Obama sent then-Attorney General Eric Holder to the funeral of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., after Brown tried to take a white police officer's gun and was killed by the officer.
• 
Even the president's recent statement that those who attack white police officers are doing "disservice to the cause" implies, psychologically, that protesters have every reason to be enraged, organized and on the march, but that they should try to show restraint.
• 
He has put officers in the paralyzing position of defending the whole of our citizenry after he has methodically cleaved that citizenry into pieces, with some like shards of glass ready to cut officers down.
• 
He has implicitly suggested that officers ask themselves if their impulses to protect and to serve are a thin veil for opposite impulses to harm citizens — even to kill them.
• 
It apparently wasn't enough for him to pit whole populations against the police.
• 
It apparently wasn't enough for him to make police question their own motivations and decency.
• 
Now he has to deny that he was the instigator of these seditious forces by praising officers and saying he mourns those who were assassinated.
• 
This will deprive some officers of their own proper rage at having been wrongly vilified by the president.
• 
The tug of war inside America, as regards those charged with protecting and serving us, at risk of their own lives, is the product of the Obama administration.
• 
The tug of war inside police officers who must protect and serve us while wondering if large numbers of us hate them is the product of the Obama administration.
• 
I believe the president knows very well that dividing is the way to conquer the spirit of our nation and the spirit of those fundamentally decent men and women who protect our laws with their lives.
      Greg Gutfeld: Dallas attacks killed five, injured 318 million  (Fox 07/11/2016)
• 
After every horrible event, the aftermath turns polarizing before the crime scene chalk hits the gravel.
• 
The only way to unite us, perhaps, would be a meteor strike. 
• 
But then again, to rework an old observation, CNN might instantly ponder, "Did the meteor target minorities more so than whites?"
• 
Feelings "feel" better than facts.  Facts are hard; feelings are soft.  Thinking requires fuel, effort and time. 
• 
Feelings spontaneously combust, no effort required.  You can unleash them right away.
• 
Feelings lead people to make mistakes, especially early on, when they're most enticing. 
• 
Take Texas' lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who called protesters in Dallas hypocrites for marching against police and then running from bullets.
• 
He's wrong.  It's not hypocritical to protest and run from bullets.  The first happens to be a guaranteed right, the second an instinct.
• 
But I get his point, and with a little thoughtfulness it could have been restated thusly: "Did you see who ran away?  None were cops.  Cops ran toward the bullets."
• 
Feelings without facts also allow you to extrapolate one incident into a phenomenon that may or may not exist. 
• 
Even President Obama agrees: "I think the danger is that we somehow suggest that the act of a troubled individual speaks to some larger political statement across the country.  It doesn't."
• 
Of course he was referring to the shooter, urging us not to use him as a symbol of all anti-police sentiment.  He's right.
• 
But equally, would he be willing to please repeat that point — and replace a few words?  Example: "I think the danger is that we somehow suggest that the act of [one or two officers] speaks to some larger political statement across the country.  It doesn't."
• 
Sadly, just days before Dallas, he said the opposite — drawing a sweeping conclusion from two separate shootings involving police.
• 
Facts are great!  They take you to places that feelings don't.
• 
If you start looking at the situations that bring citizens and cops into precarious situations, it's sometimes over absurd laws no one has any business enforcing.
• 
The flow of information helps indulge an evil act and the turmoil that follows — which might influence the likelihood of another act.
• 
But what can you do?  You must report — but it must be done, in the context, again, of facts.
• 
Feelings without facts contribute to the dominos of doom by perpetuating a media narrative (an epidemic of rogue white racist cops killing blacks), which helps to validate rage (and action) against the evil blue machine.
• 
We all saw footage of activists, through their incendiary behavior, begging the stoic police just to do something for the cameras, to validate the media narrative. 
• 
These activists knew what the media wanted, and they also knew that if they could incite such behavior, they could make it onto every channel.
• 
They used tactics of instigation, hoping to portray the police as brutal and racist.
• 
If you closely identify yourself to a political opinion, any attempt to prove your position is flawed will be felt as a personal blow to your self-esteem. 
• 
It's perceived as rude to correct people on their fallacies in public (although it's perfectly fine to express such fallacies openly, if they fit certain assumptions).
• 
Research is harder than opinion, yet both are often treated identically.
• 
If you admit you are wrong on any one issue, could it be that all your beliefs and opinions are up for review?
• 
Yes, of course you could!  But so what?  If you may be wrong, isn't it good to know?  Becoming a better person relies a lot on the desire to be proven wrong. 
• 
... the flaw in your argument won't reflect on your personal character, because adjusting your beliefs or strengthening them through research shows you to be an honest, thoughtful individual.
• 
Be wary of anyone who claims he's never wrong.
• 
But, I could be wrong.
• 
(I'm not).
      Hey, Black Lives Matter, stop terrorizing our cities  (Fox 07/11/2016)
• 
Black Lives Matter protesters laid siege to a number of cities over the weekend including my hometown: Memphis, Tennessee.
• 
They shut down the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River — stranding thousands of motorists for hours — in sweltering heat.
• 
Blocking a roadway is a crime under Tennessee law.
• 
Yet Memphis police officers were told to stand down and allow the agitators to block the Hernando-Desoto Bridge.
• 
They used to call that kind of behavior aiding and abetting.
• 
Not a single person was arrested.
• 
... protesters even blocked a car trying to escort a child to St.  Jude Children's Research Hospital.  Apparently that child's life did not matter to the protesters.
• 
We have no idea how many emergency responses were hampered by the gridlock created by the BLM crowd.
• 
We have no idea how many people missed family events or missed work because they were trapped on the interstate.
• 
In St.  Paul, Minnesota, at least 21 police officers were injured during a "full-scale riot" on Interstate 94, according to the Star-Tribune.
• 
Violent thugs hurled rocks, concrete and rebar at officers as they protested the killing of Philando Castile.
• 
One of those officers suffered a broken vertebra after someone dropped a concrete block on his head.
• 
Could someone explain to me how fracturing a police officer's spine and preventing a child from getting to the hospital advances the Black Lives Matter agenda?
• 
The police-involved shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota were terrible tragedies.
• 
If investigators determine the officers broke they law — they should and must be brought to justice.
• 
But both shootings are still under investigation — so to be honest — no one knows for certain what happened.
• 
Yet, the mainstream media, the Obama administration and the professional race agitators have once again rushed to judgment — just like they did in Ferguson, Missouri.
• 
They never let a crisis go to waste, do they?
• 
Peaceful protesting is one thing.  Domestic terrorism is another.
• 
Instead of turning a blind eye, the Memphis Police Department should've sealed off both ends of the bridge and arrested every single person not in a vehicle.
• 
But that's not what happened.
• 
The rule of law matters — without it — we've got anarchy.
      Hillary Clinton  (and her aides) should never have a security clearance again (Fox 07/07/2016)
• 
The outcome confirms exactly what half the country has been saying for decades about the Clintons.
• 
Hillary and Bill push the boundaries of the law or break them outright for the sake of personal pleasure, for financial gain, to leverage power, and for basic convenience, and are not held accountable.
• 
Comey may not want to indict Hillary, but by explaining the manners in which she mishandled U.S.  secrets, and then exonerating her, he just indicted the U.S.  legal system.
• 
And, confirming what the rest of us were thinking as we listened to his statement, he confessed, "To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.  To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.  But that is not what we are deciding now."
• 
He's talking about you and me, and anyone else unconnected to the Clintons.  If we treated those documents with the same degree of recklessness that Hillary Clinton treated them, there would be major consequences.
• 
While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.
• 
It's astonishing that the Secretary of State could behave in such a blatantly negligent way — when the very security of those she has sworn to protect is at stake.
• 
So, what is there to be done?
• 
First, under no circumstances should Hillary Clinton have a security clearance, and neither should any government official — any member of her staff — who engaged in the same kind of extremely careless mishandling of highly classified information.
• 
Moreover, regardless of the outcome of this election or future elections, Congress should ensure those top aides never receive confirmation of appointed positions.
• 
Government staff are public servants and they serve at the pleasure of the American people.
• 
They are not entitled to a government career, and those who broke the public trust should find another way to make a living.
• 
But most critically, the American people should deny Hillary Clinton the ultimate access to highly sensitive information by ensuring she is not elected to the highest office in the country.
• 
The electoral and confirmation processes stand in for the typical security vetting process and getting elected is a public seal authorizing access to state secrets.
• 
Additionally, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the president has the authority to set the standards for access to classified information.
• 
FBI Director Comey has just confirmed this week that Hillary Clinton is unfit for this enormous responsibility since she cannot personally be trusted to handle state secrets with care.
• 
For the American people to knowingly promote someone like Hillary Clinton to the highest office, to charge her with safeguarding the nation's security and our Constitution, when she so clearly has neither the will nor the judgment to safeguard national secrets, would be a new, dark chapter in American history.
• 
Not only would our county have totally become that which John Adams warned against in the 1780 Massachusetts state constitution — a government of men and not of laws — but the American people would be endorsing this shift, choosing to be ruled by a woman so blinded by decades of corruption that she can so flippantly violate national security law while serving as the Secretary of State.
• 
What was she so resolutely determined to keep out of the public eye that she needed that private server and conducted official business with a private email address?
• 
What more could she do if she had the authority as chief executive, with the FBI, and the courts on her side... not to mention a predominantly friendly media, if occasionally honest about her failures, is quick to forgive and eager to get back to the work of the dutiful "echo chamber"?
      The war on cops: The big lie of the anti-cop left turns lethal  (Fox 07/08/2016)
• 
In the summer of 2014 a lie overtook significant parts of the country and grew into a kind of mass hysteria.
• 
That lie holds that the police pose a mortal threat to black Americans — indeed, that the police are the greatest threat facing black Americans today.
• 
Several subsidiary untruths buttress that central myth: that the criminal-justice system is biased against blacks; that there is no such thing as a black underclass; and that crime rates are comparable between blacks and whites, so that disproportionate police action in minority neighborhoods cannot be explained without reference to racism.
• 
The highest reaches of American society promulgated those untruths and participated in the mass hysteria.
• 
Smith College's president abjectly flagellated herself for saying that "all lives matter," instead of the current mantra, "black lives matter."
• 
Her ignorant mistake, she confessed, drew attention away from "institutional violence against Black people."
• 
... the Times claimed that "the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast."
• 
In reality, however, police killings of blacks are an extremely rare feature of black life and a minute fraction of black homicide deaths.
• 
Blacks are killed by police at a lower rate than their threat to officers would predict.
• 
To cite more data on this point: in 2013, blacks made up 42 percent of all cop killers whose race was known, even though blacks are only about 13 percent of the nation's population.
• 
The NYPD fatally shot eight individuals in 2013, six of them black, all posing a risk to the police, compared with scores of blacks killed by black civilians.
• 
But facts do not matter when one is crusading to bring justice to a city beset by "centuries of racism."
• 
... protests and riots against the police were gathering force across the country, all of them steeped in anti-cop vitriol and the ubiquitous lie that "black lives" don't "matter" to the police.
• 
"What do we want?  Dead cops," chanted participants in a New York anti-cop protest.
• 
At another march across the Brooklyn Bridge, a group of people tried to throw trash cans onto the heads of officers on the level below them; police attempts to arrest the assailants were fought off by other marchers.
• 
The elite's desperation to participate in what they hopefully viewed as their own modern-day civil rights crusade was patent in the sanctification of Michael Brown, the would-be cop killer.
• 
He was turned into a civil rights martyr.  His violence toward Wilson, and toward the convenience-store owner he had strong-armed, was wiped from the record.
• 
A teen criminal who had shot at the police was killed by an officer in self-defense; he, too, joined the roster of heroic black victims of police racism.
• 
This sanctification of would-be black cop killers would prove prophetic. 
• 
It's profoundly irresponsible to stoke hatred of the police, especially when the fuel used for doing so is a set of lies.
• 
... it is naive not to recognize that criminal members of the black underclass despise the police because law enforcement interferes with their way of life.
• 
The elites are oblivious both to the extent of lawlessness in the black inner city and to its effect on attitudes toward the cops.
• 
Any expression of contempt for the police, in their view, must be a sincere expression of aggrievement.
• 
His homicidal postings on Instagram — "I'm Putting Wings on Pigs Today.  They Take 1 of Ours ... Let's Take 2 of Theirs" — were indistinguishable from the hatred bouncing around the Internet and the protests that few bothered to condemn.
• 
That vitriol continued after the assassination.  Social media filled up with gloating at the officers' deaths and praise for Brinsley: "That nigga that shot the cops is a legend," read a typical message.
• 
A student leader and a representative of the African and Afro-American Studies department at Brandeis University tweeted that she had "no sympathy for the NYPD officers who were murdered today."
• 
The only good that could have come out of this wrenching attack on civilization would have been the delegitimation of the lie-based protest movement.  That did not happen.
• 
The elites' investment in black victimology was too great to hope for an injection of truth into the dangerously counterfactual discourse about race, crime, and policing.
      Dallas attack: The 'Pigs in a Blanket' crowd got what they wanted  (Fox 07/08/2016)
• 
If you are prone to microaggressions you might want to stop reading and evacuate to your safe space — because what I'm about to write is politically incorrect.
• 
All lives matter.  Every single life — matters.
• 
We are all God's children no matter what color our skin might be.
• 
"The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.  The suspect stated that he was not affiliated with any groups and he stated that he did this alone."
• 
To be clear – we do not know the suspect's affiliations or allegiance, nor do we know anything about other suspects.
• 
But we do know this – the sniper was hunting for people on Thursday night – white people.
• 
As the shots rang out in downtown Dallas — police tried to protect the anti-police protesters.
• 
They put themselves in harm's way for people who were taunting them — calling them hateful names.
• 
While others ran away, police officers ran towards the danger.
• 
They did what they were trained to do.  And they paid the price.
• 
Five police officers were assassinated.  Seven were wounded.
• 
It was the deadliest day for law enforcement since 9/11.
• 
For eight years President Obama, the mainstream media, Hollywood and professional race agitators have vilified law enforcement.
• 
From "cops acting stupidly" to "If I had a son..." this president and his administration have proven time and time again that they are no friend to American law enforcement.
• 
In the aftermath of the shootings, the president and his attorney general made clear that what happened in Dallas was about guns.
• 
Granted, he offered his condolences, but honestly – his words seemed empty, hollow.
• 
Whenever there is a Muslim terrorist attack they are quick to urge people not to rush to judgment.
• 
And yet, when there is a police-involved shooting, it's "Guilty, Guilty, Guilty."
• 
In Dallas, the narrative is about guns.  In Baton Rouge and Minnesota, the narrative is about racism.
• 
Not too long ago a Black Lives Matter crowd chanted, "Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.  Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon."
• 
In New York City, protesters once shouted, "What do we want?  Dead cops.  When do we want them?  Now."
• 
On July 7th in Dallas, Texas – they got their wish.
      When it comes to Hillary Clinton, American justice is blind, deaf and dumb  (Fox 07/07/2016)
• 
The FBI determined she was extremely careless, but not criminal in her handling of confidential and classified emails.
• 
They said it was not her intent to break the law and put the entire nation in grave danger.
• 
Be sure to use that defense the next time you get pulled over in Hog Jaw, Arkansas for running that red light.
• 
Let me know how that turns out for you.
• 
We the People are held to a much different standard than high-falootin' folks like Hillary Clinton.
• 
And this sordid email affair illustrates that Lady Justice is not only blind, but she's also deaf and dumb.
• 
On the claim she never emailed classified material?
• 
"That's not true," Comey replied.  "There was classified material emailed."
• 
How about that claim that she only used one device?
• 
"She used multiple devices," Comey told lawmakers.
• 
And it turns out she lied about turning over all work-related emails.
• 
"We found work-related emails, thousands that were not returned," he said.
• 
"I think it's possible, possible that she didn't understand what a (c) meant when she saw it in the body of an email like that," Comey told bewildered Republican lawmakers.
• 
I mean — you would have to be as dumb as a door knob to not know something like that, right?
• 
Is that what the FBI director was trying to tell us — that the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party has the intelligence level of yard mulch.
• 
Sweet mercy, America!
      FBI chief’s testimony about Clinton emails torpedoes the bureau’s reputation  (Fox 07/07/2016)
• 
There is the bipartisan pretense that the FBI is the only government agency in Washington that is above reproach.
• 
Yet, this is the agency that collaborated with Lois Lerner and the IRS in an effort to criminally prosecute opponents of Barack Obama.
• 
Then, unsurprisingly, this same FBI (and Justice Department) found nothing worth prosecuting in their own blatant malfeasance.
• 
Again, this is the same FBI whose Keystone Cops approach to counter-terrorism failed to prevent eminently preventable terrorist acts ranging from the Boston Marathon bombing to the Orlando massacre.
• 
In fact, we now know that an FBI supervisor actually told one Florida police department investigating Omar Mateen, "We do NOT believe he is a terrorist" [Emphasis in original].
• 
How does an agency with this sort of record escape accountability?
• 
Quite simply, by doing favors for the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
• 
It is to politicians like Clinton and Obama that men such as Comey owe their jobs – and agencies such as the FBI owe their budgets.
• 
And so, they are subservient.
• 
According to Comey's testimony before the House Thursday, the Hillary Clinton lies, subterfuge, document destruction and national security violations that would, for starters, get you or any other non-political elitist drummed out of the FBI, shouldn't even be considered for prosecution by a "reasonable prosecutor."
• 
Well, not if that "reasonable prosecutor" owes his meal ticket and position of power to the likes (and dislikes) of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
• 
Did Hillary Clinton lie to Congress about her email practices?  Not part of the investigation.
• 
Did she conceal and illegally remove federal records?  Not part of the investigation.
• 
And no word on the pay-for-play schemes with the Clinton Foundation and its donors.
• 
How did the classified material get on Clinton's system?  Comey confessed his FBI didn't even investigate this basic question.
• 
Comey may think he's successfully threaded the political needle – highlighting Clinton's malfeasance while giving her a get-out-of-jail-free card.
• 
But all he's done is further lowered the reputation of the FBI in the eyes of the American people.
      Hillary Clinton, James Comey and the Department of Political Justice  (Fox 07/07/2016)
• 
Is it worth impairing the reputation of the FBI and the Department of Justice to save Hillary Clinton from a deserved criminal prosecution by playing word games?
• 
How hairsplitting can the FBI be in acknowledging "extreme carelessness" while denying "gross negligence" about the same events, at the same time, and in the same respect?
• 
... in the past two years, the DOJ has prosecuted a young sailor for sending a single selfie to his girlfriend that inadvertently showed a submarine sonar screen in its background.
• 
It also prosecuted a Marine lieutenant who sent his military superiors a single email about the presence of al-Qaida operatives dressed as local police in a U.S.  encampment in Afghanistan — but who inadvertently used his Gmail account rather than his secure government account.
• 
And it famously prosecuted Gen.  David Petraeus for sharing paper copies of his daily calendar in his guarded home with a military colleague also in the home — someone who had a secret security clearance herself — because the calendar inadvertently included secret matters in the pages underneath the calendar.
• 
Yet earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey ... told the public that whereas the inadvertence of the above defendants was sufficient to justify their prosecutions, somehow Clinton's repeated recklessness was not.
• 
It is obvious that a different standard is being applied to Clinton than was applied to Petraeus and the others.
• 
The criminal case against Mrs.  Clinton would have been overwhelming.  The FBI acknowledged that she sent or received more than 100 emails that contained state secrets via one of her four home servers.  None of those servers was secure.
• 
Each secret email was secret when received, was secret when sent and is secret today.
• 
Comey has argued that somehow there is such a legal chasm between extreme carelessness and gross negligence that the feds cannot bridge it.
• 
That is not an argument for him to make.
• 
That is for a jury to decide after a judge instructs the jury about what Comey fails to understand: There is not a dime's worth of difference between these two standards.  Extreme carelessness is gross negligence.
• 
Unless, of course, one is willing to pervert the rule of law yet again to insulate a Clinton yet again from the law enforcement machinery that everyone else who fails to secure state secrets should expect.
• 
Why do we stand for this?
      John Fund: Nine big questions for FBI Director Comey about Hillary's emails  (Fox 07/05/2016)
• 
You said that anyone in Hillary Clinton's position would have at least faced administrative or other sanctions for their behavior.
• 
Would you outline what is type of sanctions have been applied in the past?
• 
Would someone like Hillary Clinton be granted a security clearance after violations of this kind?
• 
You stated that the handling of top secret classified material by Hillary Clinton and her aides was "extremely careless."
• 
Lawyers say that is the definition of the "gross negligence" statute that provides for prosecution of anyone who allows classified information to be mishandled.
• 
What is the difference between those terms in your opinion, and is there a legal difference? 
• 
Some people with government security clearances have been accused and prosecuted for mishandling classified material through gross negligence.
• 
Do you have any message for them, given your decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton or her aides?
• 
You mentioned that some of the classified information was marked as classified when Mrs.  Clinton handled those emails.
• 
Is that not the definition of "gross negligence" that should trigger the statute mandating prosecution of those mishandling sensitive information?
• 
You said her private server lacked even the security protections of a commercial email account.
• 
Would you say that the odds of her server being compromised are less or greater than 50%?
• 
There is a parallel investigation into Mrs.  Clinton being conducted by the FBI into possible corruption involving the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
• 
What is the status of that investigaton and do you believe that probe will be finished before Americans go to the polls to elect a president in November?
• 
Did any of the deleted emails recovered from Mrs.  Clinton's email server bear on the investigation of the Clinton Foundation?
• 
You said that we should expect some of that information is in the hands of others.  Would you characterize how bad the damage to national security would be if that information be compromised?
• 
Do you have any estimate of how many of the approximately 30,000 emails that were deleted by Mrs.  Clinton's lawyers are "lost forever" and were not examined by the FBI?
      Fourth of July 2016: What the Founders ask of us  (Fox 07/04/2016)
• 
It is remarkable that Abraham Lincoln never delivered a Fourth of July speech.
• 
He remarked how, every July 4, Americans celebrate those "iron men" and their extraordinary achievement, because we are "historically connected" with it.
• 
"If they look back through this history and trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none.  They cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are."
• 
And so we are.  None of us fought at Bunker Hill or Lexington or Concord.  None of us endured famine, cold, or the impact of a musket ball.  None of us signed our names to a document that made us traitors, fit to be hung.
• 
Yet, despite all that, we are still Americans, and the Fourth is still our celebration, because we hold dear the "moral sentiment" for which those iron men fought and died — "That all men are created equal."
• 
Lincoln reassures us that this alone is enough to form that "historical connection" with men who in all other things bear no relation to us.  Or, as he puts it: "That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."
• 
But it is not enough to believe this.  We must do more than reread those words this Fourth of July in between the barbeques and fireworks.
• 
We must do what the Founders did, and what Lincoln did in his own time, and fight against the insidious notion that those words mean other than what they say.
      Do something bold this Fourth of July — read the Declaration of Independence  (Fox 07/01/2016)
• 
In the swirl of the current presidential election, one thing every pundit and politician talks about is how angry the American people are with Washington and the political establishment – of both parties.
• 
We're in a throw-all-the-bums-out mood.
• 
You think we're in a rebellious mood today?  It's nothing compared to how mad we were in 1776.
• 
Ever read the Declaration of Independence?  Reading it in fifth-grade history class is good, but that's not what I mean.  Do yourself a favor this weekend ... Read it word for word.
• 
It will make today's political battles seem tame by comparison.
• 
... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...
• 
And guess what ... our Founding Fathers' grievances against the king were the same grievances we have against Washington today:
• 
He erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people;
• 
He suspended our laws;
• 
He refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people;
• 
He obstructed the Administration of Justice;
• 
He imposed Taxes on us without our Consent.
• 
All you have to do is substitute "Washington" for "King," and there you have it: today's rebellion against the political elite.
• 
... we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. 
• 
Anger with the ruling elites is nothing new, and neither is rebellion.
• 
Our Founding Fathers claimed we had not only the right, but the responsibility, to remove a king who no longer listened to his people.
• 
After winning our independence, those Founding Fathers went on to write a Constitution that gives us the right to elect representatives to lead us – and to remove them if we choose.
• 
They work for us, not the other way around.
• 
So if you occasionally shake your head with disgust this summer and autumn over the vitriol of the presidential campaign, remember your right to a revolution.
• 
People fought and bled and died so you could have it.
• 
And come November, show up at the polls to exercise it.
      How Douglas MacArthur would have responded to ISIS terror attacks  (Fox 07/02/2016)
• 
The massacre in Orlando and the attacks this week in Istanbul and Dhaka demonstrate what happens when we disregard the advice MacArthur gave us more than sixty-five years ago: "There is no substitute for victory."*
• 
It reminds us of what happens when the United States fails to use all its means to defeat a vicious and committed enemy, in this case ISIS.
• 
... before starting a war, make sure you are committed to winning it. 
• 
That's a lesson President Obama has repeatedly ignored.
• 
He has refused to fully commit U.S.  strength to crushing ISIS's enclaves in Iraq and Libya, and to severing their lines of recruitment and support.
• 
He has all but abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban.
• 
He also didn't just ignore MacArthur's warning but mocked it, by throwing away America's hard-won victory in Iraq.
• 
By pulling out all remaining US troops, he opened the door to ISIS's explosive upsurge and the atrocities of its murderous followers, including now in this country.
• 
Yet Obama hasn't been alone in ignoring MacArthur's warning.
• 
From Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan, one administration after another has repeatedly pursued the opposite course, with a cost in American lives, treasure, and prestige that's almost incalculable. 
• 
MacArthur believed that the only way to win the conflict was to commit to complete defeat of the Chinese forces who had entered the war to support their North Korean allies.
• 
Sixty-five years later, the result is a war that still hasn't officially ended, despite a signed armistice in 1953.
• 
If MacArthur's lead had been followed instead, there'd be no Kim Jong Un today to threaten his neighbors with nuclear annihilation — and possibly no Maoist regime to starve to death millions in the Great Leap Forward.
• 
... "anyone who embarks on a land war in Asia ought to have his head examined."
• 
... the United States sent more than half a million men to fight a limited war in South Vietnam while allowing a ruthless, determined enemy to maintain sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos — and without unleashing the full weight of American air power.
• 
"You have got a war on your hands, and you can't just say, ‘Let that war go on indefinitely while I prepare for some other war...'"
• 
Sixty five years ago, Douglas MacArthur put his finger on the mistake that's haunted us ever since: the failure to use military force without an equal commitment to final victory.
• 
"When men become locked in battle there should be no artifice under the name of politics, which should handicap your own men, decrease their chances for winning, and increase their losses."
• 
Yet that's precisely what too many American presidents have done, bringing sorrow to tens of thousands of American families.
      A workable alternative to synthetic soldiers  (JWR 07/01/2016)
• 
The Obama administration's big idea, proudly disclosed Thursday that "transgender individuals" — not to be confused with "men" and "women" — can now serve openly in the U.S.  military services. 
• 
To transform the military finally something the president can be proud of, Defense Secretary Ash Carter invites transgendered recruits into the services because "it's the right thing to do."
• 
Only a person's qualifications, to be defined later (and maybe never) should matter, and if necessary the qualifications can be declared to not matter much.
• 
Only President Obama and Secretary Carter, neither of whom ever wore the uniform or heard a shot fired by an enemy know just how men who are willing to put themselves in harm's way should fight a war.
• 
Mr.  Carter, after all, was a professor at Harvard.  Mr.  Obama has no known military service, but wounded his pinky when he slammed the lid of a copying machine on his hand in law school, and Mr.  Carter once broke a fingernail on a paperclip he was trying to extract from a research paper at Oxford.
• 
Senior officers of the military services, who know better than to try to make fighters out of men who can't decide which toilet to use, are not happy.  But what do they know?
• 
Mr.  Obama will be gone by the time transgendered troops arrive on the scene, safe in a new home next door to the mosque.
• 
The Marines in particular are wary that academic theories, which sprout like mushrooms after an April rain from this White House, will destroy the fighting spirit of the corps.  First women in combat, now Marines of indeterminate sex.
• 
This would exact no hardships, since, as we have seen in the campaign to open up all restrooms to all comers, a person has only to decide for himself which "gender" he wants to be.  It's all in his head, not in his pants.
• 
The little pink secret of the debate is that the only women pushing for women in combat are the unwashed feminists, who themselves would never go near a uniform.
• 
Taking a transgendered man or woman at his word is his constitutional right.  It's the right thing to do.  You could ask the secretary of Defense.
      Dr.  Frankenstein elites created populist monsters  (JWR 06/30/2016)
• 
The furor of ignored Europeans against their union is not just directed against rich and powerful government elites per se, or against the flood of mostly young male migrants from the war-torn Middle East.
• 
The rage also arises from the hypocrisy of a governing elite that never seems to be subject to the ramifications of its own top-down policies.
• 
The Western elite classes, both professedly liberal and conservative, square the circle of their privilege with politically correct sermonizing.
• 
They romanticize the distant "other" — usually immigrants and minorities — while condescendingly lecturing the middle and working classes, often the losers in globalization, about their lack of sensitivity.
• 
On this side of the Atlantic, President Obama has developed a curious habit of talking down to Americans about their supposedly reactionary opposition to rampant immigration, affirmative action, multiculturalism and political correctness...
• 
Yet Obama seems uncomfortable when confronted with the prospect of living out what he envisions for others.
• 
He prefers golfing with celebrities to bowling.
• 
He vacations in tony Martha's Vineyard rather than returning home to his Chicago mansion.
• 
His travel entourage is royal and hardly green.
• 
And he insists on private prep schools for his children rather than enrolling them in the public schools of Washington, D.C., whose educators he so often shields from long-needed reform.
• 
In similar fashion, grandees such as Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos do not live what they profess.
• 
They often lecture supposedly less sophisticated Americans on their backward opposition to illegal immigration.
• 
But both live in communities segregated from those they champion in the abstract.
• 
The Clintons often pontificate about "fairness" but somehow managed to amass a personal fortune of more than $100 million by speaking to and lobbying banks, Wall Street profiteers and foreign entities.
• 
The terrorist killer, Omar Mateen — a registered Democrat, proud radical Muslim and occasional patron of gay dating sites — murdered 49 people and wounded even more in a gay nightclub.
• 
His profile and motive certainly did not fit the elite narrative that unsophisticated right-wing American gun owners were responsible because of their support for gun rights.
• 
No matter.  The Obama administration and much of the media refused to attribute the horror in Orlando to Mateen's self-confessed radical Islamist agenda.  Instead, they blamed the shooter's semi-automatic .223 caliber rifle and a purported climate of hate toward gays.
• 
In sum, elites ignored the likely causes of the Orlando shooting: the appeal of ISIS-generated hatred to some young, second-generation radical Muslim men living in Western societies, and the politically correct inability of Western authorities to short-circuit that clear-cut connection.
• 
Instead, the establishment all but blamed Middle America for supposedly being anti-gay and pro-gun.
• 
The tax-paying middle classes, who lack the romance of the poor and the connections of the elite, have become convenient whipping boys of both in order to leverage more government social programs and to assuage the guilt of the elites who have no desire to live out their utopian theories in the flesh.
• 
America's version of the British antidote to elite hypocrisy is the buffoonish populist Donald Trump.
• 
Like the architects of Brexit, he arose not from what he was for, but what he said he was against.
      Why Trump's trade tirade, at odds with the GOP, could win working-class votes  (Fox 06/30/2016)
• 
Donald Trump has broken with the Republican Party.
• 
Not in terms of renouncing his party label.  Not in terms of joint fundraising.  Not in terms of the Cleveland convention, although many GOP luminaries will be staying away, including the only two living Republican ex-presidents.
• 
No, Trump is parting company with decades of Republican religion on free trade — and that dramatizes how he is a different kind of nominee with an appeal to many working-class Democrats.
• 
I've been arguing for a year that Trump is serving a mixed ideological buffet that includes some moderate and even liberal fare.
• 
This is why many traditional GOP conservatives oppose him, but it's also why he exerts a strong pull on white working-class Democrats.
• 
But trade is emerging as one of Trump's signature issues.  He has always hit hard against trade with China, but he tied together many economic threads in a scripted speech this week, denouncing global trade as "a rape of our country."
• 
"Donald Trump doubled down on economic populism and protectionism in a speech Tuesday, effectively taking conservative orthodoxy on free trade and tossing it onto the trash pile rising behind him."
• 
"Donald Trump on Tuesday channeled more than a year's worth of fiery and freewheeling protectionist rhetoric into an uncharacteristically disciplined address, putting him out of step with decades of conservative economic orthodoxy and even some of his own prior positions."
• 
"Clinton now weakly says she only has issues with the TPP ‘currently...in its current form,' politician-speak for saying she will approve it at the very earliest opportunity."
• 
A good chunk of the American public believes we're getting screwed by bad trade deals.
• 
... Trump has been consistent on the subject, even criticizing Japanese trade back in the 1980s.  "They dump the cars and the VCRs and everything else."
• 
The Democrats, who champion labor unions, have always been conflicted on trade, since it costs some of their supporters jobs as factories and production move abroad.
• 
But the Republicans have been staunch supporters of free trade, as Mitt Romney was in 2012. 
• 
Donald Trump is not a Chamber of Commerce Republican.  That should be clear by now.
• 
His stances on immigration and terrorism tend to be divisive, but his position on trade reinforces his argument that the system is rigged against average Americans.
• 
The media seemed mainly amused by the fact that Trump delivered his speech in front of a wall of garbage.  But this is far from a garbage issue for his campaign.
      Benghazi report: It's clear Clinton put her own ambitions above fidelity to the law  (Fox 06/30/2016)
• 
It slams former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her willful indifference to her obligation to repel military-style attacks on American interests and personnel at the U.S.  Consulate and a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya.
• 
She particularly failed to save the lives of U.S.  Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues, all under her care and control while she was secretary of state.
• 
The report also slams Clinton for her repeated lies about the cause of the attacks.
• 
What does all this say of the character of Clinton?  How cold and heartless is she? 
• 
How can she expect voters to reward her with the presidency when she failed to lift a finger to save Americans and then she repeatedly lied in public about her failures — while being truthful about them in private?
• 
Yet the committee's report is incomplete ... the unstated and unacknowledged but true mission of the committee was not to reveal facts but to conceal them.
• 
There is ample evidence to support their argument that Benghazi was the unintended consequence of Clinton's private war against Libyan strongman Col.  Moammar Gadhafi.
• 
It was supposed to be the crown jewel of Clinton's foreign policy stewardship — ousting the dictator, replacing him with a democracy, putting no American boots on the ground and avoiding American bloodshed.
• 
As is often the case in war, particularly illegal ones and especially secret ones, there were unintended consequences.
• 
Here the consequences have been the destruction of the government of an American ally, the imposition of mob-ruled chaos in Libya, the empowerment of terror groups in the Middle East, the deaths of innocent American civilians, the rejection of the rule of law and the obfuscation of the truth.
• 
... Clinton and her colleagues conspired to get arms into the hands of terrorist organizations masquerading as local militias.
• 
The CIA warned her about this, but she was indifferent to the warnings.
• 
Those who signed off on this war and its methodology were arguably conspirators in an effort to provide material support to terrorist organizations by supplying them with military equipment, allegedly to be used to topple the Gadhafi government.
• 
That is a felony — and the beneficial or strategic use of the weapons is not a defense to the charge of providing them to terror groups.
• 
Ambassador Stevens and the others were killed by heavy military hardware that Clinton and her colleagues permitted to make its way into the hands of terror groups.
• 
Though Clinton was the creator of the conspiracy and remained at its heart and hoped to ride it triumphantly into the White House — and though she bears more blame than any other conspirator — the committee's work fails as a seeker of the whole truth.
• 
The truth is that some of the committee's congressional allies set in motion the awful events that led to the tragedy in Benghazi.
• 
The truth is that these people will probably escape accountability for their lawless behavior.
• 
The truth is that Congress knows that the president wages secret wars and it does nothing to stop them.
• 
The truth is that Hillary Clinton put her own political ambitions above fidelity to the rule of law and properly doing her job.
• 
The truth is that the House Select Committee on Benghazi concealed more truth than it revealed.
• 
Yet the government is supposed to work for us.  Aren't we entitled to know what the government has done in our names?
      Did Obama White House bully anti-Muslim preacher?  (Fox 06/29/2016)
• 
It was one of several action items involving the Obama administration's efforts to blame the attack on a YouTube video that mocked Islam.
• 
... why were the Pentagon and the State Department so fixated on Preacher Jones instead of dispatching troops to rescue our people in Benghazi?
• 
If I didn't know better, I'd say they were trying to find a fall guy – someone to blame other than the true culprits – Islamic radicals.
• 
It was not the first time the Obama administration tried to strong-arm Preacher Jones.
• 
... former Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the minister in 2010 to complain about a Koran burning event.  Gates said the preacher was putting military lives in jeopardy.
• 
Is burning a Koran despicable?  Absolutely. 
• 
But so is burning the American flag. 
• 
And both are protected forms of free speech.
• 
Did the Secretary of Defense call Black Lives Matter and tell them to stop burning the American flag?
• 
Did anti-Christian artists get a phone call from the White House — urging them not to submerge a crucifix in a jar of urine?
• 
Now some of you might say Preacher Jones deserved to get that phone call.  He deserved to be intimidated by government officials.
• 
Perhaps.  But where does it stop?  Where do you draw the line?
• 
Because one day it might be your pastor who gets a phone call — maybe from the attorney general — telling him to stop preaching sermons about traditional marriage — telling him those kinds of sermons put people in harm's way.
• 
Where does it stop, folks?  Where does it stop?
      Eric Bolling: It's grit that makes America great.  It's time to stop whining and get to work  (Fox 06/28/2016)
• 
GRIT (1.) mental toughness and courage — Merriam-Webster's definition
• 
(1.) an archaic descriptor denoting male-chauvinist microaggression in the form of an oppressive, traditionalist/individualist approach to adversity
(2.) a hardness of character that renders individuals unsuitable members of a progressive, collectivist society
— A Leftist's definition
• 
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair.  Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.  Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
— Samuel Johnson
• 
Grit is getting up again and again after being knocked down to continue the fight.  Grit is going over, around, or straight through obstacles to reach your goals — no matter how much it hurts to do so.  Grit is the power to try, fail, and rebuild your- self in a nation of endless possibilities.  Grit is the soul of the American spirit.
• 
Thanks to radical Leftists, the liberal media, and collectivist stalwarts teaching our kids at all educational levels, "grit" is no longer considered an essential component of success — or of the American character.
• 
Here's the thing: to be gritty and tough, you have to take risks, and by definition with risk comes the possibility of failure — a lack of security.  The grit comes in when you fail, get back up, dust yourself off, and keep trying, as many times as it takes for you to get the job done.
• 
Grit, however, is anathema to liberals.  Gritty, free-thinking citizens are harder to control.
• 
... the American Dream is about building something for yourself, not about being handed something by someone else, especially not a bloated, inefficient, deck-stacking government.
• 
The dirty little secret of liberalism is that, at least in today's form, it's not liberal at all.  Liberals don't want "liberty."
• 
... liberals have spent decades putting forth what I sometimes call the "softness doctrine," which tells Americans that the ideal person is conformist, collectivist, and in need of government assistance in nearly every aspect of life.
• 
Our government, media, and academia are brainwashing all of us — especially our kids — into being mushy blobs of fragile self-esteem, all in the name of "progressivism."
• 
While this cotton candy philosophy may make sense to sophomoric college students and sheltered media elites, those of us who have fought in the trenches of our own lives, the global economy, and the nation's politics know better.
• 
This isn't just a social problem — though it most certainly is that — it is also an economic and national security problem.
• 
Do you think China and Russia will sit back and let us continue to be the most powerful nation in the world once we're too soft to fight for market share — or even our homeland?
• 
As a nation, we need to toughen up, stop whining, and get to work.
      Karl Rove: Can Trump stop the slide while Clinton coasts?  (Fox 06/27/2016)
• 
Last week's presidential campaign began with a bang, then went as simple as A–B–C: The bang was the firing of Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, allegedly at the urging of The Donald's children.  The reasons offered ranged from Lewandowski's abrasive manner, to the internecine warfare between him and the campaign's chairman, Paul Manafort, to the absence of a comprehensive plan.  It may have been all of the above.
• 
A is for Attacks: In an Ohio speech Tuesday, Hillary Clinton went after Trump's business background, trying to turn what he believes is a strength into a weakness.  She focused on his bankruptcies, unpaid vendors and reliance on debt financing, "using other people's money."
• 
Previously, Trump had generally ignored her attacks and sometimes dismissed them as "pathetic." This time, he was smart to quickly seize upon her general topic – the economy – and volley back, saying in a video that Clinton and President Obama have doubled the national debt.
• 
Saying she represented more of the same was the right response, but more is needed.
• 
B is for Brexit: The decision by U.K.  voters to leave the European Union puts the spotlight on Trump and his nationalist, anti-establishment message.
• 
... described the 52 to 48 percent vote as "the day the quiet people of Britain rose up against an arrogant, out-of-touch political class and a contemptuous Brussels elite."
• 
Substitute "America" for "Britain" and "Washington" for "Brussels" and you've got what Trumpistas hope will be November's headline.
• 
As in Britain, there is a concern among many Americans that unrestrained illegal immigration is rapidly and permanently transforming the U.S.
• 
Obama's intervention in the Brexit vote – telling Brits their country would go to the end of the line for trade agreements with the U.S.  if they left the EU – played a role in rallying sentiment for leaving.  No one likes to be lectured by an arrogant friend.
• 
C is for Commercials: All was not happy for Team Trump this week, however.  ... "I don't want a president who makes fun of me.  I want a president who inspires me."
• 
The two campaigns are making hugely different bets on how to win.  Team Clinton believes spot TV and digital ads can make the difference in battleground states.  Team Trump, at least so far, is betting they won't.
• 
The election could hinge on who is right.
• 
This week: linton can coast – she's leading in most polls – while Trump needs to rejigger the race.  He can do so by using the Brexit vote to draw attention to the need for change.
• 
... while Team Clinton has shown discipline and focus in pulling off such maneuvers, Team Trump has not.
• 
VP: The candidates will spend an increasing amount of time considering their vice presidential running mates.  ... In his new role as a CNN commentator, Lewandowski said Trump is down to four "household names."
• 
Still, the desire of the American people for change remains strong, and Hillary Clinton remains the dreadful candidate and unappealing personality she was before (that's why she's rarely above 50 percent).
• 
The FBI primary is still underway: It wasn't a good sign that Clinton's private email server manager, Brian Pagliano, asserted his Fifth Amendment rights over 125 times during a court appearance last week in a civil case, and that Clinton's campaign was forced to admit she had failed to hand over her email exchanges with Pagliano when she supposedly provided the State Department with all her official emails.
      A real ‘Zombie Apocalypse’: How the sun [or terrorists] could cripple America for a decade  (Fox 06/27/2016)
• 
We are not ready for either the hand of God or the hand of man when it comes to protecting our sensitive electrical power grid.
• 
A bad solar flare or an electro-magnetic pulse attack by America's enemies would result in the death of most of our citizens within five years.
• 
Powerful solar flares can damage integrated circuits and our electrical transmission systems.
• 
... we already came within a week of this nightmare happening in 2012.  A train of "coronal mass ejections" created a stream of high energy particles strong enough to melt our electrical grid.  The storm only missed Earth by an astronomical whisker.
• 
As it stand right now, when this eventually happens (and it will) high energy particles will penetrate our "planetary shield" — the magnetosphere — literally melting hundreds of massive transformers.
• 
It would take years to manufacture, transport and replace these essential transformers.
• 
In the meantime, water treatment pumping stations, as well as every other modern convenience, would cease to function.
• 
If a trip back to 1800's sounds romantic, think again.  Without clean water, millions would die within weeks.
• 
Forget the zombie apocalypse.  This is a real world disaster.
• 
Good neighbors would soon become desperate and social order would break down as parents did anything they had to do to feed their children.
• 
Bad people would be free to pillage because experts predict law enforcement would be crippled as any kind of electrical communications would die and officers would rush home to protect their own families. 
• 
When we were last hit with a super energetic solar storm in 1859 the "high-tech" infrastructure of the day consisted only of telegraph lines and stations.
• 
The lines melted and papers caught on fire on telegrapher's desks.  But 1859 gravity-fed water systems and local farms meant that life continued without interruption.
• 
Our complete dependence on the technology we take for granted means we would not be so lucky today.
• 
The effects of an EMP attack on our technology are nearly identical to those caused by a severe coronal mass ejection.
• 
An EMP could be triggered by a high altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon over America.
• 
From the ground it would likely not be seen, heard or felt but even without blast damage the consequences for our electrical system would be nothing short of devastating.
• 
"Continuity of Government" is the term for sheltering favored officials and their families from nuclear attacks in well-fortified and provisioned facilities while citizens are left to wait for coordinated relief.
• 
In the case of either an EMP attack or a severe coronal mass ejection, that help could come according to some studies, only after as many as 80-90 percent of us had died. 
• 
"Hardening" the grid is possible to protect our systems from a meltdown.  This is an infrastructure project that should have started years ago.
• 
Pre-placement of emergency food and medicine and distribution plans aimed at average citizens should be developed right now in case hardening comes too late.
• 
Here is national infrastructure spending that should have the support of every citizen and every politician...before it really is too late.
      The Hamas leader who is reshaping US public opinion against Israel  (INN 06/26/2016)
• 
The Web is now referring the public to an "academic report" that came out from the Hamas front group CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations in the US), and UC Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender Studies that discusses "Islamophobia " in the United States. 
• 
His name is Hatem Bazian and he is a Hamas apparatchik on the faculty at UC Berkeley who uses California and US tax dollars to finance his jihad against Israel and the United States right from the Bay area campus. 
• 
The PLO and later Hamas, thanks to Bazian, has a campaign modeled after the Rico violations that were used by gangsters during prohibition to develop trade in liquor and prostitution across state line by using the American college system.
• 
The most frightening thing about this is the possibility that this has been promoted with the help of the U.S.  State Department to spread the idee fixe of creating a Palestinian state at any cost, even aiding a campaign designed to change American public opinion against Israel, once deemed unchangeable.
• 
The recent inclusion in the Democratic Party platform of a call for "Palestinian rights" as a provision for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now places the Democratic Party in the hands of Hamas terrorists.
• 
Cornel West, another pseudo-academic radical with a professorial position at Princeton, gave a speech in which he declared gleefully that "no longer will AIPAC (the Jews) have control of America."
• 
West, like Bazian is not an true academic but rather an activist who uses his activism to pose as a scholar in a campus milieu is increasingly lacking in academic substance these days.  Relying on race baiting and political correctness, West gained his position supporting the likes of the Black Panthers and Louis Farrakhan.
• 
Giving the appearance of academic credibility (not to mention funding from the taxpayers), Bazian and his buddies at CAIR can thus try to sound credible and promote their revolution to the student body and general public.
• 
Whereas campus clubs might exist to promote skiing, debating or martial arts in the past, they now were politicized to advance the Palestinian revolution and Arab nationalism spouting Marxist rhetoric...
• 
Where is the outrage that a group of terrorists is utilizing America's educational system to destroy a democratic ally like Israel under the nose of college administrations?
• 
This is the educational situation today in America where radical activists can claim academic status, then go on to indoctrinate future generations to support the worldwide jihad against Israel, the little Satan, and ultimately the American big Satan.
      Obama’s black propaganda  (06/25/2013)
• 
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda.
• 
It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth.
• 
Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.
• 
Unlike traditional propaganda techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions.
• 
A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies, or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole (a limited hangout).
• 
Another technique of concealing facts, or censorship, is also used if the group can affect such control.
• 
When channels of information cannot be completely closed, they can be rendered useless by filling them with disinformation, effectively lowering their signal-to-noise ratio and discrediting the opposition by association with many easily disproved false claims.
• 
... it also includes the distortion of true information in such a way as to render it useless.
• 
Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading malicious rumors and fabricated intelligence.
• 
A quarter century ago, in his international bestseller "Red Horizons," Pacepa exposed the massive crimes and corruption of his former boss, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu...
• 
... Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading malicious rumors and fabricated intelligence.  Its techniques may also be found in commerce and government, used to try to undermine the position of a competitor.
• 
Today, still living undercover in the United States, the man credited by the CIA as the only person in the Western world who single-handedly demolished an entire enemy espionage service – the one he himself managed – is now taking aim at an even bigger target: the exotic, widely misunderstood but still astonishingly influential realm of the Russian-born "science" of disinformation.
• 
... the communist bloc intelligence services, including the Russian KGB and the Romanian DIE headed by Pacepa, were much more preoccupied with rewriting history, with manufacturing lies, deception and false documents, with turning one religion against another, with defaming the noblest people and glorifying the worst, and – perhaps most importantly – with planting an endless barrage of false, perverse, anti-American disinformation into the liberal Western news media.
• 
... the reader will discover answers to many vexing questions of the modern era, such as: Why, during the last two generations, has so much of the Western world turned against its founding faith, Christianity?  Why have radical Islam, jihad and terrorism burst aflame after a long period of apparent quiescence?  Why is naked Marxism increasingly manifesting in America and its NATO allies?  What really happened to Russia after the Berlin Wall came down?
• 
Like the solution to a giant jigsaw puzzle lacking one crucial piece, "Disinformation" authoritatively provides the missing dimension that makes the chaos of the modern world finally understandable.
• 
... also document how the U.S.  "mainstream media's" enduring sympathy for all things liberal-left has made it vulnerable to – indeed, the prime carrier of – civilization-transforming campaigns of lying, defamation and historical revisionism that turn reality on its head.
• 
In "Disinformation," you'll discover:
• 
How destroying the reputation of good leaders has been developed into a high art and science.
• 
How Christianity and Judaism have been targeted for constant denigration and defamation through an ongoing campaign of disinformation.
• 
How the Soviet Union has been transformed into the first intelligence dictatorship in history.
• 
How disinformation is still very much alive in the age of Obama, remaining a powerful engine in the ongoing socialist transformation of America.
      All we need is love to defeat ISIS  (and baldness) (INN 06/24/2016)
• 
Who ever imagined it could be so easy?
• 
But it is, according to our attorney general Loretta Lynch who, through the UN, once threatened to prosecute any American speaking unkindly against Islam. 
• 
In her own words: "Our most effective response to terrorism is compassion; it's unity and it's love."
• 
This came too late for the 49 Americans in Orlando who were murdered by a man who swore allegiance to ISIS, and in the name of Allah.
• 
We can't help wondering what Ms.  Lynch is talking about.  Are we on the same planet?  Or is she talking about a galaxy far away?
• 
Because right here on earth, where angels fear to tread, the message of love isn't getting across – at least not to the right people.
• 
Who are these people running our country?  Do they think we're stupid?  Well, yes.  Absolutely.
• 
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage, and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass."
• 
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years-old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns."
• 
"They literally know nothing."
• 
He means the rest of us, too.  The entire administration thinks we're fools – and maybe we are, given that we keep voting for these people.
• 
... we are the ones who have been sedated, soothed, tranquilized and duped into swallowing every pill of deception. 
• 
Turning truth on its head and speaking down to us as if we are a nation of dunces – that's how it's been for the past seven and a half years.
• 
For all that time we've been the victims of a con. 
• 
Can we last the next seven months?
      Obama and “radical Islam”: Denial will not defeat the jihad, Mr.  President  (Fox 06/23/2016)
• 
Before delivering his angry lecture June 14 about why he rejects the term, "radical Islam," President Barack Obama assured us that the Islamic State (IS) is being driven steadily back in Syria and Iraq, and that our campaign against it is "firing on all cylinders."
• 
The next day, his spokesman ... bragged — despite what happened the previous weekend in Orlando — that the country "is safer than it was eight years ago."
• 
But then CIA chief John O.  Brennan, speaking to the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last Thursday, completely shattered those claims.
• 
IS ..., Brennan said, is spreading farther and faster than ever before...  Moreover, it is setting up terror cells and sending its trained fighters all over the world, while inspiring attacks by so-called "lone wolves" everywhere.
• 
Of course, there are no "lone wolves."
• 
There are only individuals already joined in thought with the Islamist movement, who answer the standing call to launch attacks on their own at home if not abroad...
• 
"You never walk alone" could well be the motto of the global jihad, which was very quick, as always, to claim him as a martyr.
• 
... like so many other times in the past, one of his own high-level national security officials shows us that the president is not telling the truth — not to us and probably not to himself — about these issues.
• 
... all informed analysts of the problem know that IS is not an isolated "extremist" threat, but part of a wave of numerous interrelated movements that have arisen out of the heart, not merely the fringes, of Islamic societies worldwide — even if most Muslims do not support them.
• 
And for all of our recent gains on the ground in Iraq and Syria, our brilliant assassination raids against IS leaders in the area, and the harm to its varied financial empire we are inflicting, it is we, not the terrorists, who are one the defensive.
• 
We, in fact, are losing overall, thanks to a strategy that denies the clear nature of the threat. 
• 
It is, after all, both blinding and enervating to fight an enemy you cannot or will not name. 
• 
In his speech, Obama also insisted that the Orlando killer was simply a disturbed young man with no ties to outside groups, despite his allegiance to IS and his praise for other jihadis.
• 
And he repeated his earlier claim that Mateen was radicalized entirely by the Internet, when in fact he grew up in a pro-Taliban Afghan immigrant family and cheered the attacks of 9/11 while watching them on live TV.
• 
Of course, as Obama said, mere use of the phrase would not change the war by itself.  But it would radically change our strategic policy toward Islamism considerably — a movement he himself has aided...
• 
Not to mention his disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, which handsomely rewarded ... the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism — while giving it a legal glide-path to building the bomb in a decade.
• 
If a perpetrator pledges loyalty to multiple Islamist groups, that doesn't raise questions about his or her motives.
• 
Rather, it means the killer correctly sees the jihad as one ... something the current administration sadly (and willingly) fails to grasp.
• 
The Iranian regime not only calls for the unity of jihadi groups (both Sunni and Shi`a) in waging the global jihad against unbelief, but actually funds Sunni groups like Hamas and the MB, and arms and finances the fiercely anti-Shi`a Taliban, all for ideological and strategic reasons.
• 
And they accept that help, also for ideological and strategic reasons.
• 
And while it is true that Mateen was an obviously unstable person, as Obama noted, that is one of the profiles of the ideal recruit — one who is already a bit marginalized and harbors general anti-social sentiments.
• 
In fact, IS is made up entirely of Muslims, bases itself on a sophisticated reading of much mainstream Islamic scholarship and a literal interpretation of its sacred texts, and is the fastest growing movement in modern Islamic history.
• 
... this POTUS' anger, as always, seems reserved entirely for the GOP, not for IS — one of the most barbaric organizations in history — which he invariably discusses with a tone of mild irritation or boredom.
• 
That is the most striking thing of all: he has more genuine rage and resentment for his American political opponents than he ever shows publicly toward the enemies of his country.
• 
Our president made this peculiar appearance to announce what is obviously yet again a wholly inadequate, prevaricating strategy, and to unload his pique at those who call out his denial of both terminological and military reality.
• 
Rather, he should have proved them wrong by declaring, "We are going to end the threat of the Islamic State by taking out their capital Raqqa in a combined air and ground campaign that begins tomorrow.  And next we shall cut off the heads of the vast hydra of Islamist organizations wherever they are, without delay."
• 
Instead, he bragged about having made IS cut its salaries — while IS is still decapitating innocents at will.
• 
Along with the rest of the jihadi alliance against the West and the millions of Muslims who do not agree with them, they are a much greater threat to us all than they were eight years ago.
      Immigration: Supreme Court delivers a sound blow to Obama’s lawless power grab  (Fox 06/23/2016)
• 
There is no written opinion when there is a 4-4 tie – just a one-sentence per curiam order.  So, we did not hear specifically from the Justices themselves on this issue.
• 
But we did hear from President Obama, who sharply criticized the court for failing to issue a decision on the merits of the case.
• 
"The fact the Supreme Court wasn't able to issue a decision today doesn't just set the system back even further, it takes us further back from the country we want to be."
• 
He's wrong.  What takes us "further back from the country we want to be" is a president who has relied on his infamous "I've got a pen and I've got a phone" mantra to circumvent the separation of powers spelled out clearly in our Constitution.
• 
First of all, Congress is correct in waiting until after the election to fill Justice Scalia's seat.  We are in the middle of a critical election and it's important that Americans have a voice in filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
• 
And, while the president may not like it, his flawed strategy of overstepping his authority is simply unacceptable.
• 
The Supreme Court's order Thursday means that President Obama's Executive overreach continues to be thwarted in federal court every step of the way.
• 
The injunction means the president can't move forward with his plan seeking to give quasi-legal status and work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants.
• 
The constitutional system is simple.  Congress makes the laws.  The President enforces the laws.  And the courts interpret the laws.
• 
... finding that President Obama "is not just rewriting the laws, he is creating them from scratch."
• 
President Obama is not a king.  He needs to stop acting like one.
• 
See related Evolution (Chip Bok, 11/22/2014) cartoon from Government picture album
      When 'They' Come  (JWR 06/23/2016)
• 
... man told ... that the guns are for people "to protect themselves when 'they' come."
• 
Who is "they"?  Zombies?  Yeah, he was told — "and all the others who might try to steal your food after an earthquake or take your guns or imprison your family members."
• 
This is a big difference between progressives and conservatives.  Progressivism at its core is the belief that the correct government policies will bring utopia.  Guns for self-defense aren't necessary; we just need laws banning guns and all will be peaceful and well.
• 
This ignores both human nature and history.
• 
In fact, never mind history; progressives ignore things happening now.
• 
Take Venezuela.  As with every other country that has gone down the road of command-and-control economics, Venezuela has collapsed.  It has collapsed because human beings aren't God; things happened that the central planners didn't plan for.  And now there's nothing: No food.  No medicines.  No electricity.  No health care.  No toilet paper.  No wealth to redistribute.  (Except for the wealth of the planners themselves, of course — deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez' daughter Maria is "Venezuela's richest woman.")
• 
What Venezuela does have is riots in the streets.  Because when socialists succeed in making everyone dependent upon the government, and the government fails, then there are few other options.
• 
But civil unrest is not unique to Venezuela.  So it seems prudent to ask: Could something equally catastrophic happen in the United States?
• 
What about the loss of electricity for long periods of time?  An electromagnetic pulse caused by a solar storm or "dirty" nuclear bomb could shut down parts of the electrical grid, as could other types of terrorist attacks.  Gas pumps require electricity to operate; without it, transportation would come to a standstill.  Most communications would cease.  Banks and ATMs couldn't function.  Lacking refrigeration, perishables like food and medicine would not last.
• 
This isn't science fiction.  ISIS threatens such attacks regularly.  And there have already been attempts.
• 
A planned sniper attack on a California power station three years ago took out 17 huge transformers serving Silicon Valley that took nearly a month to repair.
• 
Surely the government is taking steps to prevent such an incident, right?
• 
Wrong.  Experts who have written on the issue and testified before Congress warn that the government, mired in "bureaucratic dysfunction" and "ambiguity about who owns the problem," has done virtually nothing to protect our electrical systems.
• 
Would a successful attack on our country's power supply be a crisis serious enough to cause widespread panic?  Could there be mobs?
• 
Well, let's see.  Three weeks ago, we saw a mob of hundreds of people in San Jose, California, protesting Donald Trump's speech.  They screamed obscenities at Trump supporters, threw eggs and bottles at them, chased them, knocked them down and kicked them in the ribs, ripped off their clothes, beat them with bags of rocks, punched them in the face, broke bones, and sprayed pepper spray in the faces of their children.
• 
Does anyone seriously think people who can become incensed enough about a speech to turn violent, won't turn violent if the ATMs shut down?  If the grocery stores go empty?  If there's no way to get food, water, or gasoline?
• 
And why wouldn't conservatives, Christians and/or Republicans be among the top targets for those mobs?  When the Trump protesters turned violent in San Jose, mayor Sam Liccardo blamed Trump.
• 
Less than two weeks later, a lunatic who was a Muslim, a registered Democrat and allegedly a Hillary supporter and ISIS devotee, walked into a gay bar and murdered 49 people — and leftists all across the United States tried to blame the event on conservatives.
• 
This is nothing more than the natural extension of left-wing propaganda tactics.  For years, liberals and progressives have blamed conservatives for the disastrous consequences of liberal policies; they have denounced conservatives as racists, sexists and bigots.
• 
They accuse conservatives of being anti-immigrant — when what most want is legal immigration, prudent screening for threats and enforcement of current laws.
• 
These accusations have been repeated for so long that large swaths of the American population believe them without question.  San Jose demonstrates just how reckless and dangerous that is.
• 
If something catastrophic happened in the United States, most of us would pull together as we always do when disaster strikes.  But history, human nature, and the left's inflammatory rhetoric almost ensure that there will be mobs of people with violent intentions.
• 
That is the "they" that the Portland gun shop patron was talking...
• 
If we never face any such crisis, we will all be relieved.  But many of us intend to be prepared.
• 
So, no — we won't give up our weapons of self-defense, because have seen too much.  We won't be swayed by deceitful politicians or irate ideologues.  We won't be deprived of our constitutional rights.
      Character no longer counts  (JWR 06/23/2016)
• 
Ranking right up there with the line, "Other than that, Mrs.  Lincoln, how did you like the play?" is this recent headline in The Washington Times: "Honesty issues aside, voters still back Hillary Clinton, poll shows."
• 
Though Clinton's negatives appear higher than that of any Democrat running for president in, perhaps, all of history — and Donald Trump's are even higher — honesty appears not to matter in this election, especially to younger voters.
• 
Has the state of our politics sunk so low that voters no longer expect honesty, integrity and character to be factors in deciding for whom they will vote?
• 
How can this be?  Isn't a person's trustworthiness essential when we decide to buy a house or car, conclude a business deal or get married?
• 
If character matters in these and other circumstances, why does it matter less in selecting our next president?
• 
"Trustworthiness by itself is less important than trustworthiness to handle specific issues, like national security or the economy.  In the context of the 2016 election, Clinton's low trust numbers may not mean much.  If she is matched against a different nominee of the opposing party, she might be in danger.  Trump's bucolic approach to politics gives her some much-needed cover."
• 
But doesn't it all go together?  If one is dishonest in one's private dealings that must spill over into one's public life, right?
• 
The actor and martial arts expert, Bruce Lee, once said: "Knowledge will give you power, but character respect."
• 
In this election, two people are seeking power, but it looks like whichever one wins will have a long way to go toward gaining respect.
• 
Voters have become so angry and cynical about the state of our government and its leaders that they no longer expect to respect them.
• 
If that is where we are, does that not say more about us then it does about them?
      Get real, America.  Radical Islamist jihadis don't care about liberal values  (Fox 06/23/2016)
• 
Among the more surprising things we have learned about Omar Mateen in recent days is that he was a registered Democrat. 
• 
And not just any Democrat — a Hillary supporter.
• 
It is not surprising that Mateen (and Malik) were Democrats.  Most American-Muslims are (about 70 percent voted for Obama in 2012).  Ironically, so were most of the people Mateen slaughtered at the Pulse Club in Orlando.
• 
The atrocity at Pulse is being "explained" in many ways by interest groups who want to control the narrative.  Theories vary.
• 
Some blame the inadequacy of American gun laws.  Others decry the radicalizing potential of the internet.  Some see this as an inexplicable act by a violent psycho from Queens.  Others call it a calculated attack by a dedicated Muslim holy warrior. 
• 
There are elements of truth all of these assessments.
• 
It was also an act of Democrat-on-Democrat violence. 
• 
This is extremely inconvenient for Hillary Clinton.  If Omar Mateen had been a Trump supporter, or a Christian fundamentalist or a member of the NRA, she could have gone to the funerals, denounced reactionary Republican racism and sung Amazing Grace.
• 
It appears that the revelations in Malik's story will spare Americans that performance.
• 
Solidarity is a constant in Marxist politics, ... at least you can glue together a virtuous coalition of oppressed brothers and sisters.
• 
Then along comes Omar Mateen — an ethnic and religious victim in good standing — and the last words out of his mouth are an oath of loyalty to an Islamic ideology that punishes homosexuality as a capital crime.
• 
Since 9/11, Republicans have found it relatively easy to wrap their minds around the notion that political Islam in its current forms (Sunni and Shia) is a weaponized ideology at war with America and incompatible with life in an open society.
• 
This thought crosses liberal minds, too, although it is not said in polite company.  It could whip up animosity, incite the Muslims even more.  And we all know that most Muslims are moderate, right?
• 
That happens to be true.  But there are more than enough fanatical Muslims to wage holy war (and more coming on line every day).
• 
These jihadis are not impressed by the pleas of progressive solidarity or liberal values or Christian piety.
• 
They make no distinctions between Republicans and Democrats.  An infidel is an infidel.  And a nightclub is a nightclub.
      What is really going on?  (INN 06/21/2016)
• 
... on June 13th, Donald Trump said: "Look, we're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind.  And the something else in mind – you know, people can't believe it.  People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism'.  There is something going on.  It is inconceivable.  There is something going on."
• 
... on June 14th Barack Obama delivered a speech, in which for the first time in his presidency, he connected the words ‘radical' and ‘Islam' together.
• 
Indignantly stating that he and his administration are wrongly criticized for not using the phrase "radical Islam," he continued: "That‘s the key, they tell us.  We can't beat ISIL unless we call them radical Islamists.  What exactly would using this label accomplish?  ... Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away."
• 
Obama is right; if one calls the threat by a different name it will not go away.
• 
But if it is called by its proper name, perhaps it can be at least properly opposed?  Perhaps, it would be easier for people to understand where the threat is coming from and what it is? 
• 
ISIS did not "pervert Islam to justify terrorism," and it does not have a "twisted interpretation of one of the world's great religions" as the President tries to convince the American people.  ISIS preaches radical Islam.
• 
"The document ‘These are our Creeds and Ways' is a self-profile of the Islamic State, reflecting its basic theology and political ideology.
• 
ISIS declares that it shuns extremism, and in fact it adds nothing new to traditional Islamic dogmas except for making the return of the caliphate a mandatory article of faith.
• 
The document deals with topics that have occupied Muslim minds for generations, yet it also reflects modern and local conditions and phenomena.
• 
It is firmly based on Islamic sources, which it cites often...
• 
By pulling the wool over the eyes of the American people, striving to hide the religious component of the threat Obama is doing a disservice to the adherents of Islam.
• 
In his speech Obama asked: "Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently?  Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance?"
• 
A "random survey of 100 representative mosques in the U.S." showed that "51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all.  In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts and 58% percent of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad."
• 
Maybe it is time to start using common sense?  We do not need "to start treating all Muslim Americans differently" but if ... there are "more than 80 radical mosques in the US," at least these mosques should be put under strict surveillance or simply closed.
• 
Perhaps if the term "radical Islam" is defined as dangerous to America it is time to look more carefully at the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) identified as Muslim Brotherhood front group in the 2004 Holy Land trail.
• 
But should we really trust an organization whose founder is Omar M.  Ahmad?
• 
Appealing to Muslims Ahmad declared: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant".
• 
"The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth," he said.
• 
"Mr.  Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent.  In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated ... Mr.  Obama described the call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."
• 
It is a pity that Mr.  Kristof is not versed in Arabic and was not curious enough to ask Obama to translate the Arabic verses into English.
• 
"The words of the call to prayer are well known: Allah is greatest.  Allah is greatest.  Allah is greatest.  Allah is greatest.  I testify there is no god but Allah.  I testify there is no god but Allah.  I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.  I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.  Come to the prayer.  Come to the prayer.  Come to success.  Come to success.  Prayer is better than sleep.  Prayer is better than sleep.  Allah is greatest.  Allah is greatest.  There is no god but Allah."
• 
Pausing for just a moment to digest these lines, let the reader consider that these are the words that President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama considers to be "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset?"
• 
What is really going on?
      Gutfeld: Orlando’s doom.  The most depressing article you will ever share  (Fox 06/20/2016)
• 
The immediate consequences from the Orlando terror attack are obvious: dozens dead and maimed – families changed forever.
• 
The next layer of consequences, arriving soon, are not as obvious, but they are coming.  Here they are:
• 
We are getting a divorce.  First, a poll shows that Americans are pretty much divided on their opinions about the attack.  Most of the Democrats see it as a gun control issue.  Most Republicans see it as a terror attack.
• 
We quarrel about the quarrel.  We cannot agree on the fight.  And therefore we cannot begin to fight.
• 
We assume different identities lead to different values.  Does a black person, or a gay person or a fat white male, see a terror attack differently?  I wouldn't think so, but activists, talking heads and assorted thought-processors disagree.  Now we no longer look at a tragedy as an American one, but through the divisive eyes of balkanized camps of competing identities.
• 
The beat-down is dead.  We need to train our populace on the basics of group self-defense – meaning how to cooperate and risk their skins to take down the lone aggressor. 
• 
If ten people attack a man with a gun, one or two may die – but the alternative is worse.
• 
"Be Like 93" should be the motto – in honor of the heroic actions of the passengers of Flight 93, who saved uncountable lives on September 11, 2001 by attacking the hijackers and bringing the jet down in a Pennsylvania field.
• 
But that's not what I'm really talking about.  I mean justifiable aggression: explicitly meting out justice to those who deserve it.  How can we do that, when we cannot agree who deserves it? 
• 
Every liberal blames guns, as well as the complicit wife of the murderous, terrorist dirtbag.  And the dirtbag's dad blames social networks.  He's even suing them.
• 
The more we spread the condemnations around, the less we have for the truly guilty party.
• 
We lose respect for evidence.  Our inability to call a spade a spade is the result of divorcing cause from effect.  If we can't call Islamism out for this horribleness, then what's left?
• 
Here's science: Islamism preaches the murder of gays; then an Islamist murders a club full of gays.  Cause...effect. 
• 
Why does the left deny science?
• 
Refusing to link Islamism to evil is denying the evidence before your objective eyes.
• 
You don't even need to bring up Orlando.  Try honor killings.  Read up on the Taliban and what they do to girls who want to go to school.  Google "Taliban" and "acid."
• 
President Obama isn't just on the wrong side of history, he's on the wrong side of the future.  For a guy who claims to be all about science, he lives in a fairy tale.
• 
We have murdered sympathy.  A product of modern leftism's regressive identity politics: we see victimhood as a zero-sum game.  If you grieve for the victims of terror, is there any left for Black Lives Matter?  If you light a candle for Orlando, why not for Ferguson?
• 
Now sympathy is saddled with considerations for approval of other groups and classes.  Maybe just keep quiet instead of expressing sympathy, one might conclude.
• 
We have killed debate.  To better enhance well-being, one must be able to argue and even allow oneself to be proven wrong.  Science is all about that: prove me wrong, please.  Now, no one wants to be wrong, even when it's an abstract debate.
• 
We have disabled our impulse control.  My motto has always been: your first public thought is often your worst public thought.  Meaning: think before unloading.
• 
Now every celebrity and their less famous sibling is on Twitter lecturing us on "assault weapons" and "tolerance" as if the world right now really needs a hot take from a sitcom star on his third bout of chlamydia. 
• 
The strong and silent type has been replaced with the weak and loud.
• 
We no longer cooperate.  This sad and sober consequence is the result of combining all the results mentioned above together.  Without cooperation, society is doomed.
• 
The problem is: we no longer believe that what we have is good.  How can America defeat ISIS if we have vocal factions believing that we are worse?
• 
How can we fight the enemy if a large portion of our population thinks an inanimate object – a gun – caused Orlando?  And not this pernicious ideology you can't even call a death cult, because radical Islam is worse than that?
• 
It's a death movement.  A death phenomenon.  It's a force that sees our conscious lives as inferior to what happens after you die.
• 
Boy, this is a depressing article.  And I wrote it.
• 
Read it and weep. 
• 
For the victims.  For the country.  For your family.  For you and me.
      9/11 all but forgotten as Obama undermines America’s resolve  (NYP 06/19/2016)
• 
It was a day like no other.  A beautiful September morning transformed into horror and death, with nearly 3,000 innocents murdered for the crime of living and working in America.
• 
We promised ourselves and each other we would never forget.  Memorials to the heroic firefighters invariably echo that defiant pledge: Never Forget.
• 
They lie.  Not 15 years later, many Americans are forgetting. 
• 
The pledge was the only way to make sense of the gruesome deaths of so many.
• 
The burning towers, people jumping and falling, the twin collapses and the clouds of smoke and steel and flesh and survivors covered in chalky, choking dust.
• 
We were wounded but determined to triumph because that's what Americans always did.
• 
We also pledged because, like earlier patriots, we were eyewitnesses to evil.
• 
We saw its soulless savagery and knew they would kill us all if they could.
• 
Perhaps it was inevitable that such charged emotions would dull. 
• 
But there is something else at work, too.  The forgetting in some circles is intentional.  As determined as many still are to Never Forget, others are determined to move on, to redefine, to downplay.
• 
None is more consequential than Barack Obama, a dedicated re-interpreter of 9/11 and its aftermath.  As his presidency enters the home stretch, we see the full flowering of his wrongheaded determination.
• 
His angry scolding of those who insist on using the term "radical Islam" for our enemies and his effort to minimize the role of Islamist ideology in the slaughter in Orlando are shocking — and yet entirely consistent with his worldview.
• 
"I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."
• 
"But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America.  Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire."
• 
That aim, surely born of good intentions, was a profound mistake that continues to wreak havoc.
• 
The president of the United States cannot be a broker between his countrymen and a foreign enemy that has declared war on us.
• 
As commander in chief, his job is to lead this nation to victory.  He hasn't because he refuses to see it as a war.
• 
... the Cairo speech was titled "A New Beginning." It has worked about as well as his "reset" with Russia.
• 
In fact, it has made everything worse.  Just as Obama's persistent attempts to ban certain guns have led to record gun sales, his effort to put a smiley face on Islam has backfired.
• 
Too many Muslims in too many countries have responded to his retreat with more bloodthirsty violence.
• 
From the spreading butchery of Islamic State to more frequent and lethal attacks at home, including San Bernardino and Orlando, Obama's presumptions increasingly look ridiculous.
• 
While it is obvious that some American prejudice exists, the fundamental problem is that nearly all the world's terrorists are Muslims...
• 
For all the complications that Obama is adding to the mix, it is fundamentally a simple situation: We are at war.
• 
... this is war, and even though Obama wants America to forget, the terrorists have not forgotten us.
      I was once inmate 06833-097.  Even dads in prison need to be remembered on Father's Day  (Fox 06/17/2016)
• 
Prison is certainly the right place for violent and career criminals, and some offenders commit crimes that endanger their own children.
• 
But many prisoners are not dangerous, and separating them from their families is not necessary to hold them accountable for their crimes and keep the public safe.
• 
Prisons are for people we are afraid of but we are imprisoning many people we are just mad at.
• 
Holding low risk offenders in jail and prison comes at a high cost, not just in terms of state budgets, but also the toll it takes on children and families, the innocent casualties left behind.
• 
Given the heavy toll incarcerating a parent takes on most kids, it makes sense to place lower-level offenders under mandatory supervision in the community, allowing them to remain connected to family, gainfully employed and available to nurture their children.
• 
One of the most serious areas of concern is the disintegration of American families, which contributes to the erosion of our culture.
• 
The criminal justice system, particularly the separation of parents from their children, is an example of where unintended consequences of government policies are jeopardizing family cohesion.
• 
Sadly, many prison policies make it very hard for families to remain in touch.  These policies need to be changed to promote family contact:
• 
Most inmates are imprisoned hundreds of miles from their families, without public transportation available for their families to come for visits.
• 
Many prisons prohibit relatives other than the custodial parent from bringing their children to visit their parent.  ... No grandparents, aunts or brothers are allowed to bring them.
• 
Other prisons prohibit children from visiting unless the incarcerated parent is listed on their birth certificate.  This cuts off contact for parents not listed, and places them in a Catch-22 because many states consider failure to visit or communicate with a child in foster care as grounds to terminate all parental rights.
• 
Most jails and prisons limit prisoners to collect calls, charging exorbitant rates to their families, who are among the poorest residents of the U.S.  Some states charge as much as $3.95 to place the call plus $0.89 per minute.  Families are prohibited from using discount cards that allow the rest of us to make calls for less than 10 cents a minute.
• 
These policies undercut family ties, and work against successful rehabilitation of offenders.
• 
Of all the factors that help inmates after their release, an intact family is the most important in helping them stay on the right path.
      Obama administration's absurd priorities  (Fox 06/17/2016)
• 
U.S.  leaders have developed a disgraceful habit of casting aside those who serve their country with honor and dignity – as well as those from other countries who worked as foreign assets – when they no longer find them useful.
• 
Portugal will soon extradite former CIA officer Sabrina de Sousa to Italy for incarceration.  Her crime?  She executed the orders of her CIA superiors, who were acting under the direction of the administration with oversight from Congress.
• 
A dual citizen of the United States and Portugal, an Italian court convicted her in absentia in 2009 for her alleged role in the kidnapping of radical Egyptian imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Milan.  De Sousa says that she was nearly 200 miles away from the incident when it occurred.
• 
Even Nasr, whom the CIA rendered to Egypt where he claimed he was tortured, said de Sousa is a scapegoat.
• 
De Sousa followed a command issued by her agency and her country.  If the Italians truly believe anyone committed a crime, then they identified the wrong criminal.  Their judicial system should target the officials within the United States government who directed the operation.
• 
Dr.  Shakeel Afridi – the doctor who proved instrumental in ascertaining the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden – continues to languish in a Pakistani prison.
• 
Official Washington celebrates the great victory of killing the world's most wanted terrorist, but they left a man critical to the undertaking in the dust.
• 
Even more outrageous is that those same people boasting about the operation disclosed highly classified information that enabled Pakistan to identify Afridi's alleged role.
• 
... the "Leavenworth 10" military service members remain incarcerated for supposed crimes committed during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  To many, the sentences are unjustified given situations in which they are forced to make life-and-death decisions within fractions of a second.
• 
Many of those jailed assuredly do not deserve life sentences for erring on the side of protecting their own when threatened.  They were simply executing the orders of our commander-in-chief – with the full consent and knowledge of Congress – to the best of their ability.
• 
Meanwhile, the administration works feverishly to release radical Islamist terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay.
• 
Officials believe at least a dozen detainees released from the facility have launched attacks on allied forces in Afghanistan that left members of the Armed Services dead.
• 
Common sense would dictate the U.S.  rehabilitate those who may have committed some crimes while serving in deadly combat zones.
• 
Common sense also dictates that the leaders not leave behind those who have sacrificed, often at great personal risk, to support the U.S.  and its interests.
• 
Prioritizing the rehabilitation and release of Islamist terrorists who have committed themselves to murdering Americans stands at the height of absurdity.
• 
Who will ever again jeopardize their life to serve their country when they see how it treats its heroes versus how it treats those guilty of harming and killing its heroes?
      Judge Napolitano: Why I will always defend the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense  (Fox 06/16/2016)
• 
Most of the mass killings by gun in the United States in recent years ..  took place in venues where local or state law prohibited carrying guns, even by those lawfully licensed to do so.
• 
The government cheerfully calls these venues "gun-free zones." They should be called killing zones.
• 
As unspeakable and horrific as is the recent slaughter in Orlando, it has become just another example of the tragic consequences of government's interfering with the exercise of fundamental liberties.
• 
We know from reason, human nature and history that the right to defend yourself is a natural instinct that is an extension of the right to self-preservation, which is itself derived from the right to live.
• 
Life is the great gift from the Creator, and we have a duty to exercise our freedoms to preserve life until its natural expiration.
• 
But the lives we strive to preserve should not be those actively engaged in killing innocent life.
• 
Because the right to use modern weaponry for the defense of life, liberty and property is natural, we should not need a government permission slip before exercising it, any more than we need one to exercise other natural rights, such as speech, press, assembly, travel and privacy.
• 
The modern-day massacres are proof beyond a doubt that the government cannot protect us.
• 
In the Orlando tragedy, the man who killed 49 and wounded 53 used a handgun and a rifle.  The handgun accepted magazines containing 17 bullets, and the rifle accepted magazines containing 30 bullets.  The killer, using both weapons, fired more than 250 times last Sunday morning.
• 
That means he reloaded his weapons about a dozen times.  Each time he reloaded, he stopped shooting, as it is impossible for any person to shoot and reload simultaneously.
• 
We know from forensics that the killer was a poor shot.  We can deduce from that knowledge that he was a slow reloader.  One learns to shoot first and reload later.
• 
It is likely that it took between three and seven seconds each time he reloaded the handgun and longer with the rifle.  In those time periods, any trained person carrying a handgun in that Orlando nightclub could have wounded or killed him — and stopped the slaughter.
• 
Hillary Clinton called the rifle the Orlando killer carried a "weapon of war." It is not.  It is the same rifle that her Secret Service detail carries.
• 
Many of her acolytes have called it an assault rifle.  It is not.  It fires one round for each trigger pull.
• 
True assault rifles ... fire numerous rounds per trigger pull.  They have been outlawed on U.S.  soil since 1934.
• 
We have a government here that is heedless of its obligation to protect our freedoms.
• 
We have a government that, in its lust to have us reliant upon it, has created areas in the U.S.  where innocent folks living their lives in freedom are made defenseless prey to monsters — as vulnerable as fish in a barrel.
• 
And we have mass killings of defenseless innocents — over and over and over again.
• 
There are thousands of crazies in the U.S.  who are filled with hate — whether motivated by politics, self-loathing, religion or fear.
• 
If they want to kill, they will find a way to do so.  The only way to stop them is by superior firepower.
• 
Disarming their law-abiding victims not only violates the natural law and the Constitution but also is contrary to all reason.
• 
All these mass killings have the same ending: The killer stops only when he is killed.  But that requires someone else with a gun to be there.  Shouldn't that be sooner rather than later?
      Orlando massacre: Who the hell cares if Omar Mateen was gay?  (Fox 06/15/2016)
• 
Those in America who will do anything to deny the fact that we are at war with radical Islam have begun the public relations work of implying that the carnage wrought by Omar Mateen in Orlando might not have been driven by his political and religious ideology at all, but, instead, by his suppressed homosexuality.
• 
According to this theory, Mateen wasn't really out to kill 49 Americans because he loathed this country and everything it stands for; he was out to kill 49 projections of his inner, gay self.
• 
Had he only come out as a gay man, he would have been a loving person, not a mass murderer.
• 
Well, that should be about as interesting right now to the bereaved families in blood-stained Orlando as the theory that Hitler's frustrations over not becoming a successful artist were to the millions of Jews whose relatives died in ovens at Auschwitz and the 407,000 American military who perished to defeat that madman.
• 
Once the shooting or gassing starts, it doesn't matter whether the guy with the gun or the ovens has a mother who screwed him up.
• 
That's for armchair psychologists to debate after the war is over.
• 
... understanding the root causes of Mateen's bloodlust, or those of Hitler's or Usama bin Laden's, should never be used as a way of talking ourselves out of the existential threat such individuals represent to us once their psychologies manifest themselves in cancerous ideologies.
• 
All mass killers and all tyrants who hate life and liberty are psychiatrically ill.
• 
Man's normal psychology is as an autonomous, freedom-loving being. 
• 
Everything I have learned from interviewing thugs and killers tells me unequivocally that totalitarians and extremists of every stripe are pathological.
• 
But fighting a psychologically diseased enemy doesn't mean that enemy is less organized, less likely to spread or less lethal.
• 
The world has cancer now.  It is called radical Islam.
• 
And there is a time for psychoanalysis and a time for surgery.
• 
Positing psychological reasons why ISIS and Al Qaeda (and their like) exist, and why many millions around the world, including many inside this country, are willing to die for the twisted views they represent, will not change the fact that we will have to defeat them with resolve of steel and weaponry of steel. 
• 
Once that's over, with our scalpel well-used, we will have the luxury to get into the "whys" of their individual or collective motivations.
      Obama’s tantrum a striking display of failed leadership NYP 06/15/2016)  (NYP 0
• 
If it is true that the best defense is a good offense, President Obama should be celebrating in the end zone now.
• 
Obviously furious over criticism that his anti-terror policies are weak and that the Orlando slaughter proves it, he went on a televised tirade to let America know he's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
• 
It was a striking display of personal anger and pent-up grievances — and a total failure of leadership during a national crisis.
• 
It also, inadvertently, captured why Donald Trump was able to brawl his way to the GOP nomination.
• 
All his nice Republican rivals couldn't stir voters because they never knew how to rattle Obama the way Trump is doing.
• 
... it showed that Obama's plan to campaign against Trump as if he is running for his own third term won't be a cakewalk for the president or his legacy.
• 
For another, the Obama-Trump war means Hillary Clinton could be overshadowed in what was supposed to be her campaign for vindication.
• 
Throw in her husband and the stage is going to get crowded with alpha males competing for attention.
• 
Obama's demeanor and tone were far from presidential — tantrums rarely are.
• 
Nor was he effective in rallying the nation to his cause.  No surprise there.  His cause is himself, always and only, and his greatly diminished historic presidency looks especially insignificant next to the bloodshed in Orlando. 
• 
He meant his attacks to be especially vicious, but the spectacle was more sad than provocative
• 
The president needs a rest from the job as much as we need a new president.
• 
The world knows he's a failure and he can't stand the embarrassment.
• 
So he lashed out at Trump, who dares not only to point out the obvious, but to rip away the veil of euphemism as he lunges for the jugular.
• 
Think Low Energy Jeb, Lyin' Ted, Little Marco and Crooked Hillary.  They're all nasty and personal, yet ruthlessly accurate.
• 
Now it's Obama's turn in the crucible.  Cosseted by his media water carriers and surrounded by sycophants, he isn't accustomed to dealing with a heavyweight street fighter.
• 
The real reason was to lecture America about how right he is about everything on terrorism, from how to fight it to how to talk about it, and how Trump is worse than wrong.
• 
Most telling, and least surprising, was that his defense of why he doesn't say "radical Islam" revealed there's no there there.
• 
The idea that linking terrorism to Islam smears the entire religion is preposterous, as is his claim that it "does the terrorists' work for them."
• 
We are long past the point where Obama's saying so makes it so, or even worth discussing.  His fundamental problem is that he has nothing to show for his approach.
• 
Instead, Islamic terrorism is growing around the world and the body count is mounting at home. 
• 
Meanwhile, the moderate American Muslims Obama is always defending are almost all silent in the face of unspeakable horrors committed in the name of their religion.
• 
The president has no substantive response to any of that, and not much desire to find one.  His passion is reserved for criticism of Americans who don't see things his way, as though he can fool them one more time.
• 
At the height of his anger, he warned that even talking about terrorism with a focus on Islam "makes Muslim Americans feel their government is betraying them."
• 
In that case, they are joining a very large club, with two out of three Americans saying the country is on the wrong track.
• 
Millions of the disenchanted are turning to Trump because they concluded that not only had their government betrayed them, but that both political parties were in cahoots to keep them down.
• 
So they found an outsider they believe will speak for them and fight for them.
• 
That's why every punch Trump threw at the GOP establishment during the primaries, and every punch he throws at Clinton and Obama now, brings him more support and more loyalty.
• 
It's also why Trump is going to keep swinging all the way to November.  It's not elegant or pretty — in fact, it's often coarse and vulgar.  But it's clearly getting under the president's very thin skin, and that's why it won't stop.
• 
Obama had better get used to it.  Finally, he may have met his match.
      How many bodies will it take?  (INN 06/15/2016)
• 
"How many bodies will it take for Americans, especially the intelligentsia, including the feminists, including gay people, including our elected officials, before they understand that we: (the West, America, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents) have a very real enemy?"
• 
It is radical Islam or Islamism, Islamic Jihad or, if you prefer, Islamist Jihad; and it is not going away anytime soon.
• 
This is precisely what Israel alone has been up against since its founding in 1948.  Actually, long before that, Jews suffered the most profound Islamic anti-Semitism.
• 
Buddhists in Afghanistan were murdered or forcibly converted.  Hindus in India were slaughtered by Muslims by the millions — simply because they were Hindus.
• 
Christians have long been persecuted by Muslims for the same reason; that persecution continues today.
• 
How many deaths before we become effective in identifying potential Jihadists?  Within our borders?  Arriving as refugees and immigrants?
• 
How many deaths before we are willing to use the word "Muslim terrorist" without fearing we will be demonized for doing so?
      Will Orlando Change Anything?  (JWR 06/14/2016)
• 
Is diversity our strength?  Or anybody's strength, anywhere in the world?
• 
Does Japan's homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer?
• 
Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word "Balkanization" remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times?
• 
Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?
• 
"When in Rome do as the Romans do" was once a common saying.
• 
... the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do — and to assault those who don't knuckle under to foreign religious standards.
• 
The recent wave of refugees flooding into Europe include Muslim men who have been haranguing European women on the streets for not dressing modestly enough, not to mention their sexual molestation of those women.
• 
Smug elites in Europe, like their counterparts in America, are not nearly as concerned about such things as they are about preventing "Islamophobia."
• 
In the lofty circles of those who see themselves as citizens of the world, it is considered unworthy, if not hateful, to insist on living according to your own Western values or to resist importing people who increase your chances of being killed.
• 
But if you don't have the instinct for self-preservation, it will not matter much in the long run whatever else you may have.
• 
America's great good fortune in the past has been that Americans have been able to unite as Americans against every enemy, despite our own internal differences and struggles. 
• 
In both World War I and World War II, the top commander of American troops who went into combat against the German army was of German ancestry — Pershing and Eisenhower, respectively.
• 
So too was General Carl Spaatz, whose bombers reduced German cities to rubble.
• 
Today, that sense of American unity is being undermined by the reckless polarization of group identity politics.
• 
Some people demand American citizenship, as if it is an entitlement, while burning the American flag and waving the flag of Mexico.
• 
And the apostles of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" watch in silence.  That includes the President of the United States.
• 
Most debates about immigration policies are contests in rhetoric, with hard facts being ignored as if they didn't exist.
      After Orlando, Obama drops most partisan speech ever  (Fox 06/14/2016)
• 
... he lapsed into yet another tired attempt to link effective counterterrorism with the debate on gun control.
• 
Hijacking a tragedy to press a political agenda, however, is pure opportunism.
• 
The Orlando attack is as much about a mass shooting as 9/11 was about a plane crash.
• 
Childproofing the world to make us safe from terrorists is not a responsible strategy.
• 
If Obama wanted to debate gun control, and not look like a partisan hack, he would have chosen another time to make his case, and he would have started with the facts.
• 
He could begin by explaining why data from Pew Research Center, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention find that gun violence is at a 30-year low, even as gun ownership in America has expanded.
• 
Obama saved his greatest invectives for attacking anyone who criticized him for not naming the enemy — and anyone using the term "radical Islam."
• 
In the most superficial way, he is right.  Mouthing those words doesn't shift the calculus of war any more than calling the German war machine Nazis got GIs up the cliffs at Normandy. 
• 
But Obama's verbal assault was pure bait and switch.
• 
What has Americans really upset is not whether he mouths particular words, but the belief that the debate over words reflects a deeper concern.
• 
Their concern is that Obama is not prosecuting a winning war.
• 
Worse, Obama implied that disagreeing was "un-American" and anti-Muslim.
• 
He ignored the fact that many who use the term "radical Islam" add the qualifier "radical" to differentiate the Islamist threat from the global Muslim community. 
• 
By labeling his detractors racist and know-nothings, he simply reinforces what many Americans already believe: Obama is divider, not a uniter. 
      Why can't Obama just tell Americans the truth about the Orlando attack and radical Islam?  (Fox 06/13/2016)
• 
The massacre in Orlando by a self-proclaimed Islamist terrorist removes any doubt that the West or its allies have contained the radical jihadi movement. 
• 
You wouldn't know it by listening to President Obama.  From the Oval Office on Monday, he remained unable to utter the words "radical Islam."
• 
Yet, early Sunday morning the shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS and reportedly yelled "Allahu Akbar" before opening fire.  He murdered and injured more than 100 innocents in the worst Islamic terror assault on U.S.  soil since 9/11.
• 
The worst aspect is that political leadership could have helped to prevent the attack by addressing the violent Islamist threat by its rightful nature. 
• 
As was the case in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino or any of the other murders in the name of Allah against the West the during his time in office, the president will not identify "jihad" as even a possible motivation.  He instead talks about gun control, identity politics and thought crimes. 
• 
Americans know that it was terror.  They know that it was hate.  They also know that is so much more than that. 
• 
Law enforcement officials had Mateen on their radar.  Why did they stop monitoring him?
• 
Could it have had anything to do with the suffocating political correctness – in which "workplace violence" and "man-caused disasters" replaced jihadist terror – over the last few years? 
• 
The echo chamber of Islamist front organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society and the Muslim Public Affairs Council facilitate the administration's obfuscation.
• 
They rush to condemn the attacks to American audiences, yet they are the worst enablers of the attacks themselves. 
• 
CAIR, for example, routinely pressures American Muslims to not cooperate with law enforcement.
• 
White House records reveals that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood regularly meet with officials at the highest levels of government to influence stewards of foreign policy into minimizing the threat from Islamic terror organizations. 
• 
The president may only have seven more months in office, but he needs to provide the country with a new strategy.  It cannot continue down the same path of political correctness, and it cannot wait until a new president assumes office to reevaluate.
• 
The evidence of the West losing the struggle is overwhelming.  Globally, the number of victims has increased to unprecedented levels.
• 
American leadership needs to engage in a frank discussion about where we go from here.  It needs to identify and implement a policy against jihadist terror that transcends elections.
• 
Americans will not tolerate any more carnage.  Obama said in his remarks to the nation today that the attack in Orlando could have occurred in any U.S.  community. 
• 
He needs to finally understand that there is something dreadfully wrong with that. 
      Amb.  John Bolton: Two critical conclusions from Orlando terror attack  (Fox 06/12/2016)
• 
Sunday brought the latest terrorist attack in America, the largest mass shooting in U.S.  history, with all its attendant tragedy.
• 
Beyond the human cost, however, also lies the tragedy that Barack Obama, speaking even as it became clear that the murderer was a radical Islamic terrorist, is still unable or unwilling to draw the appropriate conclusions.
• 
The president's remarks omitted any linkages between the cold-blooded murders, the terrorist's ideology, and the broader international threat that motivated the Orlando killer and perhaps others yet unknown.
• 
We will, in the coming days, doubtless hear that the terrorist was a lone wolf, that he did not belong to any known terrorist organization, that there are no wider threats.
• 
In particular, those who are blind to the terrorist threat will downplay even the incontrovertible fact that Mateen pledged loyalty to ISIS as he committed his murders.
• 
First, the number of true "lone wolf" terrorists is infinitesimal.  The implications of that phrase, namely that terrorism is not a widespread and still-growing phenomenon, are profoundly impairing our ability to protect innocent civilians. 
• 
The evidence is now indisputable that we are confronting a far larger threat, albeit not one organized conveniently for our understanding.  This threat is unmistakably ideological...
• 
We simply must start acknowledging that terrorists — whether ISIS, Al Qaeda, or others — are not structured like governments or corporations.
• 
... it is not just the West that has mastered digital communications and Internet social networks.  The terrorists are just as good at it, for their purposes better than we are at understanding their techniques and their success.
• 
... it is precisely the disconnected, unpredictable timing of the terrorist attacks, not necessarily staged in advance, that adds to their devastating effect.
• 
Second, the United States must urgently discard the fiction that we pay no price for not pursuing international terrorists vigorously and relentlessly.
• 
Obama manifestly believes that, as bad as terrorist attacks are, American "overreaction" is worse.
• 
In his view, the use of U.S.  forces risks increasing the problem rather than reducing it, making us much a part of the problem as the terrorist threat itself.
• 
This is, of course, utter nonsense.  We are obviously defending ourselves from attack, not initiating it.  And it is palpably our failure to defend ourselves that provides incentives for the terrorist to strike even harder.
• 
A slow, casual offensive against ISIS gives the terrorists time and opportunity to encourage strikes like the one we have just seen.
• 
There is a cost — and a very human cost — to allowing ISIS any respite from the full force of U.S.  and allied military power.
• 
While the foreign political and military complexities of obliterating ISIS are real enough, presidential resolve and determination can overcome much.
• 
Obama's resolve and determination are AWOL.
• 
Obama may not be able to acknowledge the grim reality endangering us, but the rest of us must do so
• 
The winning presidential candidate will be the one whose anti-terrorism policies are the most distinguishable from Obama's.
      The Islamic radicals want to kill all of us — gay, straight, Christian and Jew  (Fox 06/13/2016)
• 
Convert or die.
• 
That is the war cry of the modern-day jihadist.
• 
"They target each and every one of us.  Their objective, which they broadcast worldwide, is to murder or forcibly convert every single American."
• 
More bodies piled on the altar of political correctness.
• 
"What we need is for every American – Democrat and Republican – to come together, abandon political correctness, and unite in defeating radical Islamic terrorism."
• 
But America is at war with an enemy our president refuses to acknowledge.
• 
So let's review the facts.  The gunman had reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS in a 911 telephone call.  He reportedly referenced the Boston bombers in that conversation.  And he reportedly and screamed "Allahu Akbar" — as he massacred innocent Americans.
• 
And still the president seemed baffled over the jihadist's motivations.
• 
"We need a commander-in-chief who will speak the truth, and who will unleash the full force and fury of the American military to utterly destroy ISIS and its affiliates."
• 
"We need to pass the Expatriate Terrorist Act, so that known ISIS terrorists cannot use U.S.  passports to return to America and wage jihad.  We need a President who is serious – who will identify the enemy by name and do everything necessary to defeat it."
• 
But the White House does not seem all that serious about naming the enemy or admitting that Radical Islam inspired the carnage.
• 
They invited a Muslim religious leader to speak.
• 
They did not invite a Christian minister.  They did not invite a Jewish rabbi.  But by golly – they made sure to invite the senior Imam for the Islamic Society of Central Florida.
• 
Now, why would they do that?  Why invite the local imam if the shooting had nothing to do with radical Islam?
• 
Instead of urging Muslims to wage war on the Islamists, he advanced the Mainstream Media's narrative about getting our guns.
• 
With all due respect — Americans did not need a lecture from the Senior Imam of the Islamic Society of Central Florida — especially after an Islamist had just slaughtered Americans on American soil.
      Orlando: The mainstream media serves up a false narrative about terror attack  (Fox 06/13/2016)
• 
In the first 48 hours since the horrific mass shooting in Orlando, the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11, the public has seen wall-to-wall media coverage of the events.
• 
The false narrative emerging from the media seeks to make a few points, all of which are red herrings and straw men designed to take attention from the truth.
• 
The shooter, Omar Mateen, was homophobic because he hated gays.
• 
Mateen was unstable because he was mean and beat his wife.
• 
Mateen had too much unfettered access to guns.
• 
Mateen was not religiously motivated.
• 
Story after story references these points, and they quote each other liberally (take the pun as you wish).
• 
We can either accept the media narrative, that some unknown complex mix of motives drove this mentally ill man to buy readily available assault weapons and kill people he simply hated for no reason, or we can apply Occam's Razor — the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
• 
The Quran teaches that homosexuality is wrong and punishable by death...
• 
Many Muslim men are brought up and taught to beat their wives — that this is the correct way to administer discipline in the home.
• 
Mateen had a clean record, worked as a security guard, kept himself in excellent physical condition, and trained for his jihad.
• 
This was not a crime of opportunity, or of passion.  It was a planned operation.  The "mentally ill" narrative offers no hard evidence at this point.
• 
He bought weapons because, despite the FBI having investigated him, nothing of concern was noted that would prevent him from doing so.  This is a failure of the intelligence and law enforcement system, not our Second Amendment rights
• 
The attack was absolutely religiously motivated.  You didn't see Mateen attacking the Orlando Islamic Center, the mosque he attended, because he didn't like the people there.
• 
You didn't see the people with whom he worshipped calling the FBI or the local authorities to report Mateen acting weird or talking about killing people.
• 
The simplest explanation is that Mateen was a radicalized Muslim, who moved easily with other radicalized Muslims, some of whom are probably living their lives in Orlando.
• 
The press is weaving a false narrative to fashion a complex explanation for a simple problem.
• 
We have a cancer of radical Islam growing in America.
• 
Political correctness, the inability of our president to accept the problem because of his beliefs about Islam being a religion of peace, and impossible restrictions placed on federal, state and local law enforcement have made this crime possible.
• 
Our government is ignoring the cancer and it will continue to grow, as long as the country keeps buying the media's spin.
      What 'Me Before You' gets wrong  (Fox 06/10/2016)
• 
I'm not really a fan of romance novels.  I read the book and saw the film because of their larger agenda: the escalating debate over euthanasia.
• 
The film is persuasive, the novel even more so.
• 
And that's what worries me about "Me Before You."
• 
"I don't want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life.  I don't want you to miss out on all the things someone else could give you."
• 
"I can't judge him for what he wants to do.  It's his choice.  It should be his choice."
• 
Will knows that his life will never be what it was before the accident.  And so it is a life not worth living.
• 
That's where Will is wrong.
• 
... "the message of the film is that disability is tragedy and disabled people are better off dead .  .  .  It comes from a dominant narrative carried by society and the mainstream media that says it is a terrible thing to be disabled."
• 
... calls "Me Before You" "offensive to disabled people, the vast majority of whom want to live — not die."
• 
But "Me Before You" is a bestselling novel and will be a popular movie because it captures what our culture believes.
• 
We're told that truth is whatever we choose for it to be.  As a result, life is ours to live as we wish and to end when we wish.
• 
The "death with dignity" movement expresses the ethos of our day.  Whether the issue is abortion rights, marriage equality, gender identity or euthanasia, the decision is ours to make.
• 
Except that it's not.
• 
"Me Before You" portrays euthanasia as a courageous and loving choice.  But the opposite is actually true.  To live with grave physical challenges is much harder than to end the struggle.  To give those you love the gift of yourself, no matter what limitations you face, is far more compassionate than to deny them your life.
• 
Moyes is wrong — life is not "Me Before You" but "You Before Me." We belong to everyone who loves us.
      Concealed carry, California and the 9th Circuit’s misrepresentation of the facts  (Fox 06/10/2016)
• 
9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 7-4 decision that Americans don't have a right to carry concealed handguns for protection.
• 
Since California bans people from openly carrying guns, their decision amounted to prohibiting people from carrying guns at all (whether openly or concealed).
• 
It is clear that a judge's political affiliation determines whether he thinks that people have a right to defend themselves.
• 
Police are probably the single most important factor in stopping crime.
• 
But police understand the simple fact that they virtually always arrive on a scene after the crime has already occurred.
• 
Police strongly support permitted concealed handguns not only for this reason but also because they know how important it is for their own safety.
• 
Research has found that as more people carry:
• 
Some criminals have stopped committing crimes.
• 
Some have moved to commit crime in places where permitted concealed handguns weren't yet allowed.
• 
Some criminals switched out of crimes like robberies where there was direct contact between victims and criminals and into crimes like larceny where victims aren't directly threatened.
• 
So far, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms" includes the right to carry for self-defense. 
• 
Given this right, California's prohibition of both open and concealed carry would seem to be unconstitutional.  But in this debate, the Bill of Rights has become secondary to political preferences.
      Our colleges are now freedom-free zones  (Fox 06/09/2016)
• 
The 1970's Black Liberation Army engaged in bombings, murders and prison breaks to further its purpose of "taking up arms for the liberation ... of black people in the United States."
• 
Today, its little publicized, but very effective progeny, relabeled Black Liberation Collective (BLC), has chapters in almost 100 college campuses "dedicated to transforming institutions of higher education through ... direct action and political education," including, one chapter proclaims, "collective resistance" by "Black students from across the country."
• 
BLC rejects free speech as protecting "an imagined denial of rights to the dominant group [whites], instead of the ... persistent denial of rights to the oppressed [Blacks]."
• 
Translated: the majority must surrender their Constitutional rights or Blacks will never have theirs.
• 
Further, they demand that colleges prosecute anyone who expresses a contrary view: "prosecute criminally ... defamatory speech in the college community."
• 
Duke's chapter paraphrases it to prohibit any speech on campus "that offends [or] "insults groups."
• 
These BLC demands violate the Supreme Court ruling that "undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right of freedom of expression."
• 
"...  By asserting their right to protest, individuals cannot decide for the entire community which ideas will or will not receive free expression."
• 
The reality is, however, that most colleges today ignore these principles to appease BLC mobs.
• 
Interference with academic freedom has extended to targeting professors and students.
• 
Two well-respected Yale Professors, Nicholas and Erika Christakis, felt forced to quit because, as she said, "the current climate at Yale is not ... conducive to civil dialogue and open inquiry."
• 
It started with her expressing the American axiom that "free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society," when commenting on students' Halloween costume decisions.
• 
Students then surrounded Mr.  Christakis, screechingly demanding an apology for his wife's statement as violating students' "safe place" and "place of comfort," followed by the "f" word and "you are disgusting."
• 
Yale's response was to applaud the demonstrators for their "cries of help" caused by discrimination against them – attributing fault to free speech and our free society.
• 
At University of Missouri, an unconfirmed assertion of the "N" word yelled at Black students sparked an organized blocking of the Homecoming Parade, students' hunger strike, 30 football players refusing to play or practice, and many faculty refusing to teach – all demanding the President and Chancellor acknowledge their "white privilege" and the University's systemic racism, and then their resignations, which were given.
• 
At Dartmouth, 150 Black students ran into the library, cursing and threatening white students studying there, chanting "f**k you, you filthy white "f**ks," and similar words."
• 
Dartmouth apologized to the assailants, while complaining victims were told that "the protest was a wonderful, beautiful thing," and that complaining whites were merely living in "a whole conservative world out there that was not very nice."
• 
Many other colleges have experienced similar violations, with very few standing up for academic freedom.
• 
One exception was Ohio State, which quickly ended a sit-in by student protestors to support demands for "justice, transparency and democratic process," by informing them that if they don't "clear the room, ... our police officers will physically pick you up and take you to a paddy wagon ... to be arrested."
• 
In the absence of strong administration, the well-organized destroyers of academic freedom will continue to win. 
• 
It is now time for alumni, parents, and right-thinking academics to organize to defeat this growing cancer.
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      It's not just Prince: Moms, dads, sons, daughters are dying every day of opiate overdoses  (Fox 06/09/2016)
• 
Last week the medical examiner confirmed what many had suspected – that Prince died of an opioid drug overdose.
• 
It's an old story but a very sad one.  A celebrity dies of a drug overdose and the world mourns.
• 
And, of course, media outlets and the public in general become aware — ever so briefly — that we, as a country, are in the midst of a drug crisis — more specifically an opiate abuse and overdose epidemic.
• 
But while it's incredibly sad that a celebrity like Prince died of an opiate overdose, the even more sad news is that mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters are dying every single day of prescription drug overdoses.
• 
According to the CDC 78 Americans die every single day of an opiate drug overdose — and over half of those deaths are from doctor-prescribed opiate pain medications...
• 
Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the US, with 47,055 lethal drug overdoses in 2014.  Of those deaths, a whopping 18,893 overdose deaths were related to prescription pain relievers.
• 
Even more unsettling that those statistics is the trend: Since 1999, the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids, including prescription opioid pain relievers, has nearly quadrupled.
• 
That's right: In 25 years, the opiate death rate has quadrupled.  The not so shocking corollary to that horrible trend?  Since 1999, the amount of prescription opioids sold in the U.S.  has also nearly quadrupled.
• 
Indeed, 90 percent of the entire world's pain prescriptions are written right here in the good old U.S.  of A.
• 
Can we see a connection?  It is readily apparent that the more pain prescriptions doled out, the more people seem to be dying from prescription overdoses.
• 
But why is there this exponential increase in opiate prescriptions — are we in so much more pain as a country?  Of course not.
• 
What there has been is an increase in the influence and growth of pharmaceutical companies that are developing ever-more powerful medications that numb pain and that get people hooked.
• 
To be clear: there are, of course, people who need pain meds.
• 
... many medical doctors will tell you that during their six years of medical school training, one or perhaps two days are devoted to addiction training.
• 
Compounding the problem, there is no objective way for a physician to measure pain: it's all client self-report.
• 
Yes, we all know of the famous heroin overdoses — heroin has become the drug most commonly associated with images of drug addiction and death in the public psyche.
• 
And yet heroin's legally prescribed cousin — pharmaceutical opiates — kills more people every year than heroin does.
      America: history's exception  (JWR 06/09/2016)
• 
The history of nations is mostly characterized by ethnic and racial uniformity, not diversity.
• 
Most national boundaries reflected linguistic, religious and ethnic homogeneity.
• 
Countries and societies that were ethnically homogeneous, such as ancient Germanic tribes or modern Japan, felt that they were inherently more stable and secure than the alternative, whether late imperial Rome or contemporary America.
• 
The Balkan states were the powder kegs of 20th-century world wars because different groups wanted to change national boundaries to reflect their separate ethnicities.
• 
The constitution of Mexico unapologetically predicates national immigration policies on not endangering Mexico's ethnic makeup.
• 
Countries, ancient and modern, that have tried to unite diverse tribes have usually fared poorly.
• 
The Italian Roman Republic lasted about 500 years.
• 
In contrast, the multiracial Roman Empire that after the Edict of Caracalla in AD 212 made all its diverse peoples equal citizens endured little more than two (often violent) centuries.
• 
Vast ethnically diverse empires such as those of the Austro-Hungarians, the Ottomans and the Soviets used deadly force to keep their bickering ethnic factions in line — and from killing each other.
• 
Modern states such as multicultural or multi-tribal Rwanda, Iraq and Lebanon have often proved deadly failures.
• 
America is history's exception.  ... United States steadily evolved to define Americans by their shared values, not by their superficial appearance.  Eventually, anyone who was willing to give up his prior identity and assume a new American persona became American.
• 
The United States has always cherished its "melting pot" ethos of e pluribus unum — of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration and intermarriage.
• 
When immigration was controlled, measured and coupled with a confident approach to assimilation, America thrived.
• 
Various ethnic groups enriched America with diverse art, food, music and literature while accepting a common culture of American values and institutions.
• 
Problems arose only when immigration was often illegal, in mass and without emphasis on assimilation.
• 
Sometime in the late 20th century, America largely gave up on multiracialism under one common culture and opted instead for multiculturalism, in which each particular ethnic group retained its tribal chauvinism and saw itself as separate from the whole.
• 
Courts ruled that present discrimination was allowable compensation for past discrimination.
• 
Schools began to teach that difference and diversity were preferable to sameness and unity.
• 
... for those who see America becoming a multicultural state of unassimilated tribes and competing racial groups, history will not be kind.
• 
The history of state multiculturalism is one of discord, violence, chaos and implosion.
• 
So far, America has beaten the odds and remained multiracial rather than multicultural, thereby becoming the most powerful nation in the world.
• 
We should remember that diversity is an ornament, but unity is our strength.
      Is Personal Responsibility Obsolete?: Part II  (JWR 06/08/2016)
• 
Too many social problems are conceived of in terms of what "we" can do for "them."
• 
... even some conservatives and libertarians are coming up with proposals for more "efficient" versions of the welfare state — namely direct cash grants for life to virtually all adults, instead of the current hodgepodge of overlapping bureaucratic programs.
• 
... "some people will idle away their lives" under his proposal.  "But that is already a problem."
• 
Everyone recognizes that there are some people unable to provide for their own survival — infants and the severely disabled, among others.
• 
But providing for such people is wholly different from a blanket guarantee for everybody that they need not lift a finger to feed, clothe or shelter themselves.
• 
The financial cost of providing such a guarantee, though huge, is not the worst of the problems.
• 
... the massive expansion of the welfare state since the 1960s has been accompanied by a vast expansion in the amount of crime, violence, drug addiction, fatherless children and other signs of social degeneration.
• 
In 16th and 17th century Spain — its "golden age" — the windfall gain was gold and silver looted by the ton from Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere.
• 
This enabled Spain to survive without having to develop the skills, the sciences or the work ethic of other countries in Western Europe.
• 
What this meant in practical terms was that other countries developed the skills, the knowledge, the self-discipline and other forms of human capital that Spain did not have to develop, since it could receive the tangible products of this human capital from other countries.
• 
But once the windfall gains from its colonies were gone, Spain became, and remained, one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.
• 
Worse, the disdainful attitudes toward productive work that developed during the centuries of Spain's "golden age" became a negative legacy to future generations, in both Spain itself and in its overseas offshoot societies in Latin America.
• 
Some welfare states' windfall gains have enabled a large segment of their own citizens to live in subsidized idleness while many jobs stigmatized as "menial" are taken over by foreigners.
• 
Often these initially poor foreigners rise up the economic scale, while the subsidized domestic poor fail to rise.
• 
Do we really want more of that?
• 
British historian Arnold Toynbee proposed the "challenge and response" thesis that human beings advance when there are challenges they must meet.
      A civil rights hero?  Muhammad Ali was anything but  (JWR 06/08/2016)
• 
As a champion in the ring, Ali may have been without equal.  But when his idolizers go beyond boxing and sports, exalting him as a champion of civil rights and tolerance, they spout pernicious nonsense.
• 
everyone from the NBA commissioner ("Ali transcended sports with his outsized personality and dedication to civil rights") to the British prime minister ("a champion of civil rights") to the junior senator from Massachusetts ("Muhammad Ali fought for civil rights .  .  .  for human rights .  .  .  for peace").
• 
Time for a reality check.
• 
It is true that in his later years, Ali lent his name and prestige to altruistic activities and worthy public appeals.
• 
But when Ali was in his prime, the uninhibited "king of the world," he was no expounder of brotherhood and racial broadmindedness.  On the contrary, he was an unabashed bigot and racial separatist and wasn't shy about saying so.
• 
In a wide-ranging 1968 interview with Bud Collins, the storied Boston Globe sports reporter, Ali insisted that was as unnatural to expect blacks and whites to live together as it would be to expect humans to live with wild animals.
• 
Collins asked: "You don't think that we can ever get along?"
• 
"I know whites and blacks cannot get along; this is nature," Ali replied.
• 
Collins wasn't sure he'd heard right.  "You like George Wallace?"
• 
"Yes, sir," said Ali.  "I like what he says.  He says Negroes shouldn't force themselves in white neighborhoods, and white people shouldn't have to move out of the neighborhood just because one Negro comes.  Now that makes sense."
• 
This was not some inexplicable aberration.  It reflected a hateful worldview that Ali, as a devotee of Elijah Muhammad and the segregationist Nation of Islam, espoused for years.
• 
"Black people should marry their own women," Ali declaimed.  "Bluebirds with bluebirds, red birds with red birds, pigeons with pigeons, eagles with eagles.  God didn't make no mistake!"
• 
In 1975 ... Ali argued vehemently in a Playboy interview that interracial couples ought to be lynched.  "A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman," he said.
• 
And it was the same for a white man making a pass at a black woman.  "We'll kill anybody who tries to mess around with our women."
• 
But suppose the black woman wanted to be with the white man, the interviewer asked.  "Then she dies," Ali answered.  "Kill her too."
• 
Ali was many fine things, but a champion of civil rights wasn't among them.  Martin Luther King at one point called him "a champion of segregation."
• 
If later in life Ali abandoned his racist extremism, that is to his credit.  It doesn't, however, make him an exemplar of brotherhood and tolerance.
• 
And it doesn't alter history: At the zenith of Ali's career, when fans by the millions hung on his every word, what he often chose to tell them was indecent and grotesque.
      Donald Trump is the response to a bullying culture  (JWR 06/06/2016)
• 
"For me personally, it's resistance against what San Francisco has been, and what I see the country becoming, in the form of ultra-PC culture.  That's where it's almost impossible to have polite or constructive political discussion.  Disagreement gets you labeled fascist, racist, bigoted, etc.  It can provoke a reaction so intense that you're suddenly an unperson to an acquaintance or friend.  ... This is a war over how dialogue in America will be shaped.  If Hillary wins, we're going to see a further tightening of PC culture.  But if Trump wins?  If Trump wins, we will have a president that overwhelmingly rejects PC rhetoric.  Even better, we will show that more than half the country rejects this insane PC regime."
• 
It's not a coincidence that when leftist protesters showed up at a conservative event at Rutgers University, students responded to the leftists' chants with "Trump!  Trump!Trump!"
• 
Political correctness is not, as some might claim, just an effort to encourage niceness.  As Gelernter notes, it's an effort to control people.  Like the Newspeak in George Orwell's 1984, the goal is to make it impossible for people to speak, or even think, unapproved thoughts.
• 
Of course, by limiting what people can think and say, political correctness has hollowed out America's universities, cheapened and distorted its politics, and served (and this last is entirely intentional) to make those who favor traditional American values like free speech feel marginalized and at risk.
• 
Almost as irritating to a lot of people, though, is the extent to which self-described "conservative" politicians, pundits and media organs have gone along.  Part of this is because PC is often misleadingly sold as politeness, and elite American conservatives are suckers for etiquette.
• 
So nobody "respectable" was willing to launch a full-scale counterattack on PC, on or off-campus. 
• 
But when "respectable" people won't talk about things that a lot of voters care about, the less-respectable will eventually rise to meet the need.  That's what Trump's doing.
• 
And a lot of people are cheering him on not so much because they're fans of Trump personally as because they're happy to see someone finally stand up to the PC bullies.
• 
Will electing Trump solve all the nation's problems?  Nope.  But, as mentioned above, it will show that more than half the country rejects the culture of political correctness, and the political class that let it take over.  And for many people, that's reason enough.
      What made so many people respond to the story of the gorilla and the little boy?  (Fox 06/03/2016)
• 
Yes, Cincinnati zoo officials shot and killed Harambe, the silver back gorilla.
• 
Yes, that decision was taken in order to protect the life of a little boy who fell into the gorilla's enclosure. 
• 
No, I am not all that troubled by this story, although the need to take down such a magnificent creature, especially due to no fault of his own, is sad.
• 
I think it's about innocence, the wish to feel in control, and the idea that in a world gone right, we would never be faced with painful choices, including ones when even doing everything a best as possible, might leave us feeling squeamish or otherwise less than happy.
• 
1.  Innocence and guilt are often not so black and white.
• 
2.  We are often less in control than we like to tell ourselves we are.
• 
3.  Under the best of circumstances, life often continues to present us difficult choices.
• 
4.  Even when we make the best possible choice, we may not feel perfectly happy.
• 
This simply is not about good vs evil, no matter how much some Harambe activists would have us believe.
• 
How often could all of us benefit from remembering how many of life's circumstances are also not so easily reduced even when we too are most tempted in that direction?
• 
... many people would be comforted by the notion that full safety is really just a matter of taking all the proper precautions.
• 
But life is full of unknowns, and we can't control all the infinite variables which shape our lives.
• 
That is no excuse for taking stupid risks, or living otherwise irresponsible lives.
• 
It simply means that we should do our best to focus on what we can directly influence, and try hard to stop worrying about the rest.
• 
After all, choosing between good and bad is actually not so hard.  People may differ about which is which, but once you make your decision about that, the rest is whole lot easier.
• 
The really tough decisions are deciding between competing goods, and those are the decisions which get more common as life improves.
• 
And finally, even when we get all of the above and manage to make what we judge to be the best possible choice, there are often unresolved questions and feelings.
• 
It's about getting past regret without pretending that everything is, was, or ever will be "perfect".
• 
It about celebrating the wisdom, if not the perfection, of a situation which is good enough for now, and hoping that tomorrow will be better still, without beating ourselves or others up too much for what wasn't great today.
      What I want you to know on Gun Violence Awareness Day  (Fox 06/02/2016)
• 
Owning and safely operating a gun saved my life.  There is no other way to interpret my situation; without my gun, I would not be able to sit here, alive and breathing, and thinking of ways to share the importance of smart gun ownership with you.
• 
I was violently attacked in my car by a man on January 26, 2016.  I am a young, 5'3 attorney who probably was seen as an easy target.
• 
My attacker mistakenly perceived me as weak and stalked me into an elevator, which took me on the slowest and scariest thirteen second ride of my life.
• 
There are some individuals that think gun owners are "trigger happy" and wanting to pull their weapons out at the first opportunity.  There is nothing further from the truth.
• 
The night I was attacked, I fought like hell for my life before reaching for my gun.  I kicked, I screamed, I had all ten fingernails ripped off and bloodied from scratching and trying to fight my way out of a literal life and death situation.
• 
Ultimately, I accessed my gun, shot my attacker multiple times, and saved my life.  He will be spending years in prison for what he did to me.
• 
Using a gun in self-protection is not a decision one makes lightly; in fact, I never dreamed that I would be forced into a situation where I would have to do so. 
• 
I owned a gun and had been trained on how to use it.  I know how to safely carry and that a gun is a serious and significant weapon; it is not to be used carelessly.
• 
What I want you to know on Gun Awareness Day is that a gun in the hands of a potential victim is not improperly placed; it can be the only thing keeping her from being brutally raped and murdered.
• 
Guns are not the problem in America; men like my attacker — who are willing to violently change one person's life for no reason except for pure evil – are the problem.
• 
Be safe at all times.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Trust your instincts.  Always be able to protect yourself.  Refuse to be a victim, and instead be a fighter and a survivor.
• 
Live to tell your tale and make a criminal regret the day he chose you as a "soft target." My gun saved my life, and one could save yours too.
      Of course you shoot the gorilla  (JWR 06/01/2016)
• 
The typical response when someone saves a small child from harm isn't, "How dare you?"
• 
But the Cincinnati Zoo has been subjected to a torrent of abuse for making the agonizing decision to shoot and kill one of its gorillas, a 17-year-old silverback named Harambe, when a 3-year-old boy fell into its enclosure.
• 
The question is: What should the Cincinnati Zoo have done when forced to choose between the welfare of a prodigious animal and a small human?
• 
This was a serious, responsible institution confronted with a life-and-death crisis, in real time and not of its devising.
• 
the child's life was potentially in danger.  This was self-evident to the shocked and dismayed witnesses, who watched Harambe drag the kid around by the ankle like a proverbial rag doll.
• 
Everything that people lamenting the shooting say about Harambe may be true: He wanted to help.  He didn't mean the child any harm.  He was merely confused.
• 
None of this means he wasn't a danger.
• 
We desperately want to anthropomorphize apes, and make them out to be the gentle giants of our imagination.
• 
Harambe was a forbiddingly strong 420-pound creature with no experience baby-sitting.  He could seriously hurt a child without even trying.
• 
Once that is acknowledged, it's clear that the zoo had no good choices.
• 
... "wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice.  That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience."
• 
In this case, the would-be human sacrifice wasn't an abstraction.  He was a 3-year-old boy.  The Cincinnati Zoo, to its credit, wasn't willing to discount his welfare, even if the decision was excruciating.
• 
It sacrificed the beast to protect the child.  In a less sentimental age, the moral calculus would be obvious.
      President Obama owes the American people an apology  (Fox 06/01/2016)
• 
... I'm not a fan of apologies, or in this case the appearance of an apology — especially if you're apologizing for responding to something terrible the other guy did.
• 
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.  They started the war, we merely ended it.  They committed terrible atrocities against our soldiers and American POW's throughout the war. 
• 
Our nuclear bombs didn't just take lives.  They saved many American (and ironically, Japanese) lives.
• 
Experts estimated the invasion of Japan would have cost at least 1,000,000 lives.  Those atomic bombs actually saved far more lives than they cost.
• 
... I'm not a fan of even the appearance of apologizing for those atomic bombs, unless of course Japan's prime minister is willing to come to Hawaii to apologize to the American victims of Pearl Harbor.
• 
But I found the response from Bill Maher's liberal viewers interesting.  I received many death threats... and people wishing me "a long slow painful death."
• 
Some lectured me on all the apologies we owe to Japanese survivors, American Indians, and of course, African-American slaves.
• 
I suddenly realized it's time for Obama's victims — middle class Americans — to speak up.  Here is my answer to liberals across the country.
• 
Obama and his socialist cabal should apologize to every middle class American for the harm they've done to the U.S.  economy; upward mobility; middle class jobs (there are none) and the American Dream (it's dead).
• 
They've created an unimaginable DISASTER.  They've destroyed the greatest nation...the greatest economy...the greatest economic system (capitalism)... and greatest middle class in world history.
• 
Obama should also apologize for adding well over $10 trillion to the national debt (by the time he leaves office), which could lead to a severe debt crisis and the eventual collapse of the U.S.  economy, but at a minimum will certainly cripple the quality of life of our children and grandchildren.
• 
Obama should also apologize for the lies and fraud of ObamaCare.  He lied when he said "If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance." Really?  I lost mine.  So did millions of other Americans.  We are owed an apology. 
• 
But the architects of ObamaCare are owed a prison sentence for fraud — because apologies alone are not enough.
• 
Obama should also apologize for the disastrous effects of ObamaCare — which has doubled and tripled premiums, co-pays, deductibles and prescription costs, killed quality high wage middle class jobs, as well as made it almost impossible to start or run a successful small business.
• 
Obama should apologize for the vicious IRS attacks – for trying to persecute people for their political and religious beliefs.
• 
Obama should apologize for cutting $2.5 billion for veterans, while adding over $4 billion to the budget for the importing of Syrian migrants into the USA.
• 
Obama should apologize for demanding Congress allocate almost $18,000 for every illegal alien child or teen that enters America.  That's $3000 more than a American-born senior citizen gets for Social Security- even though they paid into the system.
• 
Obama should also apologize for the disastrous economy he has created with his radical leftist agenda...
• 
Obama should apologize for a nation where more people collect government welfare checks than work in the private sector.
• 
Obama should apologize for the fact that under his leadership, more businesses are closing each day than opening — for the first time in America's history.
• 
And Hillary should apologize for saying "Businesses don't create jobs, government does."
• 
As soon as Obama, Hillary, their socialist cabal and every guilt-ridden white liberal apologizes for all that...
• 
Then and only then should we worry about things done 70 and 100 and 200 years ago.
• 
Obama, Hillary, Bernie and their socialist cabal are trying to ruin a great thing called America.
• 
They won't rest until America isn't exceptional and we all live a crappy life of equality (i.e.  misery).
      Socialism for the Uninformed  (JWR 05/31/2016)
• 
Socialism sounds great.  It has always sounded great.  And it will probably always continue to sound great.
• 
It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.
• 
... people who attribute income inequality to capitalists exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts — such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.
• 
Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left.  What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.
• 
... the very idea of subjecting their pet notions to the test of hard facts will probably not even occur to those who are cheering for socialism and for other bright ideas of the political left.
• 
How many of the people who are demanding an increase in the minimum wage have ever bothered to check what actually happens when higher minimum wages are imposed? 
• 
Most low-wage jobs are entry-level jobs that young people move up out of, after acquiring work experience and a track record that makes them eligible for better jobs.  But you can't move up the ladder if you don't get on the ladder.
• 
The great promise of socialism is something for nothing.  It is one of the signs of today's dumbed-down education that so many college students seem to think that the cost of their education should — and will — be paid by raising taxes on "the rich."
• 
Here again, just a little check of the facts would reveal that higher tax rates on upper-income earners do not automatically translate into more tax revenue coming in to the government.  Often high tax rates have led to less revenue than lower tax rates.
• 
In a globalized economy, high tax rates may just lead investors to invest in other countries with lower tax rates.  That means that jobs created by those investments will be overseas.
• 
None of this is rocket science.  But you do have to stop and think — and that is what too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach their students to do.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Cincinnati zoo tragedy: Why do some care more about a gorilla than a child?  (Fox 05/31/2016)
• 
This weekend a hulking 450-pound gorilla almost killed a child that fell into its enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo.
• 
Haunting video shows the gorilla tossing and dragging the 4-year-old child like a rag doll.
• 
The animal was necessarily killed to save the child. 
• 
The reaction was more disturbing than the incident.
• 
Instead of praising the heroic act of the security team that saved the boy in what was described as a life-threatening situation, the child's parents were lambasted, the zoo officials demonized, and western lowland gorilla mourned.
• 
Zoo visitors even left flowers for Harambe the gorilla and thousands on social media called it 'murder', with a 'Justice for Harambe' Facebook group quickly garnering over 90,000 likes.
• 
The mother was watching several children at the time.  She was heard telling the child not to go into the enclosure.  The child didn't listen.  This could have happened to any parent.  It was an accident.  One eyewitness described it all as happening in an instant. 
• 
It is disheartening that an endangered gorilla species was killed.  But a child almost died.  In that context concern for the gorilla needs to take a backseat.
• 
There was nothing needless about the shooting.  It was absolutely necessary.
• 
According to an incident report, the gorilla was 'violently dragging and throwing the child.'
• 
A tranquilizer may not have acted fast enough to save the boy, and may have even enraged the gorilla further.
• 
These types of incidences have ended in tragedy.  In 2012, a 2-year-old boy was horrifically mauled to death dead by a pack of wild African dogs at a Pittsburgh zoo.
• 
Gorillas are not docile creatures.  They are the largest of all primates, and are many times stronger than humans.  There is even research and evidence that this particular species of gorilla sometimes kills other gorilla infants.
• 
In a ridiculous attempt at attributing human qualities to animals The Gorilla Organization suggested that the zoo should have negotiated with the Gorilla offering it "food," "treats," "pineapple" or "some kind of fruit."
• 
Animal lover and expert Jack Hanna even defended the zoos actions, describing how he's seen gorillas "take a green coconut, which you can't bust open with a sledgehammer and squish it..." with ease.
• 
"You're dealing with either human life or animal life here."
• 
Showing compassion and empathy toward animals is certainly noble especially when it comes to a majestic and endangered gorilla.
• 
But the mentality that ascribes Disney-like human qualities to animals by prioritizing a gorilla over the saving of a child has consequences.
• 
It is the reason people seemed more outraged over Cecil the lion's death, than the savage rape and murder committed by the likes of Boka Haram. 
• 
As a parent of two toddlers my heart goes out to the family that not only had to witness a traumatic near-death encounter of a child where the mother was heard telling the sobbing boy "Mommy loves you!" but also had to endure the vicious attacks following the incident. 
      Rick Perry: The truth about 'American Sniper' Chris Kyle  (Fox 05/30/2016)
• 
Despite the high regard in which Americans have held the military for generations, there is a lot about the military that those who haven't served don't quite understand.
• 
That gap of understanding between the protected and their protectors is typically bridged by mutual respect, but can also be a gutter in which liars and character assassins slither.
• 
The most recent snake to peek its head up from the muck is a writing team for a leftwing publication whose only knowledge of the military was likely acquired while Googling derogatory slogans to scrawl on protest signs.
• 
In a stunning display of inadequate research, slanted interpretation of valid data and some overly dramatic language, The Intercept, little more than a click-hungry website, took aim at the reputation of a bona fide American hero.
• 
At issue was a disparity between Kyle's account in his book, "American Sniper," records obtained from a seemingly indifferent Navy through a Freedom of Information Act request and Kyle's official DD-214.
• 
The first mentioned two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars, the Navy recalled one Silver Star and 3 Bronze Stars and the DD-214 credited him with TWO Silver Stars and SIX Bronze Stars.
• 
If there is any inaccuracy in Kyle's account it's that he didn't take ENOUGH credit for his awards.
• 
... a DD-214 is THE definitive record of a person's time in the military, used to prove the authenticity, duration and character of said service.
• 
The official name for the form is Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty and veterans learn early on to keep a copy handy.
• 
This article is part of a disturbing trend in the left-leaning press to undermine the heroism of men and women who are willing to risk their lives in the defense of our nation's freedom.
• 
For Viet Nam-era veterans, this casually gleeful character assassination is an unpleasant reminder of a time when our military was attacked and undermined by critics on the left.
• 
Perhaps it's a byproduct of nearly eight years of an arch-liberal in the Oval Office combined with an American population increasingly disconnected from the men and women who serve in the military.
• 
I am calling on people of conscience to join me in calling for the retraction and deletion of the offending article and reprimand of the Navy personnel who have fed this misperception with their lackadaisical handling of the original information request.
• 
This request might seem odd from someone who is committed to the constitutional freedoms our military fights to defend, but freedom of speech and deliberate libel are two entirely different things.
      A nation of Peter Pans: We have created a country filled with perpetual children  (Fox 05/26/2016)
• 
... men and women between the ages of 18 and 34 are now more likely to be living with their parents than living on their own or in any other living situation...
• 
This is the first time in American history that young people — 32.1 percent of millennials — have been most likely to live with their parents.
• 
I think the trend is a calamity that reflects the erosion of real self-determination in young people, fueled by their unfounded, rocketing, wafer-thin self-esteem.
• 
We have created a nation filled with too many perpetual children — Peter and Patty Pans — who were brought up getting trophies for participating in sports, instead of winning, protected from the supposed horrors of being ranked by grades and scores and sold corrosive message by the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that everyone deserves every kind of support, regardless of the level of education they have or the work they put forward.
• 
These Peter and Patty Pans are so addicted to drugs like Facebook and Twitter that blow up their egos and make them into fake celebrities that they can feel pretty good for a long time, even when their lives are going pretty badly.
• 
That's plenty to make them feel special and attractive, even when they're going to sleep in bedrooms they've occupied since kindergarten.
• 
If the drugs of technology pushed by Mark Zuckerberg and friends aren't enough, they can get always high on marijuana.
• 
This is Barack Obama's America.  A super-strong central government, inhaling more and more power, while our young people are hobbled and inhaling more and more weed.
• 
One millennial after another comes to me to reclaim what should always have been their due — their birthrights as real people, ready to take on real challenges, with real intention.
• 
When they show up, we have to conquer their depression and anxiety and drug use — all skyrocketing in their age group, partly because no adult human being actually wants to be coddled like a child by parents or one's government.  It wears on people and leaves them dispirited and panicked and looking anywhere for relief.
• 
It is the restoration of God-given potential now being short-circuited in an epidemic way by the equivalent of Peter Pan's pixies who make our kids think they can fly by inhaling magic pixels or magic potions or magical stories about how everyone should get everything for free, forever.
      Only Islam can save us from Islam  (INN 05/23/2016)
• 
... Petraeus complained about the "inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam".
• 
The former general warned that restricting Muslim immigration would "undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims."
• 
... Obama claimed that restricting Muslim immigration "would alienate the very communities at home and abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism."
• 
If we alienate Muslims, who is going to help us fight Muslim terrorism?
• 
... we are told that we have to ally with the "moderate" Muslim governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fight the Muslim terrorists whom they sponsor. 
• 
Obama's "partners" against "violent extremism" have included Muslim Brotherhood terror supporters at home and abroad.  He backed Al Qaeda's LIFG in Libya, Iran's Shiite terror militias in Iraq, Al Qaeda allies in Syria and those are just a few of the worst examples of his partners against extremism.
• 
Petraeus and Obama view terrorists and state sponsors of terror as important allies.  Their policies have led to multiple terrorist attacks against Americans.
• 
And they still insist that we need Islamic terrorists as allies to protect us from Islamic terrorists.
• 
We need moderate theocrats to protect us from extremist theocrats.
• 
We need the Saudis and Pakistanis to save us from the terrorists whom they arm and fund.
• 
But it's Muslim immigration where their argument really shines.
• 
The United States faces a terror threat because a certain percentage of the Muslim population will kill Americans.
• 
Every increase in the Muslim population also increases the number of potential terrorists.  Muslim immigration increases the terrorism risk to Americans every single year.
• 
When you're in a hole, stop digging.  Muslim populations are a hole.  Immigration is the shovel.  Dig deep enough and you're six feet under.
• 
Even if the mainstream narrative about a moderate majority and extremist minority were true, how could the cost of Islamic terrorism justify the expansion of even moderate Muslim communities?
• 
9/11 cost us $3.3 trillion, over 10,000 dead, a national loss of privacy and traumas inflicted on millions.  What could any number of moderate Muslims possibly contribute to outweigh all that? 
• 
And instead of trying to make amends, Muslim groups like CAIR and ISNA have waged a relentless campaign to undermine national security and defame Americans.
• 
But the Obama/Petraeus narrative about needing partners in Muslim communities in America implicitly concedes that Muslim communities at home, like the Saudis and Pakistanis abroad, create environments in which Islamic terrorists can safely operate.
• 
They admit the existence of Islamic no-go zones where the FBI and local law enforcement are ineffective so that we have to treat parts of Michigan or New Jersey like Pakistan or Iraq, trying to work with untrustworthy allies to gain intelligence on enemy territory.
• 
This argument is terrible enough in the Middle East.  But it's horrifying in the Midwest.
• 
It's bad enough that we sign off on "partners" who finance terrorists and then pretend to fight them in Syria or Afghanistan, do we really want to be doing this in Illinois or California? 
• 
The real problem, as Obama and Petraeus indirectly concede, is that Muslim communities create an ideal environment for Muslim terrorists.  The last thing that we should be doing is building them up.
• 
The obvious question would be to wonder why we need them in the first place to help us cope with a problem that wouldn't exist without them.
• 
Obama insists that we need Muslim immigration so that Muslims will help us fight Muslim terror.  But if we didn't have Muslim immigration, we wouldn't need Muslims to help us fight Muslim terrorism.
• 
Muslim immigration isn't a solution.  It's a problem posing as a solution.  And we are told that we need to make the problem bigger in order to solve it.
• 
Building a counterterrorism strategy around creating more terrorism is not a strategy, it's a suicide mission.
• 
Using Muslim immigration to fix a terrorism problem caused by Muslim immigration is like drilling a hole in a boat and then trying to plug it with water.
• 
"It is precisely because the danger of Islamist extremism is so great that politicians here and abroad who toy with anti-Muslim bigotry must consider the effects of their rhetoric," Petraeus insists.
• 
It's a compelling argument, but not in the way that he thinks it is.
• 
If Muslims can't handle the full spectrum of argument, debate and namecalling that is a part of life in a free country without turning homicidal, then something has to go.
• 
According to Petraeus, it's freedom of speech.  According to others, it's Muslim migration.
• 
Americans will have to decide whether they would rather have freedom of speech or Muslim immigration.  Because even the advocates for Muslim migration are increasingly willing to admit that we can't have both.  The choice is ours.
• 
Either we can hope that Islam will save us from Islam.  And that Muslims will protect us from other Muslims.
• 
Or we can try to protect ourselves and save our lives and our freedoms from Islam.
      Obama's gender warning: The fundamental transform of our country is accelerating  (Fox 05/13/2016)
• 
"I am not a dictator, I am the president." — President Obama
• 
Standing on principle, not to mention common sense, is so rare these days that when someone does it they make headlines.
• 
That's because you can quickly be labeled a "bigot" if you oppose a lot of the sludge dumped on us by the secular left, and few can withstand the onslaught.
• 
... Washington is "telling every government agency and every company that employs more than 15 people that men should be allowed to use a women's locker room, restroom or shower facility."
• 
If you are a woman reading this, how would you feel about showering with a naked man?
• 
If you are a man who has daughters, would you be OK with allowing them to use a women's restroom knowing that a man could be in there?
• 
What about school gyms?  Are you fine with having your daughter changing and showering with a boy who believes he's a girl?
• 
What happened to the right to privacy, so revered by the progressive left?
• 
Does the fact that we are even having this debate say something about the state of our culture and the attempts by secularists to undermine what remains of its creaking foundations, traditions and what used to be known as common sense?
• 
Are morals and ethics now up for grabs, depending on which group makes the most noise and promises the most votes?
• 
Perhaps Loretta Lynch and her deputy should lead by example and shower with a transgender male.
• 
Even better, how about first lady Michelle Obama?
• 
I'm betting that neither Lynch nor the first lady would go that far.
• 
In fact, I suspect that very few on the left would want to live under many of the laws and dictates they like to impose on the rest of us.
• 
Have we gone mad?  The question all but answers itself.
• 
Gov.  McCrory has already directed state agencies to make reasonable accommodations to transgender people by installing single-occupancy restrooms.
• 
North Carolina also allows private companies to set their own bathroom policies, but that is not what the Obama administration wants.
• 
It wants to "fundamentally transform the United States of America."
• 
It's one of the few promises the president has managed to keep.
• 
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Don't hate Donald Trump.  Here's why it's time for a narcissistic president  (Fox 05/11/2016)
• 
I think we need the next president to display a healthy dose of narcissism and share it with the American people.
• 
Donald Trump may have unwieldy love for self, but I believe he also has unwieldy love for America.  And for him, these two passions may well be intertwined.
• 
In loving his freedom to speak bluntly, in loving his freedom to own property, in loving his freedom to unleash his creative force for profit and in loving his ability to hire the best people to work their hardest on worthy projects, I believe he also loves these core elements of America, the American economy and the American dream. 
• 
It is no surprise that Trump has stated his policy will put "America First." He is as unapologetically a creation of American capitalism as he is his own father's son – yes, blessed with an inheritance, but inspired, rather than hobbled, by it.
• 
Narcissists can be charismatic and unrelenting and singularly focused on achieving their goals.  Is that a horrible description of someone tasked with leading the free world?
• 
We are emerging from Barack Obama's two terms, during which he cultivated a sense of self-loathing in the American people.
• 
He did this by embarking on an apology tour, refusing to completely and clearly repudiate the reverend who preached "God damn America," encouraging Americans to doubt the fundamental decency of the police officers who serve them, pitting the rich against the poor and minorities against whites and taking no exception to his wife's statement that (prior to her husband's political ascendency) she had never felt proud to be an American.
• 
Donald Trump's prodigious, intertwined love of self and love of country may be the antidote to the poison of self-loathing Barack Obama injected into the very heart of America. 
• 
Strong medicine, Trump is, and not without side effects in the body politic.
• 
He enrages those who would ignore our boundaries and our laws.  He offends those who attack him and who then seem shocked to be hit back – and much harder. 
• 
He worries those who see that he might actually tell American creditors who manipulated their currencies and purposefully injured our economy that they may not be handed all the ill-gotten gains they expected. 
• 
See, if you hurt America, I think Donald Trump feels it like a kick to the gut.  I think Barack Obama feels like we have it coming.
• 
God uses everyone.  Maybe a narcissistic leader who clearly believes in his own destiny can remind us of America's manifest destiny.
      Dr.  Manny: Trump is the right candidate to tackle America's drug problem  (Fox 05/11/2016)
• 
America is in the midst of a drug and mental health epidemic.
• 
The crisis before us has spiraled completely out of control under the Obama administration, and the numbers are staggering.
• 
While the headlines tend to focus on the rising levels of heroin addiction, this one drug is not acting alone.
• 
All around us opioids, prescription drugs and other illegally purchased drugs are claiming the lives of mothers, fathers, children, neighbors and teachers at alarming rates.
• 
If we do not act quickly to get a handle on these issues, they will endanger our future generations to come.
• 
... we will need the voice of a true unifying leader to make any one policy work.  I believe that voice is Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
• 
Before I am attacked for believing that Trump is the best-suited candidate to tackle this issue, let us first consider the facts.
• 
He said his immigration policies will stop the drugs from reaching our small towns.
• 
Many scoff when they hear about Trump touting a wall at the border, but they fail to realize that the wall is more than just a physical presence.
• 
He's not going to build the wall and walk away, it will be manned with expert intelligence and security to improve efficiency, which is the only way we will conquer this issue.
• 
It is ignorant for us to argue that border security issues are not largely contributing to the drug crisis.  It seems like every week a new tunnel is discovered or haul of drugs is seized by border security.
• 
The very last thing that the drug abuse epidemic needs is another career Washington bureaucrat.
• 
In typical Washington fashion, the issue goes before a committee that takes months to talk about it before creating a subcommittee to plan policies that will then be reviewed by yet another committee before any action is even taken.
• 
I believe that Trump is the type of manager who, through his business experience, has learned to listen, and then very quickly execute an idea to get immediate results.
• 
How many more headlines do we have to read regarding the overdose-related death of an entertainer, celebrity or powerful businessman before we start acting for the hundreds of thousands that don't receive the media attention?
• 
... what about the hundreds who pour into emergency rooms with near-fatal overdoses, or the cops who administer the antidote on a daily basis?  How do we acknowledge them?
• 
This hidden cancer of drug abuse must be brought to light, and I think Trump is the boisterous leader to do that.
• 
I know that we elect presidents and political leaders in this country sometimes out of individual concerns.
• 
Here's what's so dangerous about the drug epidemic: It leaks into every other issue.
• 
You can bet that it's affecting our economy, and you can be sure that it feeds into illegal activity which ultimately feeds into potential enemies of this country.
• 
Don't fool yourself, this is as important of an issue as any other in this election cycle, and I believe in Trump more than any other candidate to tackle it.
      Obama’s Iran deal as sold through fiction via Ben Rhodes  (INN 05/09/2016)
• 
Ben who?  Ben Rhodes, that's who, and it was Ben Rhodes who bamboozled America, Israel and the entire world to get Obama's Iran Nuke Deal a green light.
• 
Rhodes was the point man assigned the task of selling the deal through falsehoods, like assuring us that the mullahs were reasonable people.
• 
Yes, first came the guarantee that Iran would abide.  Next came the threat aimed at dissenters.  We would be accused of war mongering.
• 
This entire bill of goods was manufactured by a man who wants to try his hand in the game of fiction, and so here we are, living in a world of pretend as hours ago, in the real world, Iran set off yet another test missile aimed at anywhere, but first Israel.
• 
There is nothing wrong with fiction so long as it's kept within a novel, but now see how we've been manipulated eyes wide open.
• 
Simply, he used the simpleminded news media to do the job for him – for himself, for Kerry and for Obama, and there was nothing to it but to do it, and why was it so simple?
• 
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years-old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns."
• 
"They literally know nothing."
• 
So next time you read about "Israeli occupation" or "Israeli apartheid," recognize that you are being fooled by people making it up.
• 
"We created an echo chamber.  They [the media] were saying things that validated what we have given them to say."
• 
Plainly, this administration has no respect for the news media.  This is logical.
• 
But it likewise has no respect and only contempt for the rest us.
• 
A man who can't write well enough to get published, gets to run our world.
• 
These are the Liberals we elected, Ladies and Gentlemen.
• 
It's their world and we're just living in it as uninvited guests.
      My fellow Republicans, if you don't vote for Trump you should never be trusted again  (Fox 05/09/2016)
• 
Of course Trump is better than Hillary.  Of course all Republicans need to unite behind Trump.  Of course he's a conservative.  I'll prove it to you.
• 
1.  Trump isn't just conservative.  On important issues, he's the most conservative Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.
• 
2.  Trump is the perfect candidate to lead the conservative movement.
• 
3.  Trump is our generation's Reagan.
• 
How do I come to these conclusions? 
• 
First, remember the famous saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Please stop saying Trump isn't a conservative.
• 
He may not be a "pure" or perfect conservative.  On that I agree.  But his views on the important issues of our day drive liberals into fits of rage and insanity.
• 
The last person I saw despised this much by liberals was Ronald Reagan.
• 
Liberals hate Trump with such rage that they want to hurt him.  They want to ruin him.  They even openly want to see him assassinated.
• 
Or haven't you seen the thousands of online and social media comments from liberals hoping Trump gets shot?
• 
Or haven't you seen the cemetery headstone "R.I.P.  Donald Trump" put up in New York's Central Park?
• 
Liberals call Trump the same names and descriptions as they used to call Reagan.
• 
They say he's an intellectual lightweight, clown, racist, extreme, stupid, ignorant, unqualified to be President, and of course, we can never allow his finger near the nuclear button.
• 
Don't forget "Hitler and Nazi." The exact same words that my ultra-liberal classmates at Columbia used to describe Reagan.
• 
So I ask you fellow conservatives... isn't this a good sign? Shouldn't you like the guy that liberals hate?
• 
If liberals despise Trump so much they are threatening to leave for Canada, shouldn't we all thank God for Trump and offer to pay for their plane tickets?
• 
You may think Trump is not a conservative, but liberals are certain he's their enemy.  They're sure certain he's a conservative.  They're certain he's the worst thing since Reagan.
• 
I agree Trump is not a pure or traditional conservative.  That's why he can win this election vs Hillary Clinton.
• 
A pure conservative position on every issue is never going to win national elections in today's America.  We need a conservative, mixed with populist and economic nationalist — always America first, presented in a fun, entertaining way.  That's Trump._
• 
Lastly we come to issues.  I care about seven of them above all else.  These are the seven issues that can instantly save America, capitalism, the U.S.  economy and the middle class.
• 
Everything and anything else is a distraction, all other issues must be put on the back-burner.  On these seven issues, Trump is as conservative as any candidate in modern history!
• 
1.  Taxes.  Trump's flat tax plan lowers tax rates even lower than Reagan. 
• 
2.  Regulations.  As a businessman I think regulations are even worse than taxes.  Our entire economy and middle class jobs have been decimated by Obama's regulations.
• 
3.  ObamaCare.  Trump wants to repeal and replace Obamacare and give Americans more health freedom. 
• 
4.  Build the wall, secure the border and end sanctuary cities.  Need I say more — this is Trump's signature issue.  His views on illegal immigration define perfection.  If he does nothing as president but stop the flow of illegal immigration, he'll be remembered as an American hero.  Just this one point can save the American economy from bankruptcy, ruin and crippling debt crisis.
• 
5.  Stop the insanity of allowing in thousands of Syrian refugees and Muslim migrants.  Why is this so important?  So that we don't become the EU — bankrupt, suffering crime and rape epidemics, and experiencing nonstop terrorist attacks.  This view isn't just conservative — it's commonsense and self-preservation.
• 
6.  Always "America First." Every single policy- domestic, foreign, trade and immigration- should be based on what's best for America, American citizens, American taxpayers, and American jobs.  I've waited my entire life to hear these words come out of a potential president's mouth.
• 
7.  Investigate and prosecute politicians who commit crimes against the American people.  What if the only thing Trump accomplishes is clean up the D.C.  cesspool, hold politicians accountable and bring criminals to justice? 
• 
Yes, folks Donald Trump is a conservative.  No, not a pure or perfect conservative.  But on the issues that count most, he'll be the most conservative president since Reagan.
• 
How can I be so sure?  Just mention Trump's name to any liberal and watch their reaction.
      Parents sue feds for forcing school to let transgenders in girls locker room  (Fox 05/06/2016)
• 
Do the rights of boys who identify as girls trump the rights of girls who are born girls?
• 
"The girls are mortified.  They are in a constant state of fear that their bodies are going to be exposed to a male in these settings.  It's a constant state of stress and anxiety for them."
• 
In 2015 the DOE warned the Township High School District 211 in Palatine that unless they gave a biologically male student unfettered access to the girls' locker rooms – they would revoke $6 million in federal funding.
• 
In other words, the Obama administration committed a de facto act of extortion.
• 
"Every school district in America has gotten the message.  The DOE is starting to enforce it through threats of revoking funding.  We get calls every week from parents and school administrators asking what can we do?  They are caving because they know the federal government is going to come after them."
• 
"Every day these girls go to school, they experience embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, fear, apprehension, stress, degradation, and loss of dignity because they will have to use the locker room and restroom with a biological male."
• 
See related Women and Children First! (Glenn McCoy, 04/25/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
      Not happy about Donald Trump's triumph?  Here's who to blame for his success  (Fox 05/04/2016)
• 
... who is to blame for the rise of Donald Trump?  Is he the "monster" the elites say he is?
• 
I am no fan of Trump and wish there were better candidates for president from both parties, but the major fault for his rise as the "presumptive nominee" of the Republican Party in 2016 can be laid at the feet of the very elites who are so vociferous in their condemnation of him.
• 
It is they who have presided over the horrific national debt, spending as if there were no tomorrow.  They are not good stewards of the money we make and they take. 
• 
It is the elites who have started wars we should not have fought and then not fought them to win with too many "rules of engagement" that only guarantee stalemate, or victory for the other side.
• 
They so penalize initiative that if today's OSHA regulations had been applied to Wilbur and Orville Wright the two visionaries would never have emerged from their Ohio bicycle shop, much less flown for the first time at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
• 
The career politicians, the lobbyists, the lawyers, the self-serving institution that government has become (instead of the constitutionally limited, people-serving institution it was originally created to be) have fueled the rise of Donald Trump.
• 
... Trump projects love for America and increasing numbers of voters, who also love America, are captivated by his love song, even if he sings it off key.
• 
When former House Speaker John Boehner refers to Sen.  Ted Cruz as "Lucifer," it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
• 
What did Boehner do as speaker, other than cut deals with Sens.  Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy and kiss former Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the cheek as she handed him the gavel?
• 
Voters gave Republicans a majority in both houses of Congress and they did almost nothing with it.
      'Make America Mexico Again': Why Americans are fed up with illegals  (Fox 05/02/2016)
• 
There is something a bit unsettling about watching violent, foul-mouthed protesters waving the Mexican flag on American soil.
• 
Over the weekend, Hispanic children lined the streets in Fort Wayne, Indiana – hurling filthy insults at Donald Trump supporters.
• 
Video captured images of the angry protesters wearing sombreros and holding signs that read, "Brown Pride."
• 
What kind of a parent would allow their child to behave that way in public?
• 
A similar protest turned violent last week in Southern California – as a horde of illegals and their supporters violently attacked Trump supporters, police and even a horse.
• 
Cole Bartiromo, identified by local media as a Trump supporter, needed a half-dozen stiches after the mob bashed open his head.
• 
The California mob spilled into the streets – blocking roadways and smashing police cars.
• 
They intended to shut down a Trump rally.  They intended to silence Mr.  Trump and his supporters.
• 
They were angry about the wall he plans to build – to secure our border from the invading *horde* of illegals.  They were angry about Mr.  Trump speaking the truth – about how illegals are killing Americans – on American soil.
• 
One of the most disturbing images in recent days came from California – a small child – holding a sign.  It read, "Make America Mexico Again."
• 
There was a time in this nation's history when having 13 million people breach your border would have been considered an invasion.  We used to fight wars over such a hostile act.
• 
But these days instead of repelling the invaders, the Obama administration gave them food stamps, free health care, and a voter registration card.
• 
We've been invaded and our government has provided aid and comfort to the enemy.
• 
In both Indiana and California the protesters tried to bully and intimidate law-abiding Americans into silent submission.
• 
The American taxpayers have reached a boiling point.  We are tired of illegals taking American jobs.  We are tired of illegals living off our tax dollars.  We are tired of illegals causing mayhem in our streets.
• 
And more than anything, we are tired of lawmakers who refuse to defend American sovereignty.
• 
And we want a president who will put American lives first.
• 
And if I see one more foul-mouthed protester waving a Mexican flag on American soil – I'll personally donate a pile of bricks to help build Mr.  Trump's wall.
• 
See related Demand Work (Paul Nowak, 04/04/2006) cartoon from USA picture album
      Want to know why Trump's winning?  'It's [still] the economy, stupid'  (Fox 04/29/2016)
• 
Why is Trump winning?  Why is he striking a chord with so many Americans? 
• 
It's the economy, stupid. 
• 
We are in an economic disaster.  And it can get worse.  Much worse.
• 
If someone who thinks just like Obama is elected, we could slide into economic Armageddon.
• 
America's economy could smash to the ground like Humpty Dumpty — into a million pieces, we can never put back together again.
• 
Consumers don't want to spend money anymore.  Investors don't want to invest anymore (at least not in small business).  No one wants to hire anymore.  No one wants to pay bills on time anymore.
• 
People that I know and trust for many years are using home equity loans to pay their employee payrolls.  They are using credit cards to pay taxes.  They have no idea how to pay their massive health insurance premiums caused by Obamacare.  My friends and business associates are in trouble.  Deep trouble.
• 
What was the number one issue for a large majority of Republican voters?  The economy and jobs.
• 
There was no close second.  Even Trump's signature issue of immigration was at the bottom of their list.
• 
The voters are scared to death about this economy, jobs and the future of middle class America.
• 
But it's not all voters.  It's just Republican voters.
• 
We know Obama, Hillary and the mainstream media are lying about "economic recovery." There is no recovery.  We have been living in an 8-year-long Obama Great Depression.
• 
Yes, those living in New York (Wall Street), San Francisco (Silicon Valley) and Washington, D.C.  (government jobs and contracts) are fat and happy.
• 
But everywhere else in-between, the people are in severe trouble.  We are scared.  We are hurting.  We know this is getting worse.
• 
Republican voters voted for Donald Trump because:
• 
A.  They don't trust any politician to save us, or to change the situation.
• 
B.  They understand only a capitalist billionaire businessman can possibly turn this nightmare around.
• 
They know Trump has failed at a few businesses — and they don't care.  At least he failed with his own money, not the taxpayers! What a refreshing change.
• 
C.  And interestingly, maybe those failures make Trump the perfect guy to turnaround the U.S.  economy.
• 
The vast majority of Obama, Hillary and Bernie supporters belong to one of four categories:
• 
A.  They work for someone else.  They collect a safe weekly paycheck, without ever having to worry where the money comes from.
• 
B.  They work for government, or collect a pension from government for NOT working.
• 
C.  They collect a welfare or entitlement check (or many different checks) from government.
• 
D.  They are in school, or college, or broke and jobless living in mommy and daddy's basement eating Doritos, while watching Jerry Springer.  They've never earned a serious check, let alone signed the front of one.  They understand nothing about money or the economy.
• 
So yes, Republicans and Democrats do live in different worlds.
• 
That accounts for most Republicans supporting Donald Trump with fervor and passion and enthusiasm.
• 
And virtually all Democrats despising him and being repulsed by him.
      ISIS: What Trump, Hillary, Cruz, Sanders and Kasich aren't telling you  (Fox 04/29/2016)
• 
Last November, shortly after a CIA drone strike killed the infamous Jihadi John in Raqqa, Secretary of State John Kerry got behind the microphones and gleefully pronounced to ISIS that "your days are numbered and you will be defeated."
• 
Good luck, Mr.  Secretary, with your melodramatic and shallow statement made meaningless by subsequent events in San Bernardino, Paris, Brussels, and less publicized ISIS inspired attacks in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
• 
Secretary Kerry's empty words are now echoed by Donald Trump, who in his long awaited speech on foreign policy stated "And then there's ISIS.  I have a simple message for them.  Their days are numbered."
• 
He went on to say "I won't tell them where and I won't tell them how.  We must as, a nation, be more unpredictable.  But they're going to be gone.  And soon."
• 
Even if Trump becomes our new president, beefs up the military as he has promised, forms stronger alliances with friends in the region, and unleashes our power, however much he may have enhanced it, no amount of effort by our military, our diplomats, or any forged coalitions President Trump could cobble together will ensure that ISIS is "gone".
• 
Trump's optimistic pronouncement about the numbered days of ISIS is unsurprising, perhaps spurred by the constant Pentagon P.R.  bulletins claiming success against ISIS.
• 
The flow of jihadi recruits has "slowed dramatically" according to a senior Obama general serving in Baghdad.  Depending on perspective, that may or may not be a good thing.
• 
When radical Islamists travel to Iraq or Syria, they head for the battlefield.  Once there they become part of a mass of martyrdom-seeking ISIS soldiers who we can pinpoint, target, and eliminate.
• 
When they don't travel to the region they stay in their home countries, simmering in jihadi hate, eager to glean inspiration and to learn killing tactics from the internet - to be acted upon whenever they wish. 
• 
A better campaign statement regarding ISIS would be one that's totally honest with the American people – such as, "ISIS is here and likely to be here for a long time.  But we will continue to pursue them in a relentless and unforgiving way."
• 
Any ISIS flag, no matter where it flies, should be a target.  We shouldn't have to wait for a platoon of non-combatant military lawyers to fret and anguish as to whether it's a viable target.
• 
We didn't win World War II because of lawyers.  We won because of leaders like General Patton, whose motto was ‘attack, attack, attack'.
• 
Trump will be reviled by the left and much of the international community if he eviscerates the rules of engagement imposed by both Bush and Obama and unleashes the hounds of war.
• 
And if he doesn't, every ISIS attack, here or abroad, will be laid at his feet as a reminder of his hollow words.
      Obama's constant meddling is killing us, America.  We need leadership, not tinkering  (Fox 04/22/2016)
• 
I have nothing against this gun-toting abolitionist; I have everything against President Obama's continued rattling of the nation's cage.
• 
I object to his ongoing efforts to "transform" and "modernize" our country, authoring one divisive measure after another, at a time when he should be restoring our confidence.
• 
The aftermath of the financial crisis, the stalemate in Congress and increased threats from Islamic terrorists have dulled our optimism.
• 
We need leadership, not tinkering.
• 
Obama's inflammatory and pesky interventions in matters great and small, from shoving ObamaCare down the country's throat to renaming Mt.  McKinley, from overturning our immigration laws to optimizing transgender bathroom availability, have kept Americans on their heels, not knowing what will come next.
• 
The nation is not well.  Suicides are at a thirty-year high, and drug addiction is soaring.  Confidence in our leaders and institutions is on the decline.
• 
Something is not right.  The patient needs bed rest – not elective surgery.
• 
It is for sure not the time to dredge up new controversies.  We have plenty of those raging already – from the Iran deal to immigration to climate change policy.
• 
Most of us are content to celebrate our nation's founders and historical leaders.  However, once you put the subject on the table for discussion, we will have different ideas.  It becomes yet another opportunity for disagreement.  To what end?
• 
Of course, the squabble over national icons confirms that reverence for our country's past is definitely passe.
• 
Young people today have very little sense of why the United States has long attracted refugees and aspirants from every continent even as other nations must pen their people in.
• 
They do not understand the contributions of capitalism or democracy.
• 
Why celebrate Andrew Jackson or Alexander Hamilton when you have no appreciation of their accomplishments?
• 
Is Obama not just a tad concerned that his legacy will include the notion that he frittered away eight years pursuing his personal agenda while ignoring the concerns of the nation?
      The real reason why the North Carolina 'bathroom bill' debate is center stage  (Fox 04/22/2016)
• 
... asking whether America has gone "stark raving nuts" to let men who consider themselves female to use bathrooms also being used by little girls.
• 
The bathroom debate is really a debate about the fundamental way we Americans will define any truth — whether as something deeply felt by an individual, or something scientifically demonstrable and verifiable.
• 
... the cultural acceptance of biological/genetic females as male and vice-versa is tied to whether our species is willing to abandon genetics and biology as fact, in favor of considering a person's desired self-image to be fact.
• 
...  whether any evidence or data should ever be considered more sacred than closely-held opinion.
• 
If I maintain that my self-concept is that of a black person (and Rachel Donezal does so assert, for herself) and I tattoo myself black, head-to-foot, should our culture accept me as a black man?
• 
If I maintain that my entire being tells me I am not 54-years-old, but 75-years-old (in my tastes and friendships and energy level), should I be entitled to receive Medicare?
• 
... if we believe that transgender individuals must use the restrooms they choose, one could argue that many of our cultural institutions must flex away from fact.
• 
And one could argue that cultural chaos will result.
• 
If the German people were to vote overwhelmingly, even unanimously, to assert that the Holocaust never happened, and then were to remove any reference to it or evidence of it from their culture, should we be required to not offend them by asserting that the Holocaust did, indeed, happen?
• 
Many people unconsciously recoil at the potential slippery slope that transgenderism and the bathroom bill represent. 
• 
We aren't simply debating who will use which bathrooms.
• 
... the slippery slope I have described really could have us embracing what is asserted, rather than what is evidenced scientifically, or is historically known to be fact.
• 
And it would then be very hard, or impossible, to plan for our country's survival or that of our species. 
      What to tell your young Bernie-Hillary voter  (JWR 04/21/2016)
• 
The Vermont senator makes seductive, yet unachievable, economic promises.  Kids are conditioned to believe they are entitled and can receive something for "free."
• 
Progressives love to describe themselves as "kind and giving." They will always magnanimously give you the shirt off someone else's back.
• 
The Nazis were socialists.  Their propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, taught modern-day liberals an important lesson: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.  The lie can be maintained only for such a time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie."
• 
"The science is settled on the matter." What a stupid statement.  By its very nature, science is never settled.  If it were, we would be still using leeches to extract blood.
• 
"Climate scientists" (who cannot get the weather forecast right nine out 10 days), know what the Earth's temperature is going to be in 20 years? 
• 
To believe the global warming alarmists, one has to believe: A.  That the data collected by climatologists who make money from their predictions are correct and that the planet is warming.  B.  That global warming is man-made.  ... C.  That, by taxing us all, government can do something about the weather.
• 
Under socialism, jokes will not be allowed unless everybody finds them equally funny.
• 
See related Sanders Supporter (Glenn McCoy, 02/01/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      PC Culture Effectively Using Words as Weapons  (JWR 04/20/2016)
• 
"PC is dangerous.  In this country, one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression.  (Political correctness) puts a muzzle on people."
• 
"This is one of the myths that the left perpetrates on our society, and this is how they frighten people and get people to shut up, that is what the PC culture is all about, and it's destroying this nation.  The fact of the matter is, we the American people are not each others enemies, it's those people who are trying to divide us that are the enemies and we need to make that very clear to everybody."
• 
Under the feckless leadership of Barrack Obama, we have become a paper tiger with Russia's Vladimir Putin continually testing our military resolve. 
• 
Thanks to political correctness, all our responses to crises must be sensitive to the possible offenses to particular groups except those with traditional American values.
• 
How on earth did our nation become brainwashed by this madness?  I suspect the process has been stewing for years.
• 
In 1963, the House of Representatives unanimously consented entry into its Record of the Current Communist Goals, an excerpt from Cleon Skousen's ‘The Naked Communist.'
• 
... most of these goals have already been achieved and explain how this decline in rational thinking and PC culture has succeeded.
• 
15.  Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
• 
16.  Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
• 
17.  Get control of the schools.  Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda.  Soften the curriculum.  Get control of teachers' associations.  Put the party line in textbooks.
• 
18.  Gain control of all student newspapers.
• 
19.  Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
• 
20.  Infiltrate the press.  Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
• 
24.  Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
• 
26.  Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
• 
28.  Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
• 
29.  Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
• 
30.  Discredit the American Founding Fathers.  Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
• 
... what has taken place on today's campuses bear evidence that the Marxist goals have been indoctrinated into the world of academia.
      Rights Versus Wishes  (JWR 04/20/2016)
• 
There are rights to decent housing, good food and a decent job, and for senior citizens, there's a right to prescription drugs.
• 
In a free and moral society, do people have these rights?  Let's look at it.
• 
In the standard historical usage of the term, a "right" is something that exists simultaneously among people.  As such, a right imposes no obligation on another.
• 
Contrast those rights to free speech and travel with the supposed rights to medical care and decent housing.  Those supposed rights do impose obligations upon others.
• 
If one does not have money to pay for a medical service or decent housing and the government provides it, where do you think the government gets the money?
• 
In other words, if one person has a right to something he did not earn, it requires another person's not having a right to something he did earn.
• 
I do not have a right to take one person's earnings to give to another.  Because I have no such right, I cannot delegate it to government.
• 
If I did take your earnings to provide medical services for another, it would rightfully be described and condemned as an act of theft.  When government does the same, it's still theft, albeit legalized theft.
• 
The bottom line is medical care, housing and decent jobs are not rights at all, at least not in a free society; they are wishes.
• 
As such, I would agree with most Americans — because I, too, wish that everyone had good medical care, decent housing and a good job.
      25 years after Anita Hill our courts are flooded with political vendettas.  Here's why  (Fox 04/19/2016)
• 
The movie is nothing short of a transparent attempt to rewrite history and lend credibility to the liberals' decades-long campaign attacking the character and integrity of Justice Thomas.
• 
... drama included conversations that never took place, introduced fictional characters with no basis in fact or reality and made up whole scenes in a clumsy effort to manufacture sympathy for its liberal heroine.
• 
Hill's public performance during Thomas' confirmation hearings ushered in a new era of agenda-driven political prosecutions and lawsuits that have become a growing problem for the U.S.  courts.
• 
Twenty-five years after Hill's failed show trial, our courts are flooded with political vendettas seeking to manipulate the judicial system for political gain.
• 
Politically motivated lawsuits and prosecutions cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
• 
Activists create nonprofits for the sole purpose of suing their enemies, collecting a settlement check and paying lawyers to find the next frivolous lawsuit.
• 
More troubling than unscrupulous lawyers and activists filing nuisance lawsuits, however, is the growing trend of politicians posing as attorneys general or district attorneys who prosecute their political enemies using taxpayer dollars.
• 
This charade can provide intense media exposure and fundraising opportunities for politicians looking to make names for themselves.
• 
Attorneys general, district attorneys and federal prosecutors have a responsibility to separate their politics from their law enforcement powers.
• 
No one is above the law, and politicians posing as law enforcement officials should not be permitted to punish their political enemies.
• 
Yet that is what happens in the courts of this country every day.
      Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn: America has forgotten how to win at war  (Fox 04/18/2016)
• 
Despite what you hear in the news from the Obama administration and the military, our strategy of conducting infrequent airstrikes and re-taking pockets of Iraq and Syria terrain will only help us achieve short-lived tactical victories.
• 
We will not ultimately and strategically defeat ISIS on our current path.
• 
Nearly fifteen years have passed since the United States was attacked on 9/11 by Al Qaeda terrorists.
• 
It has been over eighteen months since its ideological fellow travelers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured a broad swath of Iraq. 
• 
ISIS continues to add to its recruitment pool of more than thirty-six thousand foreign fighters from approximately eighty different countries – already a formidable coalition.
• 
Already ISIS has expanded well beyond its self-proclaimed "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria, with pledges of allegiance from extremist groups in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Dagestan.
• 
ISIS's intent is to network these islands of extremism into a radical Islamic archipelago, with global ambitions for conquest.
• 
A decade-and-a-half into this conflict we must acknowledge and take seriously not only the fanatical commitment of radical Islamic jihadists and their malevolent long-term intentions toward us, but also the fact that the threat has spread far beyond the Middle East.
• 
The continued forced migration of millions of refugees from the Middle East into the heart of Europe only hints at the mid- and long-term threat ISIS and its global army of jihadists pose.
• 
We have to face the fact that ISIS and its army of like-minded jihadists are determined to win that war, and believe they are on the path to victory.  They may well be right.
• 
Do we even know how to win wars anymore?  Does America still have what it takes?
• 
Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that the answers to both those questions are that we probably don't.
• 
Somewhere along our national journey our political leaders lost the clarity of vision, our military commanders the habits of strategic thought, and our public the determined will to achieve victory.
• 
There are times when it almost seems as if the idea of truly winning — stealing the willingness to continue fighting away from the enemy, and creating a real sense of a victor and a vanquished – has become too politically incorrect.
• 
I believe our inability to achieve victory stems mainly from having lost sight as a nation of what it means to win, and of the vital importance of doing so in our own interests.
• 
... because we abandoned a draft military back in the 1970s, the public has lost the personal stake it once had in any political decision to go to war.
• 
The urgency that used to attend a decision to use military force, and bring operations to a rapid and decisive end, have dissipated.
• 
Over many years such feckless political guidance and the overly bureaucratic system it has engendered have also affected the mindset of military leaders.
• 
Military leaders have been conditioned throughout their careers to accept "wish for the best" strategies and missions usually aimed at maintaining a shaky status quo, or containing as opposed to decisively defeating an enemy.
• 
... bureaucracy places such a chokehold on how the military operates today that we are now incapable of envisioning, planning and executing a strategy with clear metrics for success.
• 
The ability to capture the physical and moral high ground in conflict, and hold it long enough to achieve victory, stems mainly from political decisions.
• 
The commander-in-chief must have the will to direct the necessary actions.
• 
First and foremost, military leaders should stop pretending that we're winning the current war against ISIS and its affiliates.  We are not.
• 
... if the military ... were told to go to war, and that it would not be coming home until that war was won, we would organize and fight much differently than we have done for the past few decades.
• 
More urgent and focused planning — as reflected in reformed policies and procedures that subjugate convenience and efficiency to the imperative of winning – would in my assessment result in wars that would be far less costly than the perpetual funk of endless conflict in which we now find ourselves.
• 
To win the war against ISIS, we must defeat it on the battlefield through direct action by recapturing its territory and destroying its physical assets.
• 
But we must also attack the value system and moral code ISIS uses to recruit.
• 
We must refute the excuses that radical Islamists use to justify their actions, and promote an unambiguous alternative value system that stands in stark contrast to the primitive and barbaric dogma that ISIS espouses.
• 
A disciplined but positive and imaginative message-based information war would constantly drive home the message that ISIS doctrines are anathema to civilized peoples of any race, nationality, ethnic or religious group.
• 
Just as in the fight against imperialism, fascism and communism, winning the ideological struggle against radical Islamism will be difficult.  But winning the war of ideas is necessary to a sustainable victory.
• 
Though ISIS adherents subscribe to a return to seventh-century values that condone mass murder, the grotesque brutalization of captives, sexual slavery of minority women and children, and the forced subjugation of non-believers, they are not stupid.
• 
Quite the opposite, they are true believers who have shown both fanatical zeal and commitment, as well as great skill in manipulating world opinion and outmaneuvering their enemies.
• 
Many ISIS adherents have shown a willingness to die as martyrs for their global cause, the definition of true believers.  We thus cannot afford to underestimate our enemies' intellectual capabilities in pursuing their twisted vision.
• 
Defeating ISIS and its ilk will require not only engaging them directly through force of arms and overwhelming information operations, but also taking decisive steps to cut off the support they receive from both state and non-state actors.
• 
As you read these words, the war we are engaged in with ISIS is claiming the lives of innocent people on multiple fronts.
• 
The misery and suffering are intense, and the staggering number of atrocities continue to mount in a toll that assaults the collective sense of justice of the civilized world.
• 
It is consequently in our best interests, and those of our allies, that this war be brought to an end as soon as possible.
• 
We must face the fact that a long war works to the advantage of ISIS. 
• 
ISIS only has one aim: to conquer and compel all people under their dominion to accept their fundamentalist and perverted interpretation of Islam, or die.
• 
Unless directly confronted, attacked, and decisively defeated, ISIS will continue to do whatever it takes – for as long as it takes – to establish and expand their dreamed of caliphate of tyranny.
• 
... let's stop just participating in this never-ending conflict and instead win it, once and for all.
      Don’t be fooled America, Bernie Sanders is not pro-Israel  (Fox 04/18/2016)
• 
The accusations he has repeatedly leveled against Israel in the past few days — that its military response to Hamas rockets and terror tunnels has been "disproportionate" — reflects both abysmal ignorance about the conduct of the Israeli Defense Force and a pervasive bias against the nation state of the Jewish people.
• 
Those who most consistently attack the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces are among the worst human rights violators in the world, including countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria.
• 
Israel is singled out for unique condemnation as part of a widespread effort to delegitimize, and demonize the nation state of the Jewish people.
• 
Israel did unilaterally end its Gaza occupation and settlements, only to see that area turned into a launching pad for Hamas rockets and tunnels designed to kill Israeli civilians.
• 
"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that.  And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."
• 
Israel has now located and neutralized yet another terror tunnel leading from Gaza into Israel that had been built recently, and already extended "tens of meters" underneath the border fence and into Israel proper.
• 
Its purpose is to kill, kidnap and hold hostage Israeli civilians, including children from those towns located near the tunnel exits.
• 
The entrances to these deadly military targets have been deliberately placed by Hamas in densely populated areas...
• 
They deliberately employ what has come to be known by the cruel but accurate term, "the dead baby strategy."
• 
Under this double war crime strategy, the Israeli military is put to the terrible Hobson's choice of either allowing its own civilians to be subjected to rocket and tunnel attacks or to destroy those rockets and tunnels by attacking targets that are surrounded by Palestinian civilians, who Hamas effectively uses as human shields.
• 
What would Sanders do if the United State were faced with a comparable dilemma?
• 
Would he allow rockets to rain down on American civilians?
• 
Would he allow for terror tunnels to ferret armed terrorists to kill and kidnap American children?
      Our ignorant kids don’t know how history got us to where we are today.  Here’s a remedy  (Fox 04/16/2016)
• 
Can you answer the following questions?
• 
Who fought in the Peloponnesian War?
• 
Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach?
• 
Who was Saul of Tarsus?
• 
Why does the Magna Carta matter?
• 
What are one or two of the arguments made in Federalist 10?
• 
But knowing the answers in great detail may be less important than recognizing the importance of the questions.
• 
... the student leadership ... concluded that supporting Western civilization basically equated to "upholding white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, and all other oppressive systems that flow from Western civilizations."
• 
Apparently no one taught this up-and-coming generation that Western civilization is full of the theoretical underpinnings for things like democracy, equality, freedom, liberty, is the source of many of those sticky philosophical foundations for arguments in support of ending human oppression and slavery, and developed the economic principles responsible for pulling billions out of poverty.
• 
In a recent essay, Deneen laid out the questions above — and others — and issued a clarion call that will no doubt land with a compelling thud on the heads of today's Stanford students as well as the educational leadership that failed to teach the answers to these questions, much less acknowledge their importance.
• 
Just one problem with them: They don't know what liberty costs.  They can't identify between good and right.  They have no sense of what "exceptionalism" means.  They don't know how history got us to where we are today, and why its bloody path was worth it.
• 
"They are not to be blamed for their pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature.  It is the hallmark of their education.  They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present."
• 
"Our students' ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement.  Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings.  The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school.  It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide.  The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West."
• 
In other words, our educational system has deliberately and with malice aforethought undertaken to produce "cultural amnesia" and "a wholesale lack of curiosity" that is disguised under claims of "critical thinking, diversity, ways of knowing, social justice, and cultural competence."
• 
Yet these buzz words merely result in the development of individuals who have no history, no country, no purpose, and no unity, except in the unified belief that everyone is an independent creature full of self-worth whose motivations and intentions cannot be questioned.
• 
What is the outcome of such effort?  Sadly, it is a generation of automatons unable to distinguish complaint from blame or to differentiate expression from value.
• 
We've reached a place in time where liberty is confused with choice, and history's battles are treated as anachronistic and unworthy of acclaim.
• 
The rising generation has forgotten that enduring freedom has been attained through millennia of challenges, upheavals, and competitions whose victories — and defeats — have ushered in generations of progress for humankind. 
• 
The moral and ethical boundaries that serve as the roots of the struggle for liberty and freedom are indeed the very foundation of modern civilization, and today's students should not be taught to forget it.
• 
Answers to Deneen's Questions (Short answers to encourage readers to investigate the history and impact of each event):
• 
Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? 
• 
Athens and Sparta (431-404 BC).  Athens' ultimate defeat crippled Greece's military strength and brought the most culturally advanced Greek state to final ruin.
• 
What was at stake at the Battle of Salamis?
• 
The Battle of Salamis in 480 BC saved Greece from the Persian Empire led by Xerxes and ensured the rise of Western civilization in the world.
• 
Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach?
• 
Socrates taught Plato.  Plato taught Aristotle (Aristotle became tutor to Alexander the Great).
• 
How did Socrates die?
• 
Socrates was executed with poison, allegedly for corrupting the youth, but really because he insulted many of the distinguished households of the time.
• 
Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey.  The Canterbury Tales?  Paradise Lost?  The Inferno?
• 
Greek poet Homer, believed to have lived in the 8th century BC, authored the Iliad and Odyssey, great adventures and the most famous of the Greek tragedies.
• 
The Canterbury Tales was written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century, and is cited for its satirical wit and multiple narrators.  He died before the tales were finished. 
• 
Paradise Lost, written by John Milton in the 17th century, is an epic poem about the fall of man and his relationship to God. 
• 
The Inferno (also known as Dante's Inferno) was written by Italian poet Dante Alighieri's in the 14th-century.  It is an allegory about bringing the soul closer to God.
• 
Who was Saul of Tarsus?
• 
Paul the Apostle, who lived from 10 BC-63 AD, and wrote much of the New Testament.
• 
What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect?
• 
Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses in 1517 attacking the Catholic Church's practice of selling "indulgences" to absolve sin.  It sparked the Protestant Reformation.
• 
Why does the Magna Carta matter?
• 
Written in 1215, the Magna Carta is a cornerstone of the birth of individual liberties and the ongoing challenge to arbitrary rule.  A keystone of American democracy, it declared equality under the law and the right to due process.
• 
How and where did Thomas Becket die?
• 
The Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered on the alter of his church in 1170, his death blamed on four knights who tried to appease King Henry II and took it upon themselves to kill Becket.  Henry was enraged that his longtime friend would not absolve bishops who had sided with the authority of the king over the authority of the church.
• 
What happened to Charles I?
• 
King Charles I was executed for treason in 1649 after he sparked the first English civil war when he dissolved Parliament.  He was defeated by Oliver Cromwell and the Ironsides, and the monarchy was briefly abolished. 
• 
Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him?
• 
The 5th of November, Guy Fawkes Day, marks the day of the failed Gunpowder Plot, an attempt in 1605 by Fawkes and his Catholic allies to blow up King James I during a meeting at Parliament.
• 
What happened at Yorktown in 1781?
• 
The most important battle of the Revolutionary War when General George Washington, with 17,000 French and Continental forces, began the Battle of Yorktown, Virginia, against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and 9,000 British troops.  In a matter of three weeks, Cornwallis surrendered and the fighting ended in the American colonies.
• 
What did Lincoln say in his second Inaugural?  His first Inaugural?  How about his third Inaugural?
• 
As the Civil War neared end, President Abraham Lincoln used his second Inaugural address to call for the nation to bind up its wounds and achieve a just and lasting peace, and to care for the veterans, widows, and orphans of the war.
• 
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln pleaded with the southern states to remain in the union and suggested he would not try to pursue taking away their "property," e.g.  the slaves.  He said the matter of a union had been settled by the Constitution and it would set a terrible precedent for future states if any state tried to withdraw. 
• 
Third inaugural?  Lincoln was assassinated six weeks after his second inauguration.  Andrew Johnson, who ran with Lincoln on a National Unity Ticket though he was a Democrat while Lincoln was a Republican, was sworn in as president.  Johnson was later impeached by the House of Representatives, but survived the impeachment by one vote in the Senate.
• 
Who can tell me one or two of the arguments that are made in Federalist 10?  Who has read Federalist 10?  What are the Federalist Papers?
• 
Federalist 10, considered the most influential of the 85 Federalist papers, was written by James Madison and argued for a united republic under a central authority, saying it would be better suited to manage the various factions and their tendencies to favor their own interests over the interests of the whole.
• 
The Federalist Papers were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Madison under the pseudonym Publius.  They are written in defense of ratification of the Constitution and the role of a strong central government to guide the states.  The papers were published in newspapers around the country and eventually compiled into one volume.
      My message for the cops at the 7-Eleven  (Fox 04/14/2016)
• 
Three of you stood in a quiet corner, munching on something and sharing a story.
• 
I should have said something.
• 
Not to you, but to the women who walked out clutching their coffees and muttering under their morning breath.
• 
"What's wrong with them?  It drives me crazy when they hang out like that.  Aren't they on the clock?"
• 
I know you've heard it all before.  It's that caricature of an overweight police officer downing doughnuts in his cruiser.
• 
Wouldn't you love to know where that silly stereotype originated?  We've seen the scene in movies, sitcoms and comic strips.  In fact, the only place I haven't witnessed the police pastry myth is in reality.
• 
We question your motives every time you blink.  We doubt your integrity.  Roadside interactions are now i-captured and i-studied more than Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.
• 
Today, thousands of police will pursue criminals, make arrests, fight for justice and save lives without incident or fanfare.  But we don't hear about those cases.
• 
Why would we?  We don't bother tuning in until an inconclusive and grainy cellphone video hits the Internet. 
• 
When did we land in this alternate universe where the presumption of innocence applies only to knuckleheads with knives and every officer is corrupt until proven otherwise?
• 
How do those women know whether or not you're on the clock?
• 
Does it even matter?  Aren't you always on the clock when you're sworn to defend and protect?
• 
They probably don't know that according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 128 of our finest were killed in 2015 and 30 have already been buried in 2016 and another perished in Ohio on Tuesday.
• 
It's time to end the whispering and second guessing.
• 
It's time to end the mob-driven protests and recognize that in law enforcement, mistakes are extraordinarily rare.
      Taking Pride in Prejudice  (JWR 04/13/2016)
• 
Prejudice [prej-uh-dis].  Noun.  1.  an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.  2.  any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.  3.  unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, regarding an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group.
• 
According to these definitions from Dictionary.com, it's clear that there are two essential components to prejudice: first, it is a form of opinion, not fact; second, it must be unreasonable or preconceived.
• 
Please follow closely here: this implies that, for any opinion to avoid being prejudicial, the one holding that opinion must be able to articulate three things: 1) why he believes his opinion is correct; 2) why those who believe otherwise think they are correct; and 3) why those with whom he argues are wrong.
• 
This is a matter of simple logic.  First, if I can't explain what I believe, then my beliefs are — by definition — prejudicial.  Second, if I can't explain someone else's opinion, then rejecting that opinion is — also by definition — prejudicial.  And third, if I can't explain why I disagree with someone else's opinion, that is — again, by definition — prejudicial.
• 
But who am I kidding?  We live in a world of sound bites and slogans, a world in which image trumps substance, in which feelings trump logic, in which the loudest voice drowns out all opponents and the most inflammatory rhetoric attracts the largest audiences.
• 
The new morality that rages against prejudice is mostly smoke-and-mirrors; indeed, the people who cry out against prejudice the loudest are the most prejudicial people of all.
• 
Even worse, offenders of the new morality are not permitted to go quietly into the night and live their lives according to their principles.
• 
They are hunted down as thought-criminals and impaled upon the trident of litigation, social media pressure, and economic sanction.  With prejudice.
• 
The great Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis wisely observed that, "We must be ever on our guard, lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles." But that was a long time ago.
• 
... five Supreme Court justices conjured up a previously unnoticed constitutional right to gay marriage by rubbing the lamp of feelings and personal bias.
• 
And where was the outcry from the prejudice-zealots against the corruption of judicial process?  There was none, of course, for the obvious reason that their side won.
• 
Doubtless, the Framers of the Constitution would be horrified by the perversion of the hallowed document they crafted to buffer society against the winds of human impetuosity and moral relativism.
• 
They would certainly stand with Chief Justice John Roberts in his observation that "for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority's approach is deeply disheartening."
• 
All the more disheartening is the predictable consequence that adherents of time-honored values are already being persecuted for defending their right to moral conscience — a right that lies much closer to the heart of the Constitution than Justice Anthony Kennedy's purple ponderings about "unique fulfillment" and "profound hopes and aspirations."
• 
The zealots did stir to action, however, when a majority of voters in Mississippi passed legislation to protect vendors from forced participation in functions that violate their own religious beliefs.
• 
They merely wanted to be free from having to endorse a practice that goes against their sincerely-held religious beliefs.
• 
Without the force of law behind them, the prejudice-zealots moved quickly to apply economic pressure through the threat of corporations removing their business presence from those districts.
• 
All in the name of freedom from hatred, prejudice, and liberty.  All under the banner of tolerance.
• 
"A pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular' situations, as if they were stones to throw at people's lives."
• 
Pope Francis offers a sober assessment of how to heal a society being torn apart by culture wars.
• 
Traditionalists are sometimes too eager to reach into other people's lives, and progressives frequently reject the moral boundaries necessary to protect the freedom of even the most ardently amoral people.
• 
As long as each side is determined to destroy the other, we will continue to slip inexorably toward the kind of chaos that will eventually deprive us all of the freedom we hold so dear.
• 
No compromise will ever be possible as long as zealots wield their rejection of prejudice as a weapon to practice prejudice.
• 
Only by learning to treat even our ideological enemies with respect will we save the culture that allows us to live free.
      Down with equality!  (JWR 04/13/2016)
• 
Our president's latest obsession and political appeal (with him they are much the same) would seem to be a determination to assure equality in American life "whenever and wherever" he can.
• 
As attractive as equality sounds in any democratic society, the passion for it can lead that society into deep and dangerous waters.
• 
The concept of equality itself has undergone a sea change since it was used to mean equality only before the law — a shining ideal bequeathed to the world by Western civilization.
• 
But equality seems to have lost its earlier pristine meaning and now refers to an only material equality — an equality of income, of property, of spoils.
• 
And when words are degraded, so is society.
• 
If only the word still meant an equality of opportunity, not of results, the Jeffersonian ideal of an aristocracy of merit arising out of an equality of opportunity might be born again.
• 
A keen and always prescient observer of democracy in America, the indispensable Alexis de Tocqueville, saw that Americans are forever torn between a desire for liberty and an equal but opposite longing for equality.
• 
Each has its great benefits and great dangers, and the objective of a great leader must be to guide us safely between them. 
• 
Forgotten is de Tocqueville's warning: "Democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy."
• 
As another foreign observer once said: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." — Winston Churchill. 
      The new intolerance: Attorneys general try to shut down free speech  (Fox 04/12/2016)
• 
Last week more than a dozen attorneys general gathered in New York.  You might think they were there to discuss how to combat crime, the heroine epidemic... maybe even terrorism.
• 
They weren't.  Instead they were conferring on how to use the law to punish scientists and researchers who question climate change orthodoxy.
• 
That's right — if your scientific research bucks the party line on global warming, you could face government-inspired lawsuits.
• 
The ringmaster of this legal circus, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, was not at all subtle about what he was trying to achieve.
• 
This is perfectly Orwellian.  Put aside what you may think about climate change.
• 
Should government lawyers be threatening to punish scientists and researchers who may, for example, merely question why the results of some computer models don't match up with real world events?
• 
Should the iron hand of the law be employed to enforce conformity in science, supposedly in the name of a "scientific consensus," when in fact there is nothing approaching consensus as to whether human activity has us headed for global-warming catastrophe?
• 
Judges, prosecutors, government officials, politicians and activists are increasingly using public shaming rituals and the force of the law to impose their views on people with whom they disagree.
• 
Courts routinely overturn laws and referenda over policy differences — a practice that is patently anti-democratic and in many cases unconstitutional.
• 
Colleges and universities across America have abandoned free speech and open debate in favor of "speech codes" and "safe spaces" where students need never hear a viewpoint they don't already embrace.
• 
There's a pattern here: All of these abuses are being done in the name of progressive liberalism.
• 
No matter what the cause, progressives are increasingly willing to use any means necessary — the law, public shaming and in some cases even a threat of violence ("no justice no peace") to get their way.
• 
It's not even correct to call progressivism liberal anymore.  It has, in fact, become its opposite, an illiberal code of coercion and intolerance — and a movement intent on shaming all those who disagree.
• 
It is fast becoming a political force hostile to freedom, democracy and even equality.
• 
It champions intolerance in the name of tolerance, closed-mindedness in the name of open-mindedness, and hatred in the name of compassion.
• 
It's the master of double-think — to pretend things other than they really are. 
• 
And it's threatening the constitutional order, not to mention the civil peace, of the country. 
      Gregg Jarrett: An attorney's five takeaways from Obama's defense of Clinton's emails  (Fox 04/11/2016)
• 
1.  PRESIDENT OBAMA SAID HE BELIEVES HILLARY CLINTON "HAS NOT JEOPARDIZED AMERICA'S NATIONAL SECURITY."
• 
How does he know?  He doesn't.  He was speculating.  Hackers may well have gained access to her unsecured server... and we simply don't know it. 
• 
Obama's claim is baseless and without real knowledge.  No one, not even the president, knows every occasion when hackers succeed or fail.
• 
2.  OBAMA CLAIMED CLINTON "NEVER INTENTIONALLY PUT AMERICA IN ANY KIND OF JEOPARDY."
• 
In a court of law, that is not the issue.  The question is not whether Clinton intended to put America at risk, but whether her actions were intentional and thereby put America at risk. 
• 
Remember, knowingly storing classified information at an unauthorized location is a crime.  (18 USC 1924)
• 
3.  OBAMA DESCRIBED CLINTON'S ACTIONS AS "CARELESS," AS IF THAT MAKES IT OKAY. 
• 
It is not okay under the law.  Recklessness (or gross negligence) is sufficient to indict and convict, according to the statute and case law. 
• 
4.  OBAMA INSISTED HE WILL EXERT "NO POLITICAL INFLUENCE" ON THE FBI AND THE DOJ.
• 
Yet, he did precisely that in the interview!  He all but proclaimed Clinton's innocence by offering his opinion that she did nothing legally wrong (that is, his repeated description of "careless, not intentional"). 
• 
Presidents are not supposed to interfere directly with pending cases.  So, what did Obama do?  He interfered indirectly.
• 
5.  CLINTON'S DEFENSE IS NO DEFENSE AT ALL.
• 
She claims some of her predecessors did the same thing.  ... Even if they did, Clinton's defense is the equivalent of saying, "it's okay to rob banks because other people do it."
• 
It is the content, not the markings, which make matters classified.  Indeed, it doesn't matter if they are marked or unmarked. 
• 
If Clinton wants to claim she did not recognize the classified materials without the markings, then she would be arguing her own incompetence. 
• 
In a court of law, incompetence is not a defense.
      Bernie Sanders in Wonderland  (Fox 04/08/2016)
• 
In his now infamous April Fools' Day interview with the New York Daily News editorial board, Bernie Sanders broke new ground in US presidential politics.
• 
Candidates in New York usually laud Israel as America's friend and ally.  Not Bernie. 
• 
Sanders asserted that in the 2014 Gaza war, Israel indiscriminately slaughtered 10,000 Palestinian civilians.
• 
He went on to demand that Israel withdraw and expel roughly fifteen percent of its population from territories it has controlled for almost fifty years.
• 
In fact, the number and circumstance of Palestinian civilians killed in the 2014 Gaza War is a matter of dispute.
• 
Israel puts it at 932 (and says they were unintended victims caused by the Palestinian tactic of placing its launching sites among civilians).
• 
The notoriously anti-Israel Human Rights Council of the United Nations — citing Hamas statistics — put the number of civilian deaths at 1,462.
• 
Nobody but Sanders said it was 10,000.
• 
The question is why did he give such an inflated and easily checkable casualty figure — seven times higher than Hama's own estimate — in the first place?
• 
It is possible that Sanders, at 74, has a declining memory for facts.
• 
It is more likely that he — like many other Jewish "progressives" — disapproves of Israel so strongly that even the most egregious slander against the Jewish State seems to him to be obviously true.
• 
Sanders: "I think if the [Israeli] expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate."
• 
Daily News: "And who makes the call about illegality, in your mind?"
• 
Sanders: "Well, I think that's based on previous treaties and ideas.  I happen to think that those expansions were illegal."
• 
It is unclear what treaties and ideas Senator Sanders happens to think should lead to an Israeli withdrawal.
• 
The Daily News asked Senator Sanders what would happen if Israel happened to decline his modest plan.
• 
His answer came in the form of a threat.  Israel is an independent nation, he said, it can do as it sees fit.
• 
But if it wants a "positive relationship" with the United States during the Sanders administration, it had better do what it is told.
      Donald Trump saw what politicians ignored.  And then he disrupted American politics  (Fox 04/08/2016)
• 
There's no other way to say it: Americans are dissatisfied.
• 
They're dissatisfied with their own status, the status of the country, the economy and, especially, the government.
• 
The overall mood of the country is "anxiety, nostalgia and mistrust." Majorities believe the country is in decline.
• 
It's now widely accepted that Americans believe the American Dream is out of reach for them and, critically, their children.
• 
Against this backdrop, many politicians – on both sides of the aisle – have said they understand how dire the situation is and that they can fix it.  But only one has really made voters believe it: Donald Trump
• 
His campaign is built on probably the most resonant campaign slogan in recent history, "Make American Great Again", and Trump has, like no other candidate, made his supporters believe that there's finally a candidate out there who has Americans' best interests at heart.
• 
This faith in his intention to keep us safe from terrorists, create jobs, jumpstart the economy and put Americans first over illegal immigrants has overridden concerns for the practicality of his policies or, to be frank, the lack of specificity of his policies.
• 
Trump's palpable belief in the greatness of America has galvanized voters to levels we haven't seen since 1980.
• 
... establishment politicians will face strong challenges from outsiders in races at every level from here on out.  Trump has shown that Americans are yearning for straight talking leaders.  They want to hear that it's okay for them to be scared, for them to think things that may not be considered PC, but that they think nonetheless.
• 
Our politicians can't represent our interests if we're not allowed to voice them.  And more so than any other candidate, Trump has given voters a voice.
• 
In future elections, we may not have someone as outlandish as Trump.  But his legacy will surely have paved the way for leaders who may not know anything about governing, but know a lot about how people are feeling. 
      When Obama speaks about ethics and morality here's what I would ask  (Fox 04/07/2016)
• 
The question of morals and ethics has been debated since the dawn of humanity.  It won't be settled by the shifting winds of politics, because not everyone can agree on what is moral and what is not.
• 
Dictionary.com defines morality: "Conformity to the rules of right conduct."
• 
Ah, but here's the rub.  That definition fits a different era.  Morality today is personal.  It is not a standard to which one is encouraged to conform for one's own, or society's benefit.
• 
Rather, it is about what makes one feel good.  By this non-standard standard, one can easily change one's sense of what is moral as they might a suit of clothes or a pair of shoes and suffer no societal condemnation because that "moral code," such as it is, exists only for the individual.
• 
When President Obama speaks of ethics and morality, the follow-up question should be, "Whose ethics and whose morality?  Who, or what, established that standard?"
• 
To take one example, if you say there is no God and then turn around and tell me I should not be a racist, or that I should help someone in need, and I say, "why should I?" how do you respond?  If we are all evolutionary accidents, why can't I believe and practice anything I wish?
• 
Perhaps you respond that there are laws prohibiting discrimination.  To that I answer, "Suppose the laws are changed, is it then OK to discriminate?" It was once legal to own slaves, but did that law make slavery moral?
• 
There is the Constitution, but the courts are busy renovating that great document to fit the spirit of the age, as reflected in opinion polls, which now determine almost everything.
• 
Moral relativism has contributed to a host of societal and relational problems few wish to acknowledge.
• 
... repentance, a turning away from the old and embracing the new, which is not new, but old, tried and proven best.
• 
The president used to be against same-sex marriage, now he's for it.  Was he moral when he opposed it, or is he moral now that he supports it?  And what is his standard, because these positions are contradictory?
• 
Is the president being moral when he allows mostly Muslim refugees from Syria into the country, but permits few Syrian Christians to enter?
• 
He says he's a Christian.  Wouldn't it make more sense for him to protect Christians first, since they are the ones being targeted by Islamic fundamentalists for death, forced marriages and sexual slavery?
• 
Mark Twain is quoted as saying: "Always do what is right.  It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."
• 
What is the new standard for "right" and "moral"?  Who established it and why should anyone follow your standard when mine might be the antithesis of yours?
• 
The inability or unwillingness to answer these questions and to enforce a moral code that mostly served humanity well until the self-indulgent '60s began to destroy its foundations is responsible for the confusion and moral chaos we witness today.
• 
Who will rescue us from this moral quagmire?  It won't be anyone running for president.
• 
These things bubble up from the human heart; they do not trickle down from Washington.
      How feasible is Trump's proposed wall?  (Fox 04/07/2016)
• 
The U.S.  - Mexican border is like a 2,000-mile roller coaster that weaves through deserts, mountains and rivers.  It crosses four states, 45 cities and dips deep into washes only to rise 10,000 feet in the Coronado National Forest.  The soil is soft like a sponge near the Rio Grande and rock hard near the granite quarries of San Diego County.
• 
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build a 'big, beautiful wall' across the entire border.  Is that advisable or even feasible?
• 
Whether you call it a wall, or a fence, agents say they work.
• 
Seeing through a fence allows agents to anticipate and mobilize, prior to illegal immigrants actually climbing or cutting through the fence.
• 
A wall would have to allow water to pass through, or the sheer force of raging water could damage its integrity.
• 
"The wall is just one deterrent.  We need the wall.  But we also definitely need more boots on the ground.  We need more equipment.  It is not just one thing."
• 
... a fence provides a primary barrier.  It is backed up by ground sensors and cameras and radar mounted on tall poles that detect movement.  That information is picked up in operation centers, which relay it to field agents who can then locate and arrest the perpetrators.
• 
"It is a layered approach.  The fence gives us time.  The fence protects the agents.  It lowers the risk and gives us time to respond to illegal activity.  It slows people down.  The cameras give a situational awareness so agents know what they're about to encounter before they do."
• 
"What the fence does in the urban area is give us an opportunity to detect traffic and stop it before it assimilates into the local population."
• 
... no matter how tall ... it is only one component of a secure border.  Without cameras to see, without high speed access roads and adequate manpower, a wall is no barrier at all to illegal immigrants who will go over it, cut through it or tunnel under it.
      The politicization of the English language  (JWR 04/07/2016)
• 
Hollande at one point explicitly referred to the violence as "Islamist terrorism."
• 
Did the Obama administration assume that if the public could not hear the translation of the French president saying "Islamist terrorism," then perhaps Hollande did not really say it — and therefore perhaps Islamist terrorism does not really exist?
• 
The Library of Congress, under pressure from Dartmouth College students, recently banned not just the term "illegal alien" in subject headings for literature about immigration, but "alien" as well. 
• 
Did the Library of Congress ever read the work of the Greek historian Thucydides, who warned some 2,500 years ago that in times of social upheaval, partisans would make words "change their ordinary meaning and ... take that which was now given them."
• 
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's described Egypt's radical Muslim Brotherhood as "largely secular."
• 
CIA Director John Brennan has called jihad "a legitimate tenet of Islam," a mere effort "to purify oneself."
• 
Other administration heads have airbrushed out Islamic terrorism by referring to it with phrases such as "man-caused disaster."
• 
The effort to combat terrorism was called an "overseas contingency operation," perhaps like Haitian earthquake relief.
• 
The White House wordsmiths should reread George Orwell's 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," which warned that "political writing is bad writing" and "has to consist largely of euphemism."
• 
Obama has said the greatest threat to future generations is "climate change," a term that metamorphosed from "global warming."
• 
Rather than modifying the phrase to "suspected global warming" or "episodic global warming," the new term "climate change" was invented to replace it. 
• 
Volatile weather such as tornadoes, tsunamis and hurricanes was sometimes rebranded as "climate chaos" — as if Western industry and consumer lifestyles were responsible for what used to be seen as fairly normal occurrences.
• 
Attorney General Loretta Lynch used the term "justice-involved youth" to describe young criminals arrested and charged with crimes.
• 
From such terminology, one might think the offenders' "involvement" meant that they were parole officers or young lawyers.
• 
So what is the point of trying to change reality by making up new names and phrases?
• 
It's mostly politics.  If Hollande had used the label "skinheads" to describe European right-wing movements, the White House might not have altered the video.
• 
Clapper and Brennan are unlikely to claim that the Crusades were largely secular or an exercise in self-purification.
• 
The Obama administration probably would not describe rogue police officers charged with crimes as "justice-involved police."
• 
If cities with conservative mayors declined to enforce the Endangered Species Act or federal firearms statutes, they probably would not be known as "sanctuary cities."
• 
Orwell also wrote about a futuristic dystopia ruled by a Big Brother government that created politicized euphemisms to reinvent reality.  He placed his novel in the year 1984, warning Westerners about what was in their future.
• 
We are now 32 years beyond 1984, but we are at last living Orwell's nightmare.
      What if the minimum wage increase is a fraud?  (Fox 04/07/2016)
• 
What if this represents an intrusion by government into the employer-employee relationship?
• 
What if the $15-per-hour figure is based on a political compromise rather than on free market forces or economic realities?
• 
What if these wealth transfers will have profound unintended economic consequences and will negatively affect everyone?
• 
What if one of the politically intended consequences is that the employees whose salaries will rise will show gratitude not to their employers, who will be paying them more than they earn, by working better but to the politicians who will have forced the employers to pay them more by voting for those politicians?
• 
What if the right of an employee to sell labor by going to work and the right of an employer to purchase that labor by paying a salary are part of the natural right to exchange goods and services, which the Constitution was written to protect? 
• 
What if the Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with freely entered-into contracts but the government does so anyway?  What if the courts have approved this?
• 
What if it is none of the government's business how an employer and an employee decide on salary?
• 
What if the government has fundamental misunderstandings of the way businesses earn money, create wealth and pay salaries?
• 
What if that governmental mindset is one of control and central planning rather than appealing to the needs of consumers by providing goods and services better, faster and more cheaply than the competition?
• 
What if the government has no need to be better, faster and cheaper because taxpayers are forced to pay it for services they often don't use and the government has no competition?
• 
What if the effect of the minimum wage rise is to transfer wealth not from employers to employees but from consumers to employees?
• 
What if the folks who can no longer afford some goods and services on which they have come to rely are the very same people whom the politicians have boasted they are helping by the increase in the minimum wage?
• 
What if, rather than pay employees more than they are worth, employers stop employing some of them?
• 
What if the poor are better off being gainfully employed and earning less than $15 an hour, with an opportunity for advancement, than not working, earning nothing and relying on welfare?
• 
What if all this came about not because of market forces, such as supply and demand, and not because people worked harder and produced more but because of lawless, greedy politicians — heedless of basic economics — who think they can write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event without adverse consequences?
• 
What if the politicians who caused this did so just to win the votes of those they promised to help?  What if these politicians only helped themselves?
• 
      Campus Lunacy, Part II  (JWR 04/06/2016)
• 
This renaming craze is widespread and includes dozens of colleges and universities, including Amherst, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley.  The students have decided that some politically incorrect people from centuries ago are bad.  Other politically incorrect people are not quite so bad if they were at least sometimes liberal; their names can stay.
• 
San Diego State University students are not demanding that the school eliminate its nickname, "Aztecs," even though the Aztecs enslaved and slaughtered tens of thousands of people from tribes they conquered — often ripping out the hearts of living victims.
• 
President Woodrow Wilson was a racist who, among other racist acts, segregated civil service jobs.  Should Princeton University rename its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs plus rename its Woodrow Wilson fellowship program?
• 
Should campus feminists make clear that former President Bill Clinton, a womanizer and exploiter of women, is unwelcome on any campus?  Should they also protest any appearance by his enabler, Hillary Clinton, who helped demonize her husband's female accusers by cracking down on "bimbo eruptions"?
• 
Recently, Brown University changed its Columbus Day celebration to Indigenous People's Day.
• 
According to publications such as Lawrence H.  Keeley's "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" and Steven A.  LeBlanc and Katherine E.  Register's "Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage," we may have to rethink just how noble and peaceful American Indians were prior to Christopher Columbus.
• 
American Indians waged brutal tribal wars long before Europeans showed up.  ... Comanche Indians were responsible for some of the most brutal slaughters in the history of Western America.
• 
Our military has a number of deadly aircraft named with what the nation's leftist might consider racial slights...  Should they be renamed?
• 
Our military might also be seen as disrespecting the rights and dignity of animals.  Should military death-dealing aircraft named after peace-loving animals — such as the Eagle, Falcon, Raptor, Cobra and Dolphin — be renamed?
• 
Renaming deadly aircraft might receive a sympathetic ear from our politically correct secretary of defense, Ashton Carter.
• 
... changing history through renaming is nothing new.  Back in the Roman days, the practice was called damnatio memoriae, a Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory."
• 
It was practiced when the Romans wanted to erase the memory of people they deemed dishonorable; it was as if they had never existed.
      A Note to Conservatives Who Are Secular  (JWR 04/05/2016)
• 
The most profound thinkers in America are conservative.
• 
I write this to make it clear that my admiration for the leading conservative writers, columnists and thinkers is deep and abiding.
• 
There is, however, a "but."
• 
The vast majority of leading conservative writers, just like their liberal colleagues, have a secular outlook on life.
• 
With few exceptions, the conservative political and intellectual worlds are oblivious to the consequences of secularism.  They are unaware of the disaster that G0Dlessness in the West has led to.
• 
They think that America can survive the death of G0D and religion, that fiscal and other forms of conservatism without social conservatism can preserve America.
• 
It shows how effective the secular indoctrination in our schools and media has been, that even the majority of conservative thinkers are not only secular themselves, but seem to have no idea how much of the American civilization rests on religious foundations.
• 
They don't seem to understand that the only solution to many — perhaps most — of the social problems ailing America and the West is some expression of Judeo-Christian faith.
• 
Do the inner-city kids who study the Bible and go to church each week lead wasted lives, join gangs, bear children out of wedlock or commit murder? 
• 
And why do secular conservatives think so many affluent and well-educated Americans have adopted left-wing dogmas, such as feminism, socialism, environmentalism and egalitarianism as their religions?  Because people want to — have to — believe in something.
• 
And if it's not G0D and Christianity or Judaism, it's going to be some form of Leftism.
• 
President John Adams warned: "Because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
• 
The problem is not that most leading conservative thinkers are secular; it is that they don't seem to understand that a G0Dless and Judeo-Christian-free America means the end of America, just as a G0Dless and Judeo-Christian-free Europe has meant the end of Europe.
      How to write for spoiled college brats  (INN 04/03/2016)
• 
"How can you call it a cycle of violence when only one side does all the stabbing and suicide bombing?"
• 
"What about the Israelis and what they're doing?"
• 
"The Israelis are defending themselves against a confederacy of murderers just like the rest of the world.  Only the Israelis were the first."
• 
"That kind of talk makes me uncomfortable."
• 
"Outside there in the real world, Christians your age are being raped, beheaded, caged and dunked till they drown – how's that for uncomfortable?"
• 
"There are no SAFE SPACES for 8-year-old girls forced to marry 45-year-old ayatollahs."
• 
"You don't know how lucky you are.  Lucky, pampered and spoiled."
• 
"Can't you consider the Palestinians and their side?  It's far more complicated."
• 
"No.  Do you side with Daniel Pearl who was decapitated in Pakistan for being Jewish?  Or do you side with the cannibals who did this?"
• 
"That's your choice, and it's not complicated."
• 
He quoted Justin Trudeau's latest knee-slapper – "If you kill your enemies, they win."
• 
Oh come on!  Really?  Stupidity like that is dangerous.
• 
But for sure this is the generation that is coming, and coming soon to run our country and our world.
• 
I'm worried.
      Rep.  Blackburn: An open door for Syrian refugees will not stop ISIS.  That’s delusional  (Fox 04/01/2016)
• 
"Our openness to refugees" is not how we will defeat the Islamic State (ISIS).  A climate change summit is also not a "powerful rebuke" to ISIS. 
• 
From Paris to San Bernardino to Brussels, the American people see what is happening and there is trepidation.  They are fearful of terror deniers whose policies will let the wolves into the sheep's den to kill innocent men, women and children.
• 
President Obama's terror denial has been apparent since his administration described the 2009 terror attack at Fort Hood as "workplace violence."
• 
In 2012, Hillary Clinton and other officials blamed a well-coordinated terrorist attack on our embassy in Benghazi on a YouTube video. 
• 
When the evil blade of ISIS decapitated Steven Sotloff in 2014, President Obama was on the golf course just minutes after telling Americans that "we will be relentless and we will be vigilant to see that justice is done."
• 
Americans are now being told by terror deniers that climate change and "openness" to Syrian refugees will stop the ISIS death march.  How delusional.
• 
The reality is that we must suspend the refugee resettlement program because it is endangering the American people. 
• 
Two ISIS terrorists involved with the attacks in Paris and Brussels infiltrated Europe by posing as Syrian refugees when they entered Greece. 
• 
Terrorists have said they would slaughter innocent people — and they have. 
• 
Terrorists have said that they would take advantage of refugee programs and they have. 
• 
When will the terror deniers start listening?
• 
My legislation provides that no funding shall be made available for refugee resettlement operations until the following four conditions are met:
• 
1.  Congress passes a joint resolution approving the President's refugee resettlement plan.
• 
2.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides a report to Congress scoring the long term cost of any refugee resettlement proposa.
• 
3.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) submits a report identifying terrorist and criminal activity of refugees admitted into the U.S.  since 2001.
• 
4.  President Obama submits a report to Congress of the prior year's cost of admitting refugees and proposes offsetting spending cuts to pay for his resettlement agenda. 
• 
These are common-sense measures that should be passed immediately.
• 
... Zuckerberg, who was directly targeted in an ISIS propaganda video, suggested just this week that we can fight terror with "love."
• 
The American people are sick and tired of being patronized and being told their fears are irrational.
• 
This week we learned that radical Islamic extremists killed a staggering 28,000 people in 2014-15. 
• 
Americans are rightly concerned about the tentacles of radical Islam infiltrating our country.
• 
Compassion is a two way street, Mr.  President, and it is time the administration begin showing some for the concerns of the American people.
      Rep.  Zinke: The Taliban killed Sgt.  McClintock but the Obama White House failed to save him  (Fox 03/31/2016)
• 
On January 5, 2016, America lost an elite Special Forces soldier when the White House turned their back on him and his unit. 
• 
Army Green Beret Sergeant First Class Matthew McClintock lost his life, and two others were wounded, when his unit came under Taliban fire in a compound in Marjah, Afghanistan.
• 
After the unit was pinned down by enemy combatants, reports say the ground commander requested support from a circling AC-130 gunship.
• 
Due to the Obama administration's fear of collateral damage, the gunship was initially waived off.  The "quick" reaction force (QRF) was also delayed by hours. 
• 
The Taliban may have killed SFC McClintock, but the White House failed to save him.
• 
It's unthinkable that situations like this – where our troops are left defenseless and told not to return fire – happen at all.
• 
Even more disturbing, under this administration, these situations are the new reality.
• 
For the past several years, the White House has been forcing our troops to fight a war with their hands tied behind their backs.
• 
Troops are told they must have certainty that an individual is a combatant — apparently a known Taliban fighter pointing a weapon at them does not qualify.
• 
Our pilots are told to hold their fire until the U.S.  gains permission from foreign governments to strike...
• 
Overly restrictive rules of engagement put our troops in danger and allow our enemy to hide in plain sight.
• 
We have seen a level of armchair quarterbacking from this administration that is unprecedented and has led to needless loss of life in Marjah and Benghazi.
• 
Micromanagement by the White House will have lasting impacts on our fighting force if it is not reversed quickly.
      Dad's grief leads to quest to count deaths caused by illegal immigrant drivers  (Fox 03/30/2016)
• 
In the five years since an unlicensed illegal immigrant ran down his son, Don Rosenberg has turned his anger and grief into a mission to answer a seemingly simple question: How many people are killed each year by drivers who don't belong in the U.S., much less behind a wheel?
• 
As many as 7,500 Americans — 20 per day — are killed annually by unlicensed drivers, and Rosenberg calculates that more than half are the victims of illegal immigrants.
• 
"Not only were unlicensed drivers killing people in numbers only exceeded by drunk drivers, but many times they were barely being punished and many times faced no charges at all."
• 
After he was convicted of manslaughter, Galo served six weeks in jail and was released.  He was deported in 2013 after a years-long legal battle.
• 
"Our archives are filled with stories of drunk-driving illegals killing U.S.  citizens."
• 
"It is our official estimate that more than 3,000 U.S citizens lose their lives each year due to the insufficient enforcement of our existing border and immigration law."
• 
... the government could make the roads safer by at least deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes.
• 
"Until you have lost a loved one to an illegal criminal, you will never truly understand the other side of this issue."
• 
"With at least 11.4 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, it can be surmised that a large population drive a vehicle on a regular basis."
• 
... those who combat the problem of unlicensed drivers by awarding them licenses have it backward.
• 
A better solution ... is enforcing existing immigration law to the point that people are no longer encouraged to "enter and remain in the U.S.  illegally."
• 
"While I can sympathize with people who want to make their lives better, they can't do it at the expense of others."
• 
"I am not angry at those who come here to try and better their life or their children, but it can't be condoned or rewarded."
• 
See related Americans Won't... (Mike Lester, 08/05/2010) cartoon from USA picture album
      Supreme Hypocrisy  (JWR 03/29/2016)
• 
If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy.
• 
The Democrats complain, and the media echo their complaint, that it is the Senate's duty to provide "advice and consent" on the President's appointment of various federal officials.  Therefore, according to this claim, the Senate is neglecting its Constitutional duty by refusing even to hold hearings to determine whether the nominee is qualified, and then vote accordingly.
• 
First of all, the "advice and consent" provision of the Constitution is a restriction on the President's power, not an imposition of a duty on the Senate.
• 
It says nothing about the Senate's having a duty to hold hearings, or vote, on any Presidential nominee, whether for the Supreme Court or for any other federal institution.
• 
When the shoe was on the other foot, the Republicans made the same arguments as the Democrats are making today, and the Democrats made the same arguments as the Republicans are now making.
• 
If judges confined themselves to acting like judges, instead of legislating from the bench, creating new "rights" out of thin air that are nowhere to be found in the Constitution, maybe Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees would not be such bitter and ugly ideological battles.
• 
Chief Justice Roberts himself practically repealed the 10th Amendment's limitation on federal power when he wrote the decision that the government could order us all to buy ObamaCare insurance policies.
• 
When judges act like whores, they can hardly expect to be treated like nuns.
• 
Politicians, journalists and judges should all spare us pious hypocrisy.
      Obama dances as the world reels from  (more) terror attacks (NYP 03/26/2016)
• 
As soon as the terror in Brussels ended, the post-terror rituals began. 
• 
In America, security ramped up as millions feared their cities would be next, and officials vowed to harden our defenses in the fight against ­Islamic State.
• 
After each atrocity, Obama acts weirdly detached, a pattern that continued after Brussels.  His happy-go-lucky tourist antics in Cuba, followed by tango dancing in Argentina, provided a shocking contrast to fear at home and manhunts in Europe.
• 
Even Hillary Clinton, despite needing Obama to protect her against possible indictment, effectively rebuked his too-cool-for-school demeanor.
• 
The people who want to be president understand the need to reassure a rattled public, yet the actual president is determined not to let terrorists ruin his day.
• 
Predictably, Obama refuses to use the words "Islamic terrorism" or "radical Islam," as if doing so would stain all Muslims.
• 
There is no news in the ritual, only a fresh dispiriting realization that Obama rejects the traditional understanding of what it means to be commander in chief and leader of the free world.
• 
Recall that the day after the Benghazi terror attack that killed four Americans, including our Libyan ambassador, the president helped spread the lie about the cause and jetted off to a fund-raiser.
• 
He went golfing after reading perfunctory remarks on the beheading of journalist James Foley and coldly labeled the massacre of 130 people in Paris a "setback."
• 
Last December, before the casualty count was known in San Bernardino and before the husband-and-wife terrorists were dead, Obama declared the attack a "mass shooting" and jumped on his hobby horse to call for more gun control.
• 
As the terror attacks become more numerous, Obama's stubborn detachment becomes harder to comprehend.  He isn't budging despite former military leaders and some of his former top aides saying openly that Islamic State is "winning" and warning about the group's desire to get nuclear weapons.
• 
Yet now, in the face of more frequent attacks and the existence of a terrorist army with a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, Obama aims to turn down the concern meter to almost zero.  Indeed, he comes chillingly close to treating the dead as bothersome distractions.
• 
"Groups like ISIL can't destroy us, they can't defeat us.  They don't produce anything.  They're not an existential threat to us."
• 
His acceptance of the use of chemical weapons against children in Syria, his casual tolerance of Iran's wicked ambitions toward Israel and his abandonment of Eastern Europe to Vladimir Putin's brutality all demonstrate a readiness to appease evil.
• 
Starting with George Washington, it has been the first duty of the president to protect Americans.
• 
Whatever the ultimate cost of Obama's fecklessness, it is already a unique calamity that he refuses to accept his responsibility.
      Oliver North: Fight to win or don't fight at all.  Seven steps we need to take right now  (Fox 03/25/2016)
• 
This is a tough question to ask on Good Friday: "Is this any way to fight a war?"
• 
More than 30 are dead and hundreds more are wounded.  Consider the response from the Obama administration:
• 
In Cuba, the president of the United States shows his concern by doing "The Wave" at a baseball game beside one of the last two Communist dictators on the planet.
• 
Then, to ensure we get the point about America leading from behind, he jets off to Argentina for tango lessons.  It's not just surreal.  It's dangerous.
• 
POTUS tells us ISIS isn't an "existential threat." In the next breath the O-Team informs us "defeating ISIS" is the president's "number one priority."
• 
November 2009: Nidal Hasan murders 13 and wounds 30 at Fort Hood.  The Obama administration calls the attack, "workplace violence."
• 
December 2011: Obama ignores advice from his military commanders and orders all U.S.  military personnel out of Iraq.
• 
June 2014: The ISIS army, 30,000 strong, swarms out of Syria, capturing broad swaths of Iraq and declares a "Caliphate." Obama calls ISIS a "JV Team," says it will be "degraded and destroyed" and later tells us ISIS is "contained."
• 
August 2014: ISIS broadcasts the brutal murder of American journalist James Foley.  Our president promises "criminals" who perpetrate atrocities like this "will be brought to justice." He then goes off to play golf.
• 
July 2015: Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez murders four Marines and a Navy Sailor in Chattanooga, TN.  Our Commander-in-Chief refuses to call the killer a jihadi; but pledges to stop "lone wolf extremists."
• 
December 2015: Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik murder 14 and wound 22 at a holiday party in San Bernardino, CA.  Mr.  Obama calls it a "tragedy" and claims there is "no evidence the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas." He does note the attack is "a reminder of how easy it is for dangerous people to obtain guns in this country."
• 
Barack Obama's comments in the aftermath of these events indicate he has no grasp of what needs to be done to protect the American people from ISIS – or any of the radical Islamist terror organizations that have declared war against us.
• 
Our enemies aren't just "criminals" or "extremists." They are radical Islamist jihadis...  – these franchises from hell are one in their goals: force all "Westerners" to withdraw from the "Lands of the Prophet" – and destroy our ally, Israel. 
• 
ISIS wouldn't even exist but for the 2011 "Obama Bug-Out" from Iraq and his flaccid response to Bashir Assad's brutal civil war in Syria.
• 
ISIS isn't "contained." The organization and its affiliates now operate from safe havens in 13 countries...
• 
Ancient Christian and Yazidi communities are being annihilated.  Over a quarter million unarmed men, women and children have already perished.  More than 14 million human beings have been driven from their homes...
• 
Other than the effectiveness of their propaganda and communications, the ISIS "way of war" is extraordinarily brutal and cruel, but hardly sophisticated.  ISIS terrorists prefer "soft targets."
• 
They employ local cells to identify their prey, plan operations and commit mass murder – usually with suicidal adherents.
• 
Because we are so poor at collecting HUMINT – human intelligence – we're "shocked and surprised" by their attacks.
• 
None of these problems are intractable if we hire a commander-in-chief worthy of the title – and a Congress willing to fulfill the principal responsibility of government: protecting the lives and liberty of the American people.
• 
Define the Enemy: radical Islamists waging war against us.
• 
Define Victory: No safe havens – anywhere – for those waging war against us.  ... directly arm the Kurds and build a coalition of Sunni Arabs ... to destroy ISIS in Syria.  Without a safe haven to recruit, train and transmit vicious propaganda, suicidal jihad will become much less attractive. 
• 
Reinvigorate the CIA and DIA to collect human intelligence overseas.  Here at home Encourage task forces like those created by former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in the NYPD to penetrate radical Islamist organizations.
• 
Stop telling our enemies things they don't need to know.  Don't "chest-thump" about successes – like Obama did with the killing of Usama bin Laden – and the Belgians bragging about how "Salah Abdeslam is talking..."
• 
Video profile "soft targets" – mass transit sites and other "crowd venues." The cameras are already there.  A trained and attentive security officer should have noted the three Brussels terrorists strolling through the airport.
• 
Allow only fully "vetted" Middle East refugees into the U.S.  It's a "no brainer."
• 
Forget about closing "Gitmo" and stop releasing Jihadis to return to their war against us.
• 
Will these seven steps end the threat of radical Islam?  Not immediately.
• 
But to start, "We The People" must hire a commander-in-chief as courageous as the soldiers, sailors, Airmen, Guardsmen and Marines who volunteered to protect us all.
      Obama in Cuba - palling around with dictators  (INN 03/24/2016)
• 
Barack Obama found the perfect photo-op during his trip to Cuba, posing in front of a mural of mass-murderer Che Guevara.
• 
An American president, photographed with looks of delight on his face in front of a gigantic image of a mass murderer.
• 
The big question about Obama's trip to Cuba was whether he met with the dictator emeritus, Fidel Castro.
• 
Obama's Cuba policy has been great for the Castro family and their military-state monopolies, but terrible for average Cubans and for Americans.
• 
It was clear from the earliest days of the Obama administration that his administration would disregard human rights.
• 
Since the 1960s, the Castros had dreamed of a rapprochement with the United States — on their terms.  For just as long, the American Left had dreamed of the same thing.
• 
Now a president of the Left could do it.  The Castros interpret Obama's opening, and his trip, as a great victory: the capitulation of the United States, the behemoth to the north. 
• 
It was not in the American interest, but interest had nothing to do with it.  For Obama, this was a personal and ideological choice.
• 
The Castros typically opted not to liberalize.  Then Obama gave them what they wanted.  For free.  He did not need liberalization.  He did not need a Cuban glasnost or perestroika.  He was determined to do it, for it was on his " to-do list" (and that of the American Left in general).
• 
"By wishing Castro and Guevara long lives, were you wishing short lives to their prisoners?"
• 
President Bill Clinton pried little Elian Gonzalez out of a closet in Miami and sent him away from freedom into Fidel Castro's arms.
• 
A leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, honeymooned in the Soviet Union, and the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, honeymooned in Cuba.
• 
Communists deprive people of all political rights and leave them in extreme material want as well.  In the meeting between Raul Castro and Barack Obama, Castro said the usual stuff about how food, shelter, and health care are human rights.
• 
"I actually welcome President Castro commenting on some of the areas where he feels that we're falling short, because I think we should not be immune or afraid of criticism or discussion as well."
• 
If there earlier were any doubts where Obama's sympathies lie, he has made that very clear in Cuba.  He is with the dictators: the Marxists in Cuba, and the terrorist-sponsoring ayatollahs of Iran.
• 
Since his university days, Obama has had a long history of alliances with anti-Semites and anti-America radicals.
• 
Before his inauguration, Obama told a crowd of cheering supporters: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
• 
Obama alienated America's friends and emboldened America's enemies. 
• 
... he offered the Muslim world "a new beginning." By this, he meant not a Muslim new beginning but an American change of heart.
• 
For over seven years, Obama has been apologizing for America's "oppressive actions and hegemonic international aggression."
• 
In Cuba, he found a wonderful Marxist home.
• 
See related Cuba-USA (Glenn McCoy, 12/18/2014) cartoon from World picture album
      Renaming hypocrisy  (JWR 03/24/2016)
• 
This time, the latest college craze is a frenzied attempt to rename campus buildings and streets.
• 
Apparently some of those names from the past do not fit students' present litmus tests on race, class and gender correctness.
• 
For students, politically incorrect actions in politically incorrect eras mean that otherwise generous historical figures have to be judged as bad in all aspects — at least by 21st century standards.
• 
But why the sudden nationwide renaming frenzy — and how is it any different from other campus fads?
• 
Are students aware of the historical antecedents, like the fickle ancient Roman practice of the postmortem erasing of someone's name from all mention (damnatio memoriae)?
• 
Have they any idea that they are playing roles right out of George Orwell's dystopian works "Animal Farm" and "1984"?  Do they know the history of the verb "Trotskyize"?
• 
The renaming craze is not really about race, class and gender correctness at all. 
• 
If it were, there would be no Warren Hall at UC Berkeley.  Before liberal Earl Warren became chief justice of the Supreme Court, he was the California attorney general who instigated the wartime internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-American citizens.
• 
There also would be no Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.  President Wilson was a man of dubious racial attitudes who infamously re-segregated the federal workforce.
• 
Instead, the "Animal Farm" rules of the current campus bullies go something like this: Some incorrect people from centuries ago are bad, but other politically incorrect people from the recent past are not quite so bad if they were at least sometimes liberal.
• 
Or are students even hypocritical with their made-up litmus tests?
• 
Few students are demanding, for instance, that San Diego State University drop the school nickname "Aztecs."
• 
The imperialistic Aztecs sacrificed tens of thousands of victims from among the tribes they conquered — often ripping out the hearts of their living victims — and enslaved even more.
• 
Is the logic of the campus bullies that some heroes did not mean to do bad things, and so they cannot be judged by the standards of the moment — at least not if they were liberal and deemed politically correct?
• 
Students fail to realize that revolutionary tastes change quickly, and yesterday's PC hero can become today's pariah.
• 
Based on students' own expanding definition of sexual assault and the curtailment of freedom of speech, former president and notorious womanizer Bill Clinton would not be allowed to set foot on any campus because of his past exploitation of women.
• 
Nor would his enabler, Hillary Clinton, who in the past has sought to demonize her husband's female accusers.
• 
There are other hypocrisies in the campus renaming fad.
• 
Why would Stanford students just stop with airbrushing away Father Serra's name?
• 
The university's co-founder, philanthropist Leland Stanford, who was also governor of California, exploited Chinese laborers to help build the transcontinental railroad.  He even dubbed them a "degraded" people.
• 
Today's students, however, have invested tens of thousands of dollars into their blue-chip Stanford-branded educations.  So far, they have shown no desire to lose that snob appeal and expensive cachet — or perhaps have their degrees restamped from Stanford to something more politically correct but less marketable, such as Ohlone College, which would honor the original pre-Colonial peoples of the surrounding Silicon Valley region.
• 
n the 1930s, half-educated student faddists swallowed goldfish.  In the 1950s, the silly campus craze was to cram into phone booths.  In the 1960s, students went feral and torched buildings.
• 
Now, they pout and rename things.
      Yes, America, it's war.  Here's how we can stop losing and start winning  (Fox 03/22/2016)
• 
The January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks were a wakeup call to take radical Islam seriously.
• 
The November Paris attacks put that call on a loudspeaker.
• 
The December San Bernardino attacks showed it could happen here, too.
• 
The Brussels attacks are proof that radical Islam has spread throughout the European continent.
• 
There are likely to be more terrorist attacks in the months ahead.  How long are we going to ignore the obvious?
• 
Global Islamist jihad is at war with all of Western Civilization.
• 
President Obama and other western leaders may not see it as a war, but the other sides does.  Left largely unchecked over last seven years, radical Islam has exploded worldwide. 
• 
A guerilla army has invaded Europe.  We have seen that there are terrorist cells in the United States.
• 
Radical Islamists now savage Africa, the Levant, the Middle East, the Saudi Peninsula, and all the way to Pakistan and South Asia.
• 
Not all the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are extremists or terrorists, not by a long shot.
• 
But even if just ten percent of one percent are radicalized, that's still a staggering one million six hundred thousand people bent on destroying Western Civilization and the values we hold dear.
• 
The fascists wanted to control the world, so did the communists, but the Islamists want to brutally kill a significant percentage of the world – and that is anyone standing in the way of their end-times Caliphate.
• 
We have been one step behind this enemy for years.  We're still tongue-tied by political correctness, while they're setting off bombs at train stations, airports and community centers.
• 
But if we are to defeat radical Islam will only be with a multifaceted, comprehensive strategy that calls on all the aspects of the national power of ourselves and our allies...
• 
Our strategy needs:
• 
An economic component that bankrupts radical jihad by cutting off their oil revenues - attacking their oil fields, refineries and tankers — while we also develop our own resources to be energy independent of Arab oil. 
• 
A banking component that uses the US primacy in international banking and finance to freeze out any country or company that does business with radical Islamists from ISIS to Boko Haram.
• 
An alliance component that draws together moderate Muslims into an alliance against radical Islam.  If they're reluctant to join an anti-Islamist alliance, we should let them know they shouldn't come running to us if things don't work out.  We should call them out if they have some in their inner circles that play both sides.
• 
And we may have to hold our noses and partner with countries we do not always approve of, as we did during World War II.
• 
An anti-hostage component – we will not negotiate, exchange prisoners with nor pay ransom to terrorists.  If you take our people hostage, we will turn the tables on you and put a very large bounty on your heads.  We promise to hunt down kill anyone who kills our citizens, no matter now long it takes.
• 
A communications component which champions western values, like we had during WWII and the Cold War.  Violent radical Jihad and western civilization are NOT morally equivalent.  No apology tour, no comparing the Crusades to ISIS.  Be proud of America or be quiet.
• 
An Internet component that blocks their online recruiting and training efforts and uses metadata to track and destroy terrorist leaders.
• 
A religious and ideological component which applauds moderate Muslim leaders – like Egyptian President Sisi and the Grand Imam of Al Ahzar Mosque- who speak out against radical Islam.
• 
And finally, a military component which does not, repeat does not, require thousands of American combat forces, but rather gives our allies every inducement and all the arm twisting necessary so they put their own boots on the ground.  And which supplies them with whatever they need to do the job.
• 
We've seen two presidents from different political parties with different approaches grapple with radical Islam and both fail.
• 
There is only one country that can pull this effort together.  The current president refuses the task.
• 
Without American leadership the witches brew of radical Islamist movements will expand and ultimately succeed in acquiring weapons of mass destruction and usher in its version of paradise – the destruction of the apostates and unbelievers and triumph of the Caliphate.
• 
The greatest generation defeated fascism and communism with the likes of Churchill, FDR, Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.  They were giants.
• 
So far most of our leaders in this war against radical Islam have been pygmies. 
• 
... it was Winston Churchill who once said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they're tried everything else."
• 
So my fellow citizens, take your responsibilities to heart.  Examine the candidates, make the right choices.
• 
This time we're choosing more than a president to govern for four years, we're choosing a president who will lead not just America but all of civilization to fight, and win, the war against the most virulent, lethal, apocalyptic death cult in history.
      Brussels wake-up call: The global terror threat is growing.  Let’s get going  (Fox 03/22/2016)
• 
Imagine if, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, FDR had taken to the radio and declared everything was under control.
• 
The Nov.  13 terrorist attack on Paris, paired with today's attacks in Brussels, is the European equivalent of back-to-back Pearl Harbors.  Yet, the U.S.  administration sits as sanguine as ever, arguing it has everything in hand.
• 
The U.S.  ought to pay a lot more attention to Europe's troubles.  That's not to say America and Europe face the same security threat.
• 
Europe is a hotbed of homegrown extremist communities.  It also has established "underground railroads" transporting ISIS fighters to the Middle East and back.  European terror cells communicate with each other all the time.
• 
In contrast, the threat in the U.S.  is much more diffuse.  ... That said, the terrorist networks of today have shown remarkable resilience and the capacity to adapt and innovate.
• 
Rather than await the next wake-up call — in ... Washington should move quickly to assemble a next-generation 9/11 Commission to reevaluate the threat in a sober, bipartisan manner. 
• 
Unfortunately, the odds of this administration calling for such a review are small.  It has shown great reluctance in fighting the long war and little ability to change its assumptions about our foes.
      Obama's Che moment  (JWR 03/22/2016)
• 
President Barack Obama inadvertently found the perfect photo-op for his Cuba visit at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana.
• 
A news photo at Revolution Square caught Obama standing together with American and Cuban officials, with an enormous mural of the iconic revolutionary Che Guevara looming over his shoulder on the adjacent Ministry of the Interior building.
• 
Che is, of course, ubiquitous on dorm-room walls and T-shirts in the United States, and a hero of the Cuban revolution.  He also was a coldblooded killer who set up the Cuban gulag and presided over summary executions of political prisoners (trials were, per Che, "an archaic bourgeois detail").
• 
"Yes, we can," and now we can say, "Yes, we did."
• 
But did what?  The trip ensures that the first visit to Cuba by an American president in almost 90 years will be part of Obama's legacy, and seeks to make his opening to Cuba, announced in December 2014, irreversible.
• 
If that means extending credibility and a financial lifeline to a Castro regime that has no intention of reforming, so be it.
• 
At a press conference with President Raul Castro on Monday, Obama spoke in euphemistic terms of our "two different systems," eliding the fact that one system is open, democratic and prosperous, while the other is closed, dictatorial and economically ruinous.
• 
Castro railed against alleged human-rights abuses in the United States — Obama obligingly said he welcomed the dialogue — and El Presidente denied holding any political prisoners when reporters dared ask about it.
• 
Political arrests have accelerated.  There were more than 8,000 in 2015, four times as many as in 2010.
• 
... a patina of revolutionary romance, embodied by that image of Che looking down on President Obama, still hangs over Cuba.  It makes its human-rights abuses, theft and lies an afterthought, or even excusable, for the American left.
• 
After the Cuban missile crisis, Che said that in the event of a U.S.  attack, "if the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression."
• 
It would have been beyond his imagining that so many decades later, with the revolutionary regime cash-strapped and decrepit, the imperialist Goliath would come bearing gifts, and asking for nothing substantial in return, except a line in President Obama's Wikipedia entry.
      Judge Garland and the Left's Disdain for Truth  (JWR 03/22/2016)
• 
The mainstream media — that is, the liberal media — share all the views and characteristics of the left.
• 
There are honest individuals with left-wing views, and dishonest individuals on the right.  But truth is not a leftist value.
• 
Everything the left believes in is more important than truth: social justice, economic equality, reducing carbon emissions, expanding the power of the state, battling sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and above all of these, destroying its conservative opposition.
• 
On March 16, the day after Garland's nomination, every major mainstream news outlet, both print and electronic, depicted the judge as a centrist.
• 
... reporter wrote that Garland may actually be "the most moderate Supreme Court nominee anyone could expect from a Democratic president." The reporter also calls Garland "a superbly qualified judge with a cautious, centrist record."
• 
There is no truth to any of these reports — something easily proved by both Judge Garland's decisions and, amazingly, by the newspapers' reports themselves.
• 
"If the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch conservative, is replaced by a moderate-to-liberal Justice Garland, the court would tip to the left on several key issues, like abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gun control, campaign spending, immigration and environmental protection."
• 
In other words, the very same author who describes Garland as a centrist believes that Garland votes left on essentially every major issue confronting the nation and the Supreme Court.
• 
And the more research one does, the bigger this lie appears.
• 
So, the entire left is lying about Judge Garland, who, for the record, seems like a truly decent man who possesses a first-class mind.
• 
They do so because getting a fifth left-wing vote and weakening the Republicans is far more important than truth.
• 
And believe it or not, there is an even worse lesson here, namely the media's effectiveness in saturating society with its mendacious version of reality.
• 
Unless an American makes the effort to study the issue — and most do not — they take the news media's version as truth.
• 
The terrible lesson, which has been affirmed time and time again since the 1960s, is that a free society can experience brainwashing as effectively as a totalitarian state.
• 
And the truth is that the left-wing attack on Trump's Chicago rally had little, if anything, to do with what the incendiary comments Donald Trump has made about attacking protestors at his events.
• 
Leftist mobs attack and shut down events with which they differ as a matter of course. 
• 
They do so regularly on American college campuses, where conservative speakers — on the rare occasion they are invited — are routinely shouted down by left-wing students (and sometimes faculty) or simply disinvited as a result of leftist pressure on the college administration.
• 
Yet the mainstream media simply ignore this left-wing thuggery — while reporting that the shutting down of a pro-Trump rally is all Trump's fault for his comments encouraging roughing up protestors at his events.
• 
In the 20th century, the century of totalitarianism, virtually every totalitarian regime in the world was a leftist regime.
• 
And the contemporary American university — run entirely by the left — is becoming a totalitarian state.
• 
Tens of millions of Americans look at what the left is doing to universities, and what it has done to the news and entertainment media, and see its contempt for the First Amendment's protection of free speech.
• 
They see Donald Trump attacked by this left, and immediately assume that only Trump will take on ... "Liberal Fascism."
• 
And if these millions had any doubt that Trump alone will confront left-wing fascism, Trump's opponents seemed to provide proof. 
• 
The combination of left-wing violence and the use of it by the other GOP candidates to wound Trump rather than label the left as the mortal threat to liberty that it is may clinch Trump's nomination.
• 
Between the play-Fascism of Trump and the real Fascism of the left, most Americans will know which one to fear most.
      Members of 'Leavenworth 10' languish in military prison, while Gitmo detainees freed  (Fox 03/21/2016)
• 
The Obama administration is emptying the military's Guantanamo Bay detention facility of avowed terrorists captured fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but several American service members languish in another military prison for actions on those same battlefields that their supporters say merit clemency, if not gratitude.
• 
... remaining members of the so-called "Leavenworth 10," convicted service members doing terms ranging from 10 to 40 years for heat-of-the-battle decisions their supporters say saved American lives.
• 
"The very people who protect our freedoms and liberties are having their own freedoms and liberties taken away."
• 
"I think it's appalling and no one is talking about this issue."
• 
The "Leavenworth 10" is the name given to a fluctuating number of men housed at Leavenworth for actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that their supporters say were justified.  Over the years, a handful have been paroled, and more have been incarcerated.
• 
Among the more well-known cases is that of Army First Lt.  Clint Lorance, who is serving a 20-year sentence for ordering his men to shoot two suspected Taliban scouts in July 2012 in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan
• 
Lorance had just taken command of the platoon after the prior leader and several others were killed days before.
• 
The Taliban suspects were on motorcycles and matched descriptions given by a pilot who flew over the area earlier and spotted them as scouts. 
• 
An Afghan suspected of being an enemy combatant was brought to Miller for interrogation and wound up dead.
• 
Miller claimed the suspect tried to grab his gun and that he shot him in self-defense.  But he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
• 
His conviction stems from an April, 2007, incident in Iraq in which he and his unit captured enemies following a firefight.  He radioed a U.S.  detention facility to notify officials he was bringing in four prisoners, but was ordered to let them go.
• 
Hatley, now 47, insists he and his men let the insurgents go, but believes he was punished in the interest of the government's relations with Baghdad.
• 
"When concerns over appeasing a foreign country are allowed to interfere with justice for the purpose of the U.S.  government or the military demonstrating that we, the military or the U.S.  government will hold our soldiers accountable using a fatally flawed military judicial system, it doesn't matter what the truth is; it matters only that there is only the appearance of the truth."
• 
"Killing on the battlefield is not the same as [a police officer] killing someone on the streets."
• 
"When a cop uses force, there's a line of duty investigation.  When a soldier uses force, it is investigated as criminal, and non-infantry investigators handle the case, many who have no combat experience."
• 
While the military rightly holds its soldiers to a high standard of justice, detainees housed at Guantanamo Bay have been freed even with no mitigating circumstances or reasonable belief of rehabilitation.
• 
... of the 647 detainees transferred or released, 17.9 percent were confirmed of re-engaging in extremist activity with another 10.7 percent suspected of doing the same.
• 
West agrees that U.S.  soldiers who commit crimes should be punished severely.  But he said the military owes at least as much to men and women who risk their lives fighting for their country as it does to the unrepentant terrorist at Guantanamo Bay.
• 
"The rules of engagement should be coming from the bottom up and not the other way around, to protect them against the scores of non-state combatants and enemies."
      Obama’s public face — a political theater of distraction and deception  (INN 03/20/2016)
• 
We brought to the UN our concerns about Iran testing ballistic missiles being a violation of the Iran deal.
• 
Russia stated flatly that they "would not permit sanctions to be [re-] imposed because Iran's actions did not violate UN Security Council resolutions."
• 
Samantha Powers expressed frustration and dismay at the Russian reaction to our concerns.
• 
The Obama administration was just playing politics with the issue, and using Samantha as the actress to give voice to our "concern" in this one-act political theater.
• 
We pretend to be standing up for real-time enforcement of the Iran deal, and then blame the Russians when enforcement is prevented.
• 
Whereas the truth is there was no real expectation or desire for enforcement by Obama and his lady advisors from day one of the negotiations or our sign-off. 
• 
For the Obama inner clique, the principle is "the play's the thing" to deflect our understanding of the king's dereliction of duty for God and country.
• 
"Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence." He presented himself as a wise Solon who prefers negotiation to force.
• 
Many so-called peaceniks on the left fail to see the cowardly and traitorous underpinnings (motives) of their pseudo-pacifism.
• 
Thus, seen in a more honest light, we need to understand that preference for negotiation over force is, in reality, a preference for capitulation and a policy of fear.
• 
Capitulation is then interpreted as being wise and detached, whereas it is actually a flight from reality and the unpleasant experiences that accompany any of life's confrontations.
• 
He is identified with left-wing pseudo pacifism ("pseudo" because violence is justified, but only for leftist ideals), a Marxist-derived anti-American bias that would portray the U.S.  as an exploitative society, a bitter anti-Israel bias derived from his Muslim roots, and a false universalism ("false" because it is not God-centered).
• 
His playacting is thus an attempt to distract from his deep ideological commitments.
• 
In Hamlet, the play was intended to reveal the hidden murderous action of the King of Denmark.
• 
With the present U.S.  executive branch, the intent of the playacting is to hide the murderous intent.
• 
See related More in Common (Michael Ramirez, 04/23/2015) cartoon from World picture album
      The Obama Doctrine, unplugged  (JWR 03/18/2016)
• 
First, from the opening days of his presidency, Obama has continuously stressed what he views as America's moral flaws and its unfitness and unworthiness to serve as the world's most powerful nation.
• 
The second consistent aspect of Obama's policies is that he consistently rejects securing the traditional goals of US foreign policy – opposing US enemies, siding with US allies, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, to US enemies.
• 
Third, Obama has consistently refused to see the dangers of the policies that he has adopted and blames others when the dangers materialize and his policies fail.
• 
Finally, Obama has consistently undercut US allies in his attempts to appease US enemies.
• 
It is easy to chalk this up to arrogance.  Obama is certainly one of the most arrogant leaders the US has ever had – if not the most arrogant president in US history.
• 
But given his intelligence, it is hard to escape the impression that Obama's epic arrogance, which makes it impossible for him to admit failure, is just as much of a style preference as a character trait.
• 
Obama's belief in America's moral turpitude, his eagerness to trample US credibility, reject traditional US policy goals; his refusal to see the dangers inherent in his radical policies or acknowledge their failures let alone accept responsibility for their failures, and his trampling of US allies while appeasing its enemies all point to Obama's true doctrine.
      GOP's message to voters should be this: Supreme Court fight is about Obama's abuse of power  (Fox 03/18/2016)
• 
Let us be clear: Republicans in the Senate are under no obligation to interview, vote on or confirm President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court.
• 
The point is this: President Obama has caused this conflict, by diminishing the role of the legislature and assuming unprecedented power for the executive branch.
• 
He has purposefully skirted Congress for the better part of seven years, instead pushing ahead on his mostly unpopular agenda through regulations and executive orders.
• 
As a result, the Court is being asked to act as referee, ruling on the legality of Obama's "my way or the highway" presidency.
• 
You don't change a referee in the middle of a contest.
• 
... this is a fight about President Obama undermining the checks and balances established in the Constitution.
• 
For the Republican leadership, refusing to consider Mr.  Obama's nominee is a matter of principle, and also an opportunity to reward voters for having elected a Republican Congress.
• 
In fairness, substantial resistance from Congress led the president to go his own way, using whatever tools he could find to pursue his "legacy" agenda.
• 
Many think those tools went beyond the rightful scope of the executive branch.  Now, it is up to the Supreme Court to decide.
• 
Because the Court will weigh whether Mr.  Obama has overstepped, he cannot be allowed to put his thumb on the scale by adding another sympathetic jurist.
• 
This is the message that Republican leaders need to send to voters: the president has abused his authority, and we rely on the Supreme Court to reestablish the checks and balances that prevent an imperial White House.
      Analysis: Media, Beltway warnings about Trump a throwback to 1980  (Fox 03/17/2016)
• 
Another day, another dire warning about Donald Trump's growing power.
• 
This isn't the first time, however, that the editorial pages and the pundits have tripped the alarms about an outsider Republican candidate.
• 
The warnings about Trump are in some ways a throwback to what was said and written about Ronald Reagan when he ran against Jimmy Carter in 1980.
• 
Then, the former California governor was portrayed as a fascist and compared to Hitler.  He was accused of stoking nationalistic fears, and offering simplistic solutions to big issues.  Journalists also pointed to Reagan's political affiliation with the Democrats for a major part of his life.
• 
Sound familiar?
• 
... the New York Times wrote that Reagan was "bellicose" and "simple-minded," explaining that as "Reagan has become more deliberate in his remarks on foreign affairs over recent months, that quality has remained — a sense that he is somehow not connected with the world as it is."
• 
... wrote that Reagan's problem is "not a loose lip but the simple answer.  In Mr.  Reagan's case it appears to arise from a romanticized image of America...  Translating nostalgia into policy is far more difficult, and dangerous, than he lets on."
• 
... alleged Reagan was "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf."
• 
"Harry Stein (later a conservative convert) wrote in Esquire that the voters who supported Reagan were like the ‘good Germans' in ‘Hitler's Germany.'"
• 
Meanwhile, as Trump has faced accusations for shifting positions, Reagan faced many of the same complications in his coverage.
• 
"Throughout the fall campaign, this Reagan has muted much of his conservative rhetoric in an effort to reposition himself as a born-again New Dealer sympathetic to the plight of blue-collar workers pinched by unemployment and inflation."
• 
... claiming he shifted core values in virtually every election he ran.  "This strategy does not sit particularly well with either the handful of Republicans on the party's liberal wing nor with the ultraconservatives who have been largely shut out from key campaign positions."
• 
Reagan, like Trump, also took heat for his simple answers to questions about complex topics.
• 
... wrote that Reagan's appeal to a wide range of voters came from his ability to churn out those answers.  ... "on occasion, such simplicities have gotten Reagan into trouble and generated the impression that his pronouncements are, at best, poorly researched."
• 
The central narrative on Reagan, though, focused on his nationalistic rhetoric.  Indeed, he pushed for voters to rally behind the United States as it prepared to confront the Soviet Union.
• 
President Jimmy Carter's campaign quickly seized an opportunity to question Reagan's competence on foreign policy when Reagan publicly supported Taiwan.
• 
In the 2016 cycle, many pundits and Republican rivals also cite Trump's murky answers to complex issues.  They say Trump lacks substance in his answers, and flip-flops – pointing, for instance, to his once-pro-choice stance that has since changed to pro-life.
• 
Opponents say Trump's changes in position are indicative of how he lacks trustworthiness as a candidate.  They say Trump's rhetoric does damage to the Republican brand, arguing it alienates large groups of people.
• 
But critics also suggest the problems with Trump are far more consequential than past concerns about Reagan.
• 
"Mr.  Trump resembles other strongmen throughout history who have achieved power by manipulating democratic processes.  Their playbook includes a casual embrace of violence; a willingness to wield government powers against personal enemies; contempt for a free press; demonization of anyone who is not white and Christian; intimations of dark conspiracies; and the propagation of sweeping, ugly lies."
      The Left May Well Get Trump Nominated  (JWR 03/15/2016)
• 
This past Friday, a left-wing mob shut down a Donald Trump rally in Chicago.
• 
Most Americans viewing what happened saw it for what it was — another left-wing assault on the speech of those with whom they differ and on traditional American civility.
• 
For the record, I have been relentless in my criticisms of Donald Trump, both in print and on my radio show, preferring any other Republican candidate.
• 
Based on his past, I have not had any reason to trust him as a conservative or as a Republican, and he has exhibited serious character flaws.
• 
Nevertheless, truth must trump opposition to Trump.
• 
And the truth is that the left-wing attack on Trump's Chicago rally had little, if anything, to do with what the incendiary comments Donald Trump has made about attacking protestors at his events.
• 
Leftist mobs attack and shut down events with which they differ as a matter of course.
• 
They do so regularly on American college campuses, where conservative speakers — on the rare occasion they are invited — are routinely shouted down by left-wing students (and sometimes faculty) or simply disinvited as a result of leftist pressure on the college administration.
• 
In just the last year, left-wing students have violently taken over presidents' or deans' offices at Princeton, Virginia Commonwealth University, Dartmouth, Providence College, Harvard, Lewis & Clark College, Temple University and many others.
• 
Conservative speakers have either been disinvited or shouted down at Brandeis University, Brown University, the University of Michigan and myriad other campuses.
• 
And leftists shout down virtually every pro-Israel speaker, including the Israeli ambassador to the United States, at every university to which they are invited to speak.
• 
Yet the mainstream media simply ignore this left-wing thuggery — while reporting that the shutting down of a pro-Trump rally is all Trump's fault for his comments encouraging roughing up protestors at his events.
• 
That the left shuts down people with whom it differs is a rule in every leftist society.  The left — not classical liberals, I hasten to note — is totalitarian by nature.
• 
In the 20th century, the century of totalitarianism, virtually every totalitarian regime in the world was a leftist regime.
• 
And the contemporary American university — run entirely by the left — is becoming a totalitarian state, where only left-wing ideas are tolerated.
• 
Tens of millions of Americans look at what the left is doing to universities, and what it has done to the news and entertainment media, and see its contempt for the First Amendment's protection of free speech.
• 
And if these millions had any doubt that Trump alone will confront left-wing fascism, Trump's opponents seemed to provide proof.
• 
The combination of left-wing violence and the use of it by the other GOP candidates to wound Trump rather than label the left as the mortal threat to liberty that it is may clinch Trump's nomination.
• 
And if the left continues to violently disrupt Trump rallies, they ... may well ensure that Donald Trump is elected president.
• 
Between the play-Fascism of Trump and the real Fascism of the left, most Americans will know which one to fear most.
      Trump, Chicago and Libs Playing with Matches  (JWR 03/15/2016)
• 
Let's imagine that members of the Tea Party went to a Bernie Sanders rally to do just one thing: disrupt it.
• 
Let's imagine they shouted during Sanders speeches and tore up Sanders campaign posters.  Let's say they had no intention of letting Bernie speak because they didn't like what Bernie had to say.
• 
Like all true believers, they were convinced they were right, so whatever they did, they reasoned, was fair game.
• 
Who would get the blame?  Bernie Sanders for "provoking" the Tea Party with his radical views ... or the Tea Party?
• 
We know the answer.
• 
When a protestor at a rally in Las Vegas was ejected, Trump told the crowd, "I'd like to punch him in the face." That kind of talk is not presidential.  It doesn't cool things down.  It heats them up.
• 
But the demonstrators – Trump calls them "disruptors" – who went to his rally in Chicago to cause trouble were not Republicans.  If they vote at all, they vote Democratic.  More than a few of the troublemakers were holding Bernie Sanders campaign signs.
• 
I take Sanders at his word that his campaign wasn't behind the disruption in Chicago.  But they were his supporters.  If Trump supporters disrupted a Sanders rally – even if Trump had no direct hand in the matter — Trump would be held accountable.  Why isn't Bernie Sanders treated the same way?
• 
... the people who want to shut down speech they don't like – whether they're Sanders supporters or activists from Moveon.org or Black Lives Matters — are the bigger menace.
• 
They're the authoritarians, the ones who don't believe in free speech.  They're the ones who think that disrupting an opponent's political rally is a legitimate tactic.
• 
"The ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it's dangerous."
• 
It's much easier to take on Donald Trump than the crazy wing of her own progressive base.
• 
Another reason we should have seen it coming is because the same thing has become commonplace on too many college campuses, where liberal students shut down speech they don't like.
• 
That is the historical background to what we're seeing today.  If you don't like what the other side is saying, shut it down.  There are no consequences.  No one gets kicked out of school for shouting down a conservative on campus.
• 
Just a few weeks ago, left wing demonstrators at California State University Los Angeles barricaded the entrances of a theater where conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was set to deliver a speech on censorship and diversity on college campuses.
• 
"Led primarily by the school's Black Student Union and Black Lives Matter chapter, the hundreds of demonstrators, including some professors, poured into the Student Union building Thursday afternoon to block other students from attending the event."
• 
At one point a...  "A demonstrator pulled the fire alarm midway through the lecture, but Shapiro carried on with his remarks despite the shrill noise and pounding at the doors."
• 
This kind of thing has become depressingly routine on too many college campuses.  But I don't recall Bernie condemning any of that.  And I don't recall Hillary warning us that, "If you play with matches, you're going to start a fire you can't control."
• 
The sensitive liberal snowflakes on college campuses who might faint if they were exposed to views that don't comport with their own have been playing with matches for quite some time now.
• 
The grownups should have taken the matches away a long time ago.  They didn't.  And that helps explain what happened in Chicago.
      An alternative obituary for Nancy Reagan  (Fox 03/11/2016)
• 
In death as in life, Nancy Reagan, the former first lady, who lived in the White House from 1981-1989, and who died Sunday at the age of 94, couldn't catch a break from the Washington Post.
• 
Nancy Reagan had an undeniable knack for inviting controversy.  There were her extravagant spending habits at a time of double-digit unemployment, a chaotic relationship with her children and stepchildren that could rival a soap-opera plot, and the jaw-dropping news that she had insisted the White House abide by an astrologer when planning the president's schedule.
• 
When, for example, Nancy Reagan enlisted private donors to buy new White House china, you'd have thought she was going to take it with her when she left.  It was portrayed as personal extravagance rather than a gift to the nation.
• 
And the praise from a grateful nation flowed?  Well, no.  ... She was dubbed "Queen Nancy," as if she and Ronald Reagan were going to use the 220 place settings for their suppers in the family quarters.
• 
The late Johnny Carson joked that her favorite junk food was caviar.  I don't remember similar jokes when the Obamas served Kobe beef.
• 
It was rarely noted that (unlike lavish spending on perks of the job in the current administration), the Reagan China, which is still in use, didn't cost the taxpayer a penny.
• 
And yet Mrs.  Reagan got accolades like this (from Newsweek): "Even her staunchest defenders concede that Nancy Reagan is more Marie Antoinette than Mother Teresa."
• 
When it came to clothes, the same double standard applied.  Democratic First Ladies such as Jackie Kennedy and Michelle Obama are lauded for the stylish clothes they wear, and nobody has suggested that in hard economic times Mrs.  Obama scale back on her expensive designer wardrobe.
• 
Somehow, however, it was considered a minor scandal that Nancy Reagan wanted to be an elegant first lady, even though she either spent her own money or borrowed gowns from American designers to achieve this goal.  There was no rule against either, but the press was shocked, shocked.
• 
If you were living in D.C.  during the Reagan years and not hostile to the Reagans, however, you remember it as a time of glamour and excitement.
• 
Nancy Reagan may be the last First Lady to have been genuinely excited about coming to Washington, D.C.
• 
She saw her job as twofold: make Ronald Reagan's life happy and give the nation a dignified White House.
• 
"Ms.  Kelley asserts that Mrs.  Reagan will go down in history as the cold and glittering icon for a morally vacuous era."
• 
Vacuous?  The Reagan White House seems innocent and wholesome in retrospect, a time when the first couple was gracious and America was proud and respected.
• 
The company the Reagans kept seems, in retrospect, far more dignified than, for instance, potty-mouthed couple Beyonce and Jay Z, who have been at times intimates of the Obamas.
• 
But I imagine Mrs.  Reagan's truly unforgivable sin was not her spending or that famous red-bordered china, but that she defined herself completely in terms of another person — and that person was her husband.
• 
"My life didn't really begin until I met Ronnie," she repeatedly said.
• 
It was anathema to feminists to define one's life in terms of a man and perhaps anathema to everyone to build a life around another human being in the Age of Me.
• 
The partnership of Ron and Nancy made two people happy and may have helped him become president, and that is her most enduring legacy.
• 
Rest in peace, Mrs.  Reagan — you were always a lady first.
      Razzle dazzling ourselves  (JWR 03/08/2016)
• 
Looking for someone — anyone — to blame for the rise of Donald Trump, a rise fueled by angry white males who feel left out and rejected by the elites and special interest groups that disparage their race, mock their faith, criticize their patriotism as xenophobia, excoriate their traditions and protect everyone's rights but their own?
• 
Look no further than the culture beast that is primarily responsible for the fundamental transformation of America, as President Obama once put it.
• 
We have an education system that doesn't educate.  Students get diplomas and degrees, but can't find jobs.
• 
Television spews out "reality shows" that have nothing to do with reality.
• 
Kids seem to know more about sex than they do about schoolwork.
• 
Judges issue rulings that conform more to opinion polls than the Constitution.
• 
The strangest behavior is trotted out as the next civil rights movement and anyone who says "no" is branded a bigot.
• 
Many fallen nations collapsed not from war but from moral rot.
• 
This is the fallout from the "if it feels good do it," looking out for number one, baby boom generation and especially their spoiled offspring who know little about sacrifice, personal responsibility or nationalism.
• 
It should not surprise anyone that such non-thinking and self-focus has fueled the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.
• 
On the other side of the political fence, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton feed into the entitlement mentality that the government exists to give you stuff and take care of you.
• 
Donald Trump's rise is fueled by emotion, anti-intellectualism and the jettisoning of sober thought.
• 
Unlike Ronald Reagan, who spent two decades thinking and honing his positions, Trump is like floor wax — all shine, no depth.
• 
If the choice is between Trump and Hillary Clinton, we are in really bad shape.
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 03/08/2016)
• 
Will a Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice rule that an "under-representation" of any group is evidence of discrimination?
• 
Our educational system may not teach students much math or science, but students learn from gutless academic administrators that mob rule is the way to get what you want — and to silence those who disagree with you.
• 
People who are willing to consider virtually any conceivable excuse for criminals' acts cut no slack at all for decisions that police have to make in a split second, at the risk of their lives.  For some people, it is not enough that cops put themselves at risk to protect the rest of us.  They want cops to risk their lives for the sake of handling criminals more gently.
• 
Historians of the future, when they look back on our times, may be completely baffled when trying to understand how Western civilization welcomed vast numbers of people hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization, people who had been taught that they have a right to kill those who do not share their beliefs.
      Ronald Reagan won the Cold War but it was Nancy Reagan who made it happen  (Fox 03/06/2016)
• 
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.  But that victory might never have ever happened without Nancy Reagan.
• 
Throughout Reagan's first term, he was adamant about one thing.  He did not want to just coexist with the USSR, as had all of his predecessors, but to defeat it.
• 
He said on many occasions that his plan for the Soviet Union was simple, "We Win, They Lose".  He called the Soviet Union an "evil empire."
• 
Reagan wanted us to win the Cold War, but not on the battlefield.  He wanted to win it through economic pressure and diplomacy.
• 
But when he took office in January 1981 those goals were so ambitious they were laughable.  So Reagan's first term was devoted to fixing the U.S.  economy, rebuilding our military, and restoring relations with our allies.
• 
Once he had the United States in a position of strength, Reagan reversed gears, and pursued a policy of peace and arms reduction with the Soviet Union.
• 
When she greeted Gromyko, he leaned down to her and said, "Does your husband believe in peace?"
• 
She responded, "Yes, of course."
• 
Gromkyo responded, "Then whisper ‘peace' in your husband's ear every night."
• 
Without missing a beat, Mrs.  Reagan replied, "I will.  And I'll also whisper it in your ear."
• 
The rest is history.  President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev reached historic arms control agreements.  Reagan went to Moscow.  Gorbachev visited the United States.  They ushered in a new era of peace that had been unequalled in modern times.
• 
Feminists today look at Nancy Reagan as an example of the old world, when women worried more about frivolous things like clothes and dinner parties.
• 
Let them.  Nancy Reagan had more to do with successfully winning the Cold War than all the generals, diplomats and politicians ever could. 
• 
Nancy Reagan may have been tiny in size, but she was a giant in stature.  We have peace in the world today because that indomitable first lady took the first step.
      A physician's take on Trump's health care plan  (Fox 03/03/2016)
• 
Repeal and replace.  Trump has said this repeatedly, and it carries more weight now than previous threats thrown at President Obama's veto pen.
• 
Modify the law that inhibits the sale of health insurance across state lines.  ... Trump favors portability of health insurance from state to state.
• 
Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premiums on their tax returns.  Businesses take these deductions, so why shouldn't individuals?
• 
Health Savings Accounts.  Trump proposes to expand this program.  Contributions should be tax-free and be allowed to accumulate and become part of the patient's estate.
• 
All prices should be transparent.  Patients should be able to shop for the best prices for procedures, examinations, etc.  This will help drive prices down to a more affordable range.
• 
Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper products.  Trump believes special interests are driving up prices, and he wants consumers to be able to import drugs, which will drive prices down.
• 
Trump's position paper on health care goes on to say that enforcing immigration laws will relieve economic pressures.
• 
So Donald Trump has a health care plan.  It needs more flesh on its bones, but at first glance it is not as reckless as his main opponents (both huge ObamaCare critics) say it is. 
• 
Trump promises to reverse at least some of the damage ObamaCare has done to my patients and me.  I believe that if he's elected, he'll try.
      The paranoid view of history infects Oberlin  (INN 03/01/2016)
• 
"Anti-Semitism," wrote Stephen Eric Bronner, author of the engaging book A Rumor About The Jews, "is the stupid answer to a serious question: How does history operate behind our backs?"
• 
For a wide range of ideological extremists, anti-Semitism is still the stupid answer for why what goes wrong with the world does go wrong.
• 
It is a philosophical world view and interpretation of history that creates conspiracies as a way of explaining the unfolding of historical events; it is a pessimistic and frantic outlook, ... which shifts responsibility from the self to sinister, omnipotent others — typically and historically the Jews.
• 
... an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Oberlin College who wildly claimed that Jewish bankers control the world economy and have financed every war since Napoleon, that Israelis and Zionists were not only behind the 9/11 attacks in New York but also orchestrated the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, and that Israeli fingerprints could be found in the downing over Ukraine of Malaysian Air Flight 17 and also in the rise of ISIS.
• 
What troubles observers of this type of intellectual incoherence emanating from academia, is that, unlike its intellectually flabby predecessors from right-wing hate groups or left wing cranks, this political analysis comes complete with academic respectability of Oberlin.
• 
"In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds.  It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant."
• 
"The central image," ... of this defective way of looking at how history works, "is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life...  [The] enemy is clearly delineated."
• 
"Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history .  .  .  Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he directs the public mind through ‘managed news'; he has unlimited funds ... he is gaining a stranglehold."
• 
Israel, and the Rothchilds, in Karega's hallucinatory universe, symbolize Jewish power in the way that classic anti-Semitic depictions of the Jew has always depicted them: they comprise a shady cabal of omnipotent, money-hungry, unscrupulous moneymen, loyal to no single nation, willing to profit from wars and contagion, the enemies of morality, law, and virtue.
• 
Jews are at once a separate race who keep to themselves and never assimilate and adopt the host culture and manipulative insiders who penetrate host societies from within and undermine mores and economies for their own gain. 
• 
Minister Farrakhan, it will be remembered, characterized Judaism as a "gutter religion," deemed Hitler "a great man," and, lest there be any doubt where his sympathizes lie regarding Israel, decided that the "plight" of American blacks puts them "in the same position" as the Palestinians.
• 
So his view that Israel's fingerprints are all over the 9/11 attacks, and that Jews in fact benefited from the terrorism, is not in variance from his twisted beliefs, nor, apparently, those of Karega.
• 
The university campus is not the public square, where any idea — no matter how deranged, improbable, inaccurate, libelous, historically unfounded, or damaging — can be spoken and heard, unchallenged, without government interference.
• 
But while universities should, and do, protect the notion of unbridled expression and the ability to express any opinion as part of "scholarly inquiry," it has never been the intention of academic free speech to protect, or promote, irresponsible, inaccurate, or deranged speech that is clearly outside the parameters of responsible scholarship, research, and factuality.
• 
A professor has every right to contend that the earth is flat, or that the United States is a greater terrorist threat than ISIS, or that the Holocaust never took place, or, as professor Karega has contended, that Jewish bankers rule the world and enabled Israel to orchestrate 9/11 and the Paris shootings, but the right to express such madness does not insulate an individual from the responsibility of taking ownership of his or her opinions.
• 
"We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well."
      Ben Carson: Why I intend to stay in the GOP presidential race  (Fox 02/29/2016)
• 
It seems like the only thing that's guaranteed in this year's election is the litany of punditry after every primary.
• 
This undiscussed industry has helped make politics more blood sport than democratic exercise.
• 
It seems to get nastier at every turn, as campaign flacks dressed up as journalists line up to savage candidates whose campaigns they see as a threat to their preferred politician.
• 
Is this what has become of politics in the world's greatest democracy?
• 
Whether establishment or outsider, conservative or moderate, a cottage industry has arisen around gaming and controlling the primary process.
• 
Unfortunately, these pundits have gotten too lost in the gladiatorial spectacle to see what truly matters: the will of "We the People" of America.
• 
With every call to drop out, pundits and political operatives salivate over polling percentages — as though the people they represent were commodities to be bought and bartered in the backrooms of D.C.'s exclusive political clubs.
• 
This mentality is driving voters away from the political system they have so long supported.
• 
The commoditization of the electorate is precisely what drove me into this race. 
• 
... the gears that turn the political machine no longer recognize "We the People." Instead they see a mass of voters to be prodded, lured or strong-armed into their camp.
• 
Sadly, this juxtaposition of power isn't just a product of election season, it's the very nature of what our government has become...
• 
Career politicians are serving their special interests over the people who elected them, returning home often only to beg for money or votes.
• 
I trust that the American people will soon wake-up and realize that leadership is not about how one speaks, but rather the life one leads.
• 
My candidacy is about restoring the principles of self-government by running as a true citizen-statesman who is accountable to all and beholden to none.
• 
Our nation is best served when the people have free choice.  If a reporter wants to change a person's vote, they should give him or her a compelling reason, not take away their options.
• 
It is a fundamentally undemocratic response to insinuate that people should be stripped of their choice "for the good of the party."
• 
It isn't just the obvious problems that affect us all, such as education, our weak economy, our ballooning federal debt and our national security, including the expanding threat of ISIS.
• 
We must also be careful guardians of our liberty, fighting the influences of special interests and an entrenched political elite that believe they can decide elections for us.
• 
Many are starting to take a stand, refusing to allow the pundits and political class to continue to manipulate them, seeking instead to preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.
      Political correctness is destroying America.  That's why I am on a mission to crush it  (Fox 02/25/2016)
• 
While political correctness has gripped America's universities, schools, media, and large corporations, it has not yet reached most everyday Americans.
• 
This is why the American Dream remains alive — and why the United States is still the world's leading destination for immigrants.
• 
Politically-correct ideology requires that success is resented.  Ambition becomes suspicious.  Mediocrity is preferred to excellence.  The collective is elevated over the individual.
• 
Just about every problem in America today is linked to political correctness.  Declining educational standards, increasing secularism, the police not being allowed to do their job, an inability to secure her borders, a diminished America in the world theatre and reluctance to smash the evil of currently rampaging Islamism – all of it is rooted in politically-correct ideology.
• 
When the focus is on the collective, individual dreams can never fully materialize.
• 
America is much more than a country.  It's an ideal, a value system.  Put simply, it's the best idea the world has ever had.  That's why American greatness and leadership is indispensable to civilization, as we know it.
• 
The world's fortunes travel with America – we need America to be as healthy as possible.
• 
Any historian worth their salt will tell you that most great nations last between 200-250 years.  That puts America right in the "kill zone".
• 
If it is to make it to her tri-centennial in 2076, it must eliminate the intellectual tyranny and cultural cringe that political correctness insists on, as well as the moral and intellectual Lilliputians who bully relentlessly.
• 
America has been, and remains, the refuge for brilliant, creative, ambitious, and independent thinkers of other lands.
• 
America provides the most friendly, open, nurturing, free and optimistic environment for any individual to achieve their dream.  This must be protected at all cost.
      Res Idiotica  (02/23/2016)
• 
My students are know-nothings.  They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent.
• 
But their minds are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation.
• 
They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten it origins and aims, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference about itself.
• 
They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically).
• 
They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting who will run America and the world.
• 
But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks.
• 
Who fought in the Peloponnesian war?  What was at stake at the Battle of Salamis?  Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach?  How did Socrates die?  Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey.  The Canterbury Tales?  Paradise Lost?  The Inferno?
• 
Who was Saul of Tarsus?  What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect?  Why does the Magna Carta matter?  How and where did Thomas Becket die?  What happened to Charles I?  Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him?
• 
What happened at Yorktown in 1781?  What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural?  His first Inaugural?  How about his third Inaugural?  Who can tell me one or two of the arguments that are made in Federalist 10?  Who has read Federalist 10?  What are the Federalist Papers? 
• 
At best they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance.  They are not to be blamed for their pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature.  It is the hallmark of their education.  They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present. 
• 
Our students' ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement.
• 
The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome...  It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide.  The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.
• 
... this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.
• 
What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, historyless free agents, and educational goals composed of contentless processes and unexamined buzz-words like "critical thinking," "diversity," "ways of knowing," "social justice," and "cultural competence."
• 
Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes "flexibility" (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).
• 
In such a world, possessing a culture, a history, an inheritance, a commitment to a place and particular people, specific forms of gratitude and indebtedness (rather than a generalized and deracinated commitment to "social justice), a strong set of ethical and moral norms that assert definite limits to what one ought and ought not to do (aside from being "judgmental") are hindrances and handicaps.
• 
My students are the fruits of a longstanding project to liberate all humans from the accidents of birth and circumstance, to make a self-making humanity.
• 
The inability to answer basic questions about America or the West is not a consequence of bad education; it is a marker of a successful education.
• 
Above all, the one overarching lesson that students receive is to understand themselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference.
• 
... a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions. 
• 
Ancient philosophy and practice heaped praise upon res publica – a devotion to public things, things we share together.
• 
We have instead created the world's first res idiotica – from the Greek word idiotes, meaning "private individual."
• 
Our education system excels at producing solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to a public, a common culture, a shared history.
• 
They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions.
• 
They are living in a perpetual Truman Show, a world constructed yesterday that is nothing more than a set for their solipsism, without any history or trajectory.
      Scalia and the Supreme Court: What the Justice would want now  (Fox 02/19/2016)
• 
After the tragic and untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the nation has before it the question of whether to fill his seat now or only after the people have spoken in November.
• 
On that question, those of us who knew him and knew his deep respect for the place of politics in our constitutional order know that he would have been the first to remind us that the president may nominate his replacement, but the Senate's power to consent, or not, is equally important and equally to be respected.
• 
Far more important than that immediate question, however, is whether Justice Scalia's legacy of respect for the written Constitution and the limited government it authorizes will continue to animate the nation's highest court, or whether instead the Court will join the political branches as handmaiden and move us ever closer to the vision President Obama and his party have been pushing now for nearly eight decades.
• 
We need only look to those of Mr.  Obama's persuasion who would succeed him for the particulars of that vision.  Driven by identity politics and class warfare, and informed by a medieval understanding of economics, they would make America look like the rest of the world — a world from which so many of us have fled.
• 
Mr.  Obama should know: more than any other administration, his has lost before the Court more than half the time, many of the most important cases by a single vote.
• 
Is it any wonder that he wants to fill Justice Scalia's seat as quickly as possible, or that he is already trying to shame Senate Republicans against a filibuster, the very tactic he himself employed against then-Judge Samuel Alito?
• 
Given the profound implications for the nation's future of this president's filling this seat, it is imperative, especially after the people spoke so clearly in 2014, that they be allowed to speak once more about our future before this seat is filled.
      Scalia fight: Republicans must stay strong  (Fox 02/18/2016)
• 
Few people in modern history have fulfilled their oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" more than the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
• 
It doesn't take a fortune teller to predict the scenario that would present itself if the political dynamics were reversed and a Republican president were in the White House with a Democratic Senate majority.
• 
Democrats would be demanding no justice be confirmed until the next president takes office and they would make it a major campaign issue.
• 
"We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances." That was 19 months before the 2008 election.
• 
It is a little more than eight months away from the next election.
• 
The president is not about to nominate a conservative and should not be expected to.
• 
Will he pick someone who is a closet liberal, daring the Senate to reject that person, or will he choose an openly liberal person and challenge the Senate to block his nominee?
• 
If ever there was a time for Senate Republicans to stand firm, this is it.
• 
For the Left, this is an opportunity to impose a liberal agenda on the nation for perhaps as many as 40 years.
• 
For the Right, it will determine whether conservatives will have the power to stop an agenda they believe is proving ruinous to the country — economically, legally and morally.  The stakes could not be higher.
• 
"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex.  The only issue is whether it prohibits it.  It doesn't.  Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant.  Nobody ever voted for that.  If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey, we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws.  You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date.  All you need is a legislature and a ballot box.  You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine.  You want a right to abortion?  There's nothing in the Constitution about that.  But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it.  Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law.  That's what democracy is all about.  It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society."
• 
If President Obama puts another liberal on the court, tipping its balance, that person is likely to undo all that Scalia has done to honor the Constitution.
      Justice Scalia and constitutional fidelity  (Fox 02/18/2016)
• 
Justice Scalia was the most aggressive and consistent defender on the Supreme Court of the primacy of the text of the Constitution in the post-World War II era.
• 
He was the modern-day progenitor of the idea — and eventually the jurisprudence — of interpreting the Constitution faithful to the plain meaning of its words.  He was utterly and unambiguously faithful to this concept.
• 
This theory of constitutional interpretation has two names — textualism and originalism.
• 
Justice Scalia argued that the Constitution means what it says; it says it is the supreme law of the land; and all American judges have taken a solemn oath to be subject to what it says.
• 
It is superior to the jurists who interpret it.  It is what it says, not as they might wish it say.  Thus, all judges are bound by the text.  Hence the word "textualism."
• 
So "no law" means no law.  "Due process" guarantees fair process, not substance.  A constitutional guarantee is a real guarantee.
• 
The exercise of rights articulated in the Constitution cannot be subject to popularity contests.
• 
If the text of the Constitution is ambiguous, it then becomes the duty of the jurist to ascertain the original public meaning of the words that form the ambiguity.  Hence the word "originalism."
• 
Ascertaining original public meaning often requires the skills of a historian; yet, thanks to James Madison, the historical record is ample.
• 
The rejection of this line of thinking permits jurists to interpret the Constitution in novel and creative or even destructive ways, according to their own ideologies.
• 
It permits them to adapt a meaning in the text that they wish had been there to fortify contemporary societal attitudes.
• 
Justice Scalia argued that that is not the job of jurists.
• 
The job of the jurist, he argued, is not to adapt the text of the Constitution to public trends or cultural changes.
• 
That is the job of the Congress and the States through legislation.
• 
The opposition reacted and coalesced around a concept called the "living Constitution."
• 
Its tenets are that modern-day jurists can adapt the Constitution to modern-day societal preferences and governmental needs.
• 
Justice Scalia argued that that itself violates the judicial oath, which is to uphold the Constitution as it was written, not as some jurists may wish it to be.
• 
Only three-quarters of the States, he maintained, can change the Constitution — by amendment — and they have done so only 27 times in the past 225 years.
• 
This steadfast attitude about the proper judicial role on the Court led him to author staunch defenses of the right to life even in the womb, free speech even when hateful, private property even when it is in the government's way, the right to confront one's accusers at trial even when unpleasant, the right to keep and bear arms in the home even if locally prohibited, and the right to privacy in "persons, houses, papers, and effects."
• 
I once asked him if he felt he belonged to the Court.  His reply was short and blunt.
• 
He told me he belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, he belonged to his family, and he belonged to the Constitution.
• 
The Court, he said, was just one creature intended to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.  The Constitution is the Court's creator.  No creature can be greater than its creator.
      Bernie Sanders and the "Jewish Question"  (INN 02/18/2016)
• 
In 1921, Albert Einstein presented a paper on his then-infant Theory of Relativity in Sorbonne University in Paris.  "If I am proved correct," he said, "the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist.  If relativity is proven wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew."
• 
In a politically divided society like the US, there are always those who support the president and those who find faults in his every move.  And if the president happens to be Jewish; if Bernie Sanders becomes the next president, the Einstein Theorem above will hold at every turn.
• 
Left-leaning ideology is an ideology obsessed with rooting for the underdog, the poor, the deprived, the loser.  As a rule, the flag bearers of this standpoint are quite aggressive — even to the point of turning violent — in their quest for saving the world from its villains.
• 
There is a problem, though, with the left-leaning approach.  Equating "Good" with the underdogs and the losers, "Evil" with the successful and the winners, is not always proper.
• 
Of course, there are cases to the contrary, nevertheless, profiling by picking "good" and "evil" based on "poor" and "successful" respectively, is ironic, wrong and improper.
• 
... a former aggressor turned loser became a favorite of the left, while the winner, the former underdog, the David, became the villain — It had won and therefore it was no longer the smaller fry.
• 
And now, a candidate for president of the US, Bernie Sanders, takes on the anti-Israel flag, trying to protect the Palestinian underdog, blaming Israel for inflicting misery on the "poor" Palestinians without regard to the fact that the Arabs who dream of wiping Israel off the map have brought about this misery upon themselves.
• 
The more alarming part of this potential consequence; the force that grants this leftist anti-Israel agenda more credibility is the fact that the left-leaning candidate for president happens to be Jewish.
• 
The fact that he is Jewish, who would betray the special relationships between the Jewish state and the US, would be viewed as the weightiest authority in support of the anti-Israel forces.
• 
If a Jew, an insider, stands up and condemns Israeli "aggression" than it must be proof that Israel is a "criminal state", and Jews who support its "crimes" must be reviled. 
• 
... when Ivan Boesky or Andrew Fastow or Bernie Madoff committed fraud, almost every article mentioned they were Jewish. 
• 
There is no doubt in my mind that Bernie Sanders will become a failed president if he ever makes it to the White House.
• 
He will not be able to fulfil the grandiose promises he throws around.  Not only half of the US, the Congress and half of the governors will stand in his way and will make sure that he fails, but even without that gigantic obstacle, Socialism on the level Sanders proposes has been shown to throw a country into a depressive economic mess anytime it has been attempted in recent history.
• 
I definitely hope Sanders falls short of getting the necessary number of delegates in his quest for the top job.
• 
I hope that Americans wake up to the enormous damage his potential reign could inflict on the US, both economically and the homeland security front.
      Trump: Bush Administration Knowingly 'Lied' About Iraq War Intel Read more at  (JWR 02/18/2016)
• 
It's one thing to disagree with the decision to go to war in Iraq.  That, believe it or not, was once a minority view.
• 
Two months after the invasion, a Gallup poll found 79 percent of Americans thought the war was justified — about half of those said, "The war will be justified regardless of whether (weapons of mass destruction) are found."
• 
Republican candidate front-runner Donald Trump took things to a new level.  He not only called the decision to go to war "a big, fat mistake" (and, post-debate, proclaimed it "a disaster") but also said: "They lied.  They said there were weapons of mass destruction.  There were none, and they knew there were none."
• 
"I am ... keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli.  It is astonishing to see the 'Bush lied' allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact..."
• 
"Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings..."
• 
"...  No one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion.  The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive — to the president, to Congress and to the media..."
• 
"The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact — with potentially dire consequences.  I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been 'stabbed in the back' by politicians."
• 
"I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq.  And lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don't let anyone stretch the case on WMD.  And he was the one who was skeptical.  And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum.  The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, hey, look, it will only take a week or two.  And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months.  And so Bush pulled the trigger.  A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence.  But there was no lying in this that I could find."
• 
Accusing a commander in chief, irrespective of his or her party, of knowingly lying to start a war is serious business.
• 
In the Iraq War, almost 4,500 U.S.  service members died, to say nothing of the war's cost.
• 
To claim that the Bush administration knowingly lied to start the Iraq War is to assert that the CIA was behind 9/11 or that O.J.  Simpson was innocent of double homicide.
• 
Facts don't matter.  Lack of evidence means presence of proof.
      Not the America I knew  (JWR 02/16/2016)
• 
Envy is defined by Dictionary.com as "a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions, etc." That perfectly characterizes the entire political philosophy of the Democratic progressive left.
• 
In his victory speech following his New Hampshire primary win, Sanders said America was founded on the principle of fairness.
• 
No it wasn't.  You don't find the word "fairness" in the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution.  The word you do find is "liberty."
• 
The Founders wanted Americans to be liberated from oppressive, intrusive, dictatorial government and to be free to pursue happiness, according to their definition of the word.
• 
Sanders and Clinton aren't channeling the Founders, they're channeling Robin Hood.  They want to take from people who have sacrificed, invested, risked and worked hard and give the fruits of their labors to others who have not embraced those noble practices
• 
The late football coach Vince Lombardi once said, "The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand."
• 
Today, it is all about envying what others have.  In biblical terms it is covetousness, a violation of the Tenth Commandment.  Covetousness is destructive, not to the person who is its object, but to the person doing the coveting.
• 
... onsider this quote from one of the great African-American leaders of the past, Booker T.  Washington: "Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work."
• 
That such noble sentiments have largely disappeared from our culture and been replaced by envy, greed and entitlement, explains why our national debt soars, why so many find themselves in financial difficulty, or think they do, because that's what the left has told them.
• 
At the founding of America, self-interest was often secondary to the public good.  Today, self-interest is supreme and the public good is largely forgotten.
• 
No wonder we are in trouble on all levels, as liberal-progressives double down on failure to promote their own political self-interest.
      The judge who set words on fire  (JWR 02/16/2016)
• 
Antonin Scalia would surely be bemused — and maybe even amused — by a lot of the nice things being said about him now, sometimes by unexpected people.
• 
He was the rare lawyer who could speak and write without taking refuge in learned bloviation.  This sometimes irritated colleagues with smaller gifts of language and rhetoric.
• 
During oral arguments, he asked more questions than the other justices, occasionally more than the rest of them together, often bringing the room to nervous laughter. 
• 
"Scalia doesn't come into oral argument all secretive and sphinxlike, feigning indecision on the nuances of the case before him.  He comes in like a medieval knight, girded for battle.  He knows what the law is.  He knows what the opinion should say.  And he uses the hour allocated for argument to bludgeon his brethren into agreement."
• 
"His writing style is best described as equal parts anger, confidence, and pageantry.  Scalia has a taste for garish analogies and offbeat allusions — often very funny ones — and he speaks in no uncertain terms.  He is highly accessible and tries not to get bogged down in abstruse legal jargon.  But most of all, Scalia's opinions read like they're about to catch fire with pure outrage.  He does not, in short, write like a happy man."
• 
And why should he have, with the world on fire?
      Why 'White Privilege' is not only bogus — it actually does great harm to blacks  (JWR 02/16/2016)
• 
A pillar of contemporary leftism is the notion of "white privilege."
• 
There are simply too many variables other than race that determine individual success in America.
• 
And if it were true, why would whites commit suicide at twice the rate of blacks (and at a higher rate than any other race in America except American Indians)?
• 
... white men, whom the left argue are the most privileged group of all in America, commit 7 of every 10 suicides in America — even though only 3 of 10 Americans are white males.
• 
Whatever reason one gives for the white suicide rate, it is indisputable that, at the very least, considerably more whites than blacks consider life not worth living.
• 
To argue that all these whites were oblivious to all the unique privileges they had is to stretch the definition of "privilege" beyond credulity.
• 
Second, there are a host of privileges that dwarf "white privilege."
• 
A huge one is "two-parent privilege." If you are raised by a father and mother, you enter adulthood with more privileges than anyone else in American society, irrespective of race, ethnicity or sex.
• 
Another "privilege," if one wants to use that term, that dwarfs "white privilege" is "Asian privilege." ... Will the left soon complain about Asian privilege?
• 
For most of American history it was a lot easier being a Christian than being a Jew in America.  Yet, I do not know a Jew — myself included — who doesn't believe that to be a Jew in America has always been an unbelievable stroke of good fortune.
• 
It is not surprising that an American Jew, Irving Berlin, wrote "God Bless America."
• 
There are even times when there is "minority privilege" in America today.
• 
And the biggest privilege of all is "American privilege." Unless you or your family make some big mistakes, the greatest privilege of all is to be an American.  That's why much of the world wants to live in America.
• 
In the left's view, it is not poor values or a lack of moral self-control that causes crime, but poverty and, in the case of black criminals, racism.
• 
Therefore, the disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by black males is not attributable to the moral failure of the black criminal or to the likelihood of his not having been raised by a father but to an external factor over which he has little or no power — white racism.
• 
White privilege is another left-wing attempt, and a successful one, to keep America from focusing on that which will truly help black America — a resurrection of the black family.
• 
In doing so, the left has become the only real enemy the black has in America today.
      'Get over it': Justice Scalia's most memorable quotes  (Fox 02/15/2016)
• 
"The Court must be living in another world.  Day by day, case by case, it is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize."
• 
"War is war, and it has never been the case that when you capture a combatant, you have to give him a jury trial in your civil courts.  It's a crazy idea to me...  If he was captured by my army on the battlefield that is where he belongs.  I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son.  And I am not about to give this man — captured in war — a full jury trial, that is just crazy."
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"So, the question comes up, is there a constitutional right to homosexual conduct?  Not a hard question for me.  It's absolutely clear that nobody ever thought when the Bill of Rights was adopted, that it gave a right to homosexual conduct.  Homosexual conduct was criminal for 200 years, in every state.  Easy question."
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"As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically."
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"Our manner of interpreting the Constitution is to begin with the text, and to give that text the meaning that it bore when it was adopted by the people..."
• 
"If you think aficionados of a 'living' Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again.  You think the death penalty is a good idea?  Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it.  You want a right to abortion?  Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it.  That's flexibility.  Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers."
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"What is a 'moderate' interpretation of the text?  Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?"
• 
"I used to travel on the subway from Queens to Manhattan with a rifle.  Can you imagine doing that now in New York?  I mean, 'There's a man with a gun!'"
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"[H]ave the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity.  Be fools for Christ.  And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."
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"I don't worry about my legacy.  Just do your job right, and who cares?"
      It's time to declare war on ISIS  (Fox 02/15/2016)
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For seven years we've all watched as America's global leadership has declined and radical Islamic terrorism spread around the world.
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What will it take for America's leaders to wake up to the true nature of radical Islamic terrorism?
• 
... President Obama refuses to acknowledge this threat for what it is: a radical ideology that seeks to violently impose Islam on others and supplant existing cultures and duly constituted governments around the world.
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We cannot defeat the Islamic State and other brands of radical Islamic terrorism until we confront this truth.
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... enclaves of the would-be Islamic State caliphate have sprung up in Libya and other North African nations, as well as the Gaza strip and even Pakistan.
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Unless we act now, these ISIS loyalists will only entrench their positions as they work to meet each other in the middle.
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These are not just the ambitions of faraway mad men.  Around the world people are working to advance this ideology — not just in the Middle East, but here in America as well.
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Whether through violent attacks like San Bernardino or the shooting of a police officer in Philadelphia, or through social "lawfare" tactics designed to silence criticism and advance the goal of imposing sharia, Islamic jihad has already reached our shores.
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Although CAIR claims to represent peaceful Muslims in civil rights issues, its history ties directly to the terrorist organizations Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
• 
Most disturbing of all is the revelation during the Holy Land trial of a strategic document that called on members to conduct a ‘civilizational jihad' to impose sharia law in the United States.
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We must destroy terrorist movements like ISIS around the world while countering radical Islamic ideology here in the United States.  No group can subjugate the U.S.  Constitution to their will.
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This is hardly the first time the United States has been threatened by radical ideologies.
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Just as with Nazism and Soviet communism, the American people will prove too resilient to be defeated by expansionist and oppressive regimes like ISIS.
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As President I will declare war on the Islamic State, taking back the territory through which it claims legitimacy.
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This fight extends far beyond the illegitimate borders of the Islamic State and the soldiers they have recruited.  My plan will leverage every American strength — diplomatic, economic, political and cultural — to combat radicalization and ensure that no country provides safe harbor for terrorism.
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In the U.S., I will work tirelessly to defend our way of life from those who wish to destroy it.  hat means not only investigating groups like CAIR, but securing our borders to ensure that terrorists do not have a pathway into the homeland.
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I will not allow a stream of poorly vetted people from Syria to come to the U.S.  On the contrary, I will establish refugee safe zones in Syria and neighboring countries, so that refugees are provided for, but are also ready to return home when it is safe for them to do so.
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A president's most solemn vow is to protect the people, whose country they have entrusted to him.  This plan is my promise to uphold America's security to my utmost, confronting our worst threats head on.  Radical Islamic terrorism is the greatest threat we face today.
      On President's Day, let's remember what Thomas Jefferson knew about extremists  (Fox 02/15/2016)
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President Obama was elected on a promise to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and avoid new wars.  But a funny thing happened on the way to peace – more terror attacks at home and the rapid rise of ISIS abroad. 
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No matter how much he'd rather focus on issues like global warming and gun control, the president has to rise to the challenge of this increasing Islamist threat. 
• 
He's certainly not the first president to have to shift priorities on the fly.  Many if not all of his predecessors entered office with a clear agenda,only to watch world events scramble their to-do lists.
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Consider our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who took office in 1801.  Like Obama, Jefferson was widely considered a pacifist who preferred diplomacy over war.
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But when Tripoli (now Libya) declared war on us because we refused to pay extortion and ransom to the pirates off the Barbary coast, Jefferson rose to the challenge.
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He started with a display of strength to intimidate our enemies, sending the U.S.  Navy's newest frigates to the region.
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When that show of power wasn't enough to get the Tripoli pirates to stop their attacks and release their hostages, Jefferson ordered bombardment from those powerful new ships.
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Unfortunately, then as now, long distance bombing didn't work.  To the Islamic extremists of any generation, surviving against a Western attack is considered as good as winning.
• 
That's why airstrikes and a few ground advisors won't break the back of ISIS today.  In fact, ISIS just uses our bombings to recruit more terrorists.
• 
Eaton and a detachment of Marines took the major city of Derne in less than 3 hours.  Yusef Qaramanli, the Tripoli leader, quickly surrendered.
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A deal was cut, hostages were released, and America's merchant ships could finally pass safely near the Barbary Coast.
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President Obama still hasn't learned the key lesson that Jefferson and other presidents (most recently George W.  Bush) learned about the Middle East: You can't crush an outlaw Islamist regime from the air.
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The more we delay putting boots on the ground against ISIS, the more the American people will lose patience – and the more power and prestige ISIS will gain for surviving our attacks.
• 
Obama needs to realize that winning a war is more important than his pledge to end a war.  He needs to empower our military and trust the experts at the Pentagon
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He needs to end the irresponsible releases of terrorists from Gitmo, tighten restrictions on immigrants from countries that support terrorism, confront our enemies abroad, and do whatever it takes to keep us safe at home.
      Is social media fueling a national epidemic of teen suicide?  (Fox 02/08/2016)
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... young people — including adolescents, teenagers and those in their 20s — are disconnected from the reality of their own existences.
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Facebook, Twitter, Tinder and the like have made them think of themselves as mini-reality-TV versions of themselves.
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Too many of them see their lives as a series of flickering photos or quick videos.
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They need constant doses of admiration and constant confirmation of their tenuous existence, which come in the form of Facebook "likes" and Twitter "retweets."
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This substitution of media for real meaning has not only been shown to weaken their self-esteem and their ability to sustain themselves through adversity, but it can cheapen the value they assign to life in general — including their own lives.
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... to the extent that one is never truly alive, one can entertain the notion of killing oneself, without the normal psychological hurdles.
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This is one reason, by the way, that drugs like heroin are rampant.  Heroin kills real feelings.
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And young people are, increasingly, strangers to dealing with real feelings.
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Heroin is just the powdered equivalent of text messaging, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the technology drugs Americans — especially American teen — are mainlining every single day.
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This is one reason why young people are increasingly fascinated with dramas about vampires and zombies.  They know something about the walking dead.
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Yes, they try to insulate themselves by having more and more and more sex, with more and more partners, but, ultimately, that doesn't convince them they are more than their bodies.
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To fully want to live, to fully resist death, even amidst adversity, one must be convinced that one has a soul and a true destiny.
      Sloppy Language and Thinking  (JWR 02/10/2016)
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George Orwell said, "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
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Gore Vidal elaborated on that insight, saying, "As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too.  Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate."
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And John Milton predicted, "When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation."
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These observations bear heeding about how sloppy language is corrupting our society.
• 
"Almost half a century after the U.S.  Supreme Court concluded that Southern school segregation was unconstitutional and 'inherently unequal' ... racial and ethnic segregation continued to intensify throughout the 1990s."
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Let's examine the term "racial segregation."
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Based upon racial disparities, might we conclude that opera performances, dressage and wine tastings are also segregated?
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If you want to see more "segregation," visit South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont.  Not even 1 percent of their populations is black.
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What might our segregation scholars propose?  Would they suggest rounding up blacks in the states where they are over-represented, such as in Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, and bussing them to America's "segregated" states?
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Might they suggest drafting blacks to attend operas, dressage and wine tastings?
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The test they would use is: If a black wants to use a water fountain, attend an opera or live in Montana, can he?
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That ought to be the same test for schools: If a black lives in a school district, is he free to attend?  If the answer is yes then the school is not segregated, even if no blacks attend.
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Terms related to segregation are "disparities," "gaps" and "disproportionality," all of which are taken as signs of injustice that must be corrected.
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There are race and sex disparities and gaps all over the place.  For example, blacks are 13 percent of the population but 80 percent of professional basketball players and 66 percent of professional football players, and on top of that some of the most highly paid players.
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Before we invest resources into worrying about such matters, we might focus on language corruption, because it is polluting our thinking, resulting in inept and dangerous social policies.
      Toxic Words  (JWR 02/09/2016)
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During this election year, we are destined to hear many words that are toxic in the way they misrepresent reality and substitute fantasies that can win votes.
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One of these words is "entitlement." To hear some politicians tell it, we are all entitled to all sorts of things, ranging from "affordable housing" to "a living wage."
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But the reality is that the human race is not entitled to anything, not even the food we need to stay alive.  If we don't produce food, we are just going to starve.
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If we don't build housing, then we are not going to have housing, "affordable" or otherwise.
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Particular individuals or groups can be given many things, to which politicians say they are "entitled," only if other people are forced by the government to provide those things to people who don't need to lift a finger to earn them.
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All the fancy talk about "entitlement" means simply forcing some people to work to produce things for other people, who have no obligation to work.
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People who are producing nothing can feel a sense of grievance against those who are producing much, and being rewarded for it, if our basis for receiving economic benefits is supposed to be what we are all "entitled" to, rather than what we have worked to earn.
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One of the most misleading uses of the notion of entitlement is to say that people who paid into Social Security for years are now entitled to the pensions they receive.
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The question is not how long you have been putting money in, but how much money you put in.
• 
... the first generation to enter Social Security would have their pensions paid by money received from the second generation, as well as its own money.  The second generation would be paid with money that included what was paid in by the third generation, and so on.
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This is the principle behind a "pyramid" scheme, in which the first investors can get a big return on their money by simply paying them money received from subsequent investors.
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But it is only a matter of time before reality catches up with us, since the pyramid scheme is not actually investing any money or saving any money.
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That is why a private insurance company that sold annuities based on a pyramid scheme would be prosecuted for fraud, and its officials put in prison.  But you can't put Congress in prison, even when that is what it deserves.
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With the money running out in the so-called trust fund for Social Security, reality is beginning to break through the fantasies, and is closing in on us.
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No one wants to pull the rug out from under people already retired and dependent on Social Security, or on people nearing retirement age, and expecting a pension that is just not going to be there.
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We can be both realistic enough, and decent enough, to rescue older people who have been victimized by political fantasies.
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We can pay higher taxes temporarily to rescue them.  But, there is no reason to bankrupt the country by keeping the fraud going forever.
      You Don't Know What Obama Said at the Mosque  (JWR 02/09/2016)
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If you seek to understand Barack Obama and his views, the best place to go is his speeches.  ... When you do, you realize how often what Obama says is morally and intellectually confused and even untrue.
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The most recent example was his speech last week at a mosque in Baltimore.  In addition to reassuring Muslim Americans that they are as American as Americans of every other faith — President Obama spoke a lot of nonsense, some of it dangerous.
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President Obama: "So let's start with this fact: For more than a thousand years, people have been drawn to Islam's message of peace.  And the very word itself, Islam, comes from salam — peace."
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Why did Obama say this?  Even Muslim websites acknowledge that "Islam" means "submission" [to Allah], that it comes from the Arabic root "aslama" meaning submission, and that "Islam" is in the command form of that verb.
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That's why "Muslim" means "One who submits," not "One who is peaceful."
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Obama: "Jefferson and John Adams had their own copies of the Quran."
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The reason Jefferson had a copy of the Quran was to try to understand it in light of what the Muslim ambassador from Tripoli had told him and John Adams.
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When asked why Tripoli pirates were attacking American ships and enslaving Americans, the Muslim ambassador explained that Muslims are commanded to do so by the Quran: "It was written in their Quran that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman [Muslim] who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to Paradise."
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Obama: "And how do we move forward together?  ... It can't be just a burden on the Muslim community — although the Muslim community has to play a role."
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Most Americans would say that the American Muslim community has to play "the" role, not "a" role in preventing violent Islam from capturing the minds of American Muslims, and in helping authorities identify extremist Muslims.
• 
One would have expected that after mentioning "Christians targeted now in the Middle East," he would have mentioned "Jews targeted now in the Middle East." That, however, would presumably have been too controversial to say.  So, the president mentioned the many Jews in France "who now feel obliged to leave" their country because "they feel themselves under assault" — and then came the corker: "sometimes by Muslims."
• 
Sometimes?  French Jews have recently been murdered, tortured and harassed more than at any time since the Holocaust.  And virtually every one of those attacks has been perpetrated by Muslims.
• 
Obama: "We have to be consistent in condemning hateful rhetoric and violence against everyone.  And that includes against Muslims here in the United States of America."
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Two facts are relevant here.  One is that religious hate crimes are exceedingly rare in America.  The other is that in 2014, the last year for which we have data, Jews were targets of hate crimes four times more frequently than Muslims.
• 
Obama: "I often hear it said that we need moral clarity in this fight.  And the suggestion is somehow that if I would simply say, these are all Islamic terrorists, then we would actually have solved the problem by now, apparently."
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No one has ever said that if the president were to identify Islamic terrorists by name instead of nameless "violent extremists," "we would actually have solved the problem by now."
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What drives most Americans crazy is that the president of the United States refuses to name the enemy.
• 
And this rewriting of reality filters down.  Increasingly, for example, when (and if) 9/11 is taught in American schools, the attackers are never identified as Muslims.
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Obama: "In the discussion I had before I came out, some people said, why is there always a burden on us?  When a young man in Charleston shoots African-Americans in a church, there's not an expectation that every white person in America suddenly is explaining that they're not racist."
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This point alone should have been publicized by the media — that the president of the United States tells Muslims that they have no moral obligation to condemn violence committed in the name of Islam.
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Obama: "American Muslims are better positioned than anybody to show that it is possible to be faithful to Islam ... and to believe in democracy."
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That is actually true.  Given that theocracy, not democracy, is a central tenet of Islam, if an Islam compatible with democracy ever develops, it will probably develop in America.
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Obama: "These are the voices of Muslim scholars, some of whom join us today, who know Islam has a tradition of respect for other faiths."
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Another falsehood.  Islam has no such tradition.  Islam has always demanded that Jews and Christians be treated as humiliated second-class citizens — when not forced to choose between conversion or death.
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Now you know what President Obama said at the Islamic Society of Baltimore.  But if you just read or listened to the mainstream media, you would have missed it because none of this was reported.  It was all about, as the headline in USA Today put it, "At Baltimore mosque, Obama condemns anti-Muslim bigotry."
      Memo to idiots cheering Bernie and Hillary  (INN 02/05/2016)
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As Fidel came to power in 1959, how many Americans slid onto rafts to get into Cuba?  Or took the last ship to Havana?
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Attention to all you college kids out there so starry-eyed for Bernie – are you serious?
• 
Far and wide you've been educated by Liberal pro-BDS professors, so you're not expected to know too much except that the two most reliable beacons of tolerance and liberty, the United States and Israel, are on the wrong side of history.
• 
Let's be clear.  There is no difference between socialists, liberals and progressives.  They are all Communists, or shades of the same mentality.
• 
... it's about taking from the rich and giving it to the poor in order to make everybody equal, meaning equally miserable.
• 
It's also about a one-man show.  No checks.  No balances.  Like Obama visiting a Baltimore mosque to offer Muslims his love and concern.
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But Obama visited no synagogue to share Jewish grief for loved ones being slain in Israel, most recently the 19-year-old woman of valor Hadar Cohen.
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Communism sucks.  Ask the people who lived there.  Call it by its more pleasant and more acceptable name, socialism; same answer.  Unbearable.
• 
The system works beautifully for those who rule.  Like Stalin and all the rest.
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The rulers own chalets and mistresses and vacation on the Riviera.  The masses stand miles deep waiting for a loaf of bread.
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That's the deal Bernie and Hillary are selling.  In fact the two of them are out there dueling for the most extreme spot on the Left.
• 
The system is so rotten that even Putin isn't a socialist/Communist anymore.
• 
The people actually living under Communism hated the damned thing.  The Soviets needed tanks to keep the folks roped in.
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Since the turn of the 1900s, we've always had Americans infatuated by the lures of Marxist-Leninism so long as they remained infatuated from Beverly Hills, or Fifth Avenue.
• 
Communism sounds terrific, but only from a dreamy distance.
• 
For some reason, to this day the attraction still holds among the young and the stupid.
      The regrettable decline of higher learning  (JWR 02/04/2016)
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What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes and censorship have to do with higher learning?
• 
American universities want it both ways.  They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else.
• 
In fact, today's campuses mimic ideological boot camps.  Tenured professors seek to indoctrinate young people in certain preconceived progressive political agendas.
• 
Grade-conscious and indebted students make the necessary ideological adjustments.
• 
Race, class and gender agenda courses — along with thousands of "studies" courses — have been invented. 
• 
A generation of politicized professors has made the strange argument that they alone have discovered all sorts of critical new disciplines of knowledge — apparently unknown for 2,500 years — to ensure that graduates would be better educated than ever before.
• 
Universities have lost their commitment to the inductive method.  Preconceived anti-Enlightenment theories are established as settled fact and part of career promotion.  Evidence is made to fit these unquestioned assumptions.
• 
Students now leave campus largely prepped by their professors to embrace a predictable menu: the glories of larger government, income redistribution, greater entitlements, radical environmentalism, abortion, multiculturalism, suspicion of traditional religion, and antipathy to the international role of the United States in the past and present.
• 
Unfortunately, this costly indoctrination comes at the expense of what is increasingly less taught: traditional mastery of foreign languages, great works of literature, philosophy, history, mastery of grammar and composition, and the Socratic method.
• 
... universities usually oppose any objective measurement of their effectiveness.
• 
They certainly want federally insured student loans, but they do not want proof of their competency through national exit tests, which might help ensure that all graduates leave college able to compute, read and write well.
• 
How odd that standardized tests are permissible to judge entering students but not to certify exiting ones.
• 
Colleges are schizophrenic in lots of other ways.  They claim they are special institutions that should be free to form their own curricula, enjoy ancient rites such as faculty tenure, not worry much how much they charge students or treat part-time faculty, and establish radical new legal protocols that run contrary to the Constitution.
• 
When colleges create "safe spaces" designated by race and gender, they butt up against U.S.  law.  Assuming the guilt rather than innocence of students accused of bad behavior does not stand up in court.
• 
Universities ask the public to subsidize these strange rituals by making endowments tax-exempt.  The government extends federally guaranteed loans and ensures write-offs for charitable giving.
• 
In the past, there was a clear bargain.  The university said, "Leave us alone to do our business that we know best, and we promise to turn out the best-educated and most inductive generation of American youth."
• 
Universities are now breaking their word.  Students, if they even graduate (about four in 10 do not, even after six years), are not "universally" educated.
• 
Instead, they are the least prepared yet most politicized graduates in memory.  Arrogance and ignorance are a bad combination.
• 
If the university cannot fulfill its original compact of broadly educating youth while keeping within bounds of American laws and protocols, then it will either have to change or slowly become irrelevant.
      The threat of a Super-EMP  (INN 02/04/2016)
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"Within 12 months of an EMP attack or a massive solar flare between two-thirds to 90 percent of the U.S.  population would perish" from lack of electricity.
• 
That's well beyond a stunning and chilling augury, one that should make Congress take the threat so seriously that it puts aside all else and acts immediately to protect our electric grid.
• 
... the threat comes from the detonation of a Super-EMP device 300 miles in our exo-atmosphere and right over the center of the United States.
• 
The damage caused by the E1 pulse to our electric infrastructure is complete, long lasting (a decade or more) and incalculable cost-wise.
• 
The gamma rays focused on the center of the country radiate out horizontally, not into the ground.  They then form a circular impact on the nation's entire electric grid depending on its altitude (300 miles up seems optimum).
• 
The E1 wave is an extremely fast electrical pulse that will take out objects dependent upon electrical conductivity, such as many cars (save for those manufactured before 1974), most of the technological gadgets to which we are addicted, and, unfortunately, far too many military assets that will be useless after the attack.
• 
Importantly, greater damage is done to such targets when they are powered on at the time the pulse hits the earth.
• 
The truly existential threat of a Super-EMP attack on the U.S.  comes courtesy of North Korea, a disgruntled and paranoid rogue state that has been trading nuclear secrets with Iran in a mutual pact to destroy us.
• 
Kim Jong Un harbors schizophrenic delusions, chief among them is his belief that an imminent attack is coming from the U.S.  and South Korea.
• 
Kim, likely with Iran nuclear physicists standing beside him, tested what may have been a hydrogen-based Super-EMP on January 6 of this year.
• 
Evidence of its highly efficient and destructive power came in just three words from North Korean news broadcasts.  Their experts contend that they will destroy us, "all at once."
• 
"In a commentary feature on its website, North Korea's state media outlet boasted that its nation's scientists are in ‘high spirits' to detonate nuclear weapons capable of destroying America ‘all at once.'"
• 
No nuclear or any other kind of attack could destroy the entire country "all at once" except a Super-EMP with the core component being hydrogen.
      Isn't It Strange?  (JWR 02/03/2016)
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"Isn't it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, his upbringing, his environment, his culture but ... after a shooting, the problem is the gun?"
• 
Ronald Reagan had it right when he said, "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.  It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."
• 
"Back in the 1950s and even later, many high schools had shooting ranges.  Students even brought their own rifles to school."
• 
"What changed in society that we could trust such activities then, but not now?"
• 
I would like to ask America's anti-gun fanatics what accounts for today's mayhem: Have guns become more evil or have people become more evil?
• 
"Get it straight: Welfare, Food Stamps, WIC ... are not entitlements.  They are taxpayer-funded handouts, and shouldn't be called entitlements."
• 
"Social Security and Veterans Benefits are 'Entitlements' because the people receiving them are entitled to them.  They were earned and paid for by the recipients."
• 
"No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produced."
• 
John Wayne put it best, particularly for my colleagues in academia.  "I'd like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the world owes them a living."
• 
Finally, there is a most important message from our 34th president, Dwight D.  Eisenhower: "If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison.  They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads.  But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."*
      Obama's Dubious Mosque Choice  (JWR 02/03/2016)
• 
Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) today, his first visit to a U.S.  mosque since becoming president.
• 
ISB leaders have amassed a record of support for radical Islamic causes over the years, including endorsing the Chechen jihad and Palestinian suicide bombings.  Its former imam was active in a charity later linked to terror financing including Hamas, the Taliban, and for providing "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to Osama bin Laden.
• 
It's safe to assume the White House vetted the ISB and found it an acceptable venue for a presidential appearance despite this history.  And that is not surprising.
• 
The Obama administration has repeatedly embraced contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, repeatedly meeting with its officials during and after the Arab Spring while ignoring secular democracy advocates.
• 
It praised the early tenure of Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi when he briefly served as Egypt's president.
• 
In 2014, two ISB officials joined with CAIR in a news conference blasting Israeli military actions in Gaza.
• 
The conflict, known as Operation Protective Edge, started when Hamas operatives kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens and continued its incessant campaign of firing rockets with the hope of killing Israeli civilians.
• 
"The U.S.  government must not remain silent about Israel's indiscriminate assault and unjust use of force," Husain said.  "The right of a nation to defend itself does not extend to unrestrained aerial bombardments of civilian populations and must be condemned."
• 
Far from genocide, which is the systematic elimination of a people, and from an indiscriminate attack, Israel campaign against Hamas "went to extraordinary lengths" to minimize civilian casualties, said Gen.  Martin Dempsey, then-chairman of the U.S.  Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• 
Israel dropped leaflets and called residents of buildings targeted for bombing in hopes the residents would heed the warnings and seek safer locations.
• 
After the conflict ended, Dempsey sent a team of senior officers to learn from Israeli military leaders to study the tactics in Gaza to minimize civilian casualties.
• 
"In this kind of conflict, where you are held to a standard that your enemy is not held to, you're going to be criticized for civilian casualties," he said.
• 
In 2004, El-Sheikh justified Palestinian suicide bombings, saying they are acceptable when "certain Muslims are to be cornered where they cannot defend themselves, except through these kinds of means, and their local religious leaders issued fatwas to permit that."
• 
Just after 9/11, the ISB hosted speakers who would become prominent advocates of jihad, including American-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a 2011 U.S.  drone strike.  Awlaki's online sermons remain some of the most watched, most effective terrorist recruiting material online.
• 
Qaradawi called for the "conquest" of Europe and America through Dawa, or proselytizing.  "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!  Not through sword but through Dawa."*
      The age of working-class discontent  (JWR 02/02/2016)
• 
We live in the age of working-class discontent, which, if it wasn't obvious before, has been made plain by the passions roiling 2016 presidential politics.
• 
The media's preferred description of the average Republican voter has often been "the angry white male." This was crudely simplistic and meant to be pejorative.
• 
If the press wants to update the descriptor, it should refer to "the despairing white male." Or more accurately, the despairing white working class.
• 
White working-class life in America has been in a slow-motion disintegration for decades...  The white working class is an archipelago of hopelessness. 
• 
... only about 40 percent of the white working class say the country's best days are ahead.  This is not only lower than college-educated whites (53 percent), but much lower than blacks (60 percent) and Hispanics (56 percent).
• 
It is astonishing to think that the white working class has a dimmer view of the nation's future than blacks, who have been historically discriminated against and still lag badly on almost every socio-economic indicator.
• 
We are conditioned by the media to be obsessed with race, when class is an increasingly important divider.  ... The class divide among whites shows up again and again on questions about the fairness of the country.
• 
... white working-class Americans distrust institutions like the government and business more than college-educated whites do; they are more likely to think that their vote doesn't matter because of the influence of wealthy interests; they are more likely to think that hard work doesn't necessarily lead to success.
• 
There is a sense among working-class whites that America has gone off the rails, and has been that way for a long time.
• 
Besides the economic battering that lower-skilled workers have taken in recent decades, the working class is increasingly disconnected from the institutions that lend meaning and hope to people's lives: marriage, the workforce, churches and other institutions of civil society.
• 
They believe that the long-standing American promise of a country where children are better off than their parents has been betrayed, and they sense that their time is past...
      The World They Made  (JWR 02/01/2016)
• 
One party is supposed to be the party of big government, the other the party of small government.  When the Big Government Party is in power, the government gets bigger, and, when the Small Government Party is in power, the government gets bigger.
• 
One party is supposed to be the party of social liberalism, the other the party of social conservatism.  When the Socially Liberal Party is in power, the country gets more liberal, and, when the Socially Conservative Party is in power, the country gets more liberal.
• 
One party is supposed to be the party of foreign-policy doves, the other the party of foreign-policy hawks.  When the doves are in power, America loses wars, and, when the hawks are in power, America loses wars.
• 
... it'd be the reconfiguration of Mr and Mrs Main Street America as just another interest group.
• 
So a philosophical commitment to free trade means less to them than the degeneration of mill and factory towns into wastelands of fast-food service jobs and heroin addiction.
• 
An abstract respect for religious pluralism means less to them than reducing the number of crazies running around whose last words before opening fire are "Allahu akbar!"
• 
A theoretical belief in private-sector health care means less to them than not getting stiffed by crappy five-figure health "insurance" that can be yanked out from under you at any moment...
• 
They don't care when the insiders say that Trump isn't a "real Republican".  To them, that's not a bug, it's a feature.
• 
... disenchantment with the only electoral alternative to the Democrats is now so great that they don't even care that Trump isn't a "real conservative".
      Presidential politics: How to ensure conservative judicial nominees on the Supreme Court  (Fox 01/29/2016)
• 
"What kind of judges will you appoint?  Will they be conservative?  What does that mean to you and how will you ensure it?"
• 
Trump cited Justice Clarence Thomas and noted that Justice Roberts "turned out to be an absolute disaster because he gave us ObamaCare."
• 
There is no one right answer, but questioning the presidential candidates about judicial appointments is vitally important.
• 
Over the past 50 years, a Democratic president has never failed to fill a Supreme Court vacancy with an appointee who was and remained a reliable liberal vote on the hot-button issues before the Court.
• 
Roberts and Kennedy – along with retired Justices Stevens, Souter, and O'Connor – make it painfully clear that Republican presidents do not have the same record with respect to conservative appointees.
• 
What is the best way to identify a nominee who will remain committed to conservative judicial principles and the constitutional limits on government if placed on the federal bench?
• 
I believe the core characteristic GOP presidents should look for is the courage and commitment to follow the Constitution and laws where they lead, even when they lead to an inconvenient, uncomfortable or politically incorrect place.
• 
A long judicial record of constitutionalism – something Alito had but Roberts did not – is an important piece of evidence.
• 
But it is not the only predictor of judicial courage.  That quality can be demonstrated on or off the bench.
• 
What's important for now is that we hear from all the GOP hopefuls about how they would approach the challenge of filling judicial vacancies.
• 
What specific steps will they take in selecting nominees?  What characteristics will they look for?  What questions will they ask potential nominees?
      I missed the red flags of someone in pain, but it won't happen again  (Fox 01/29/2016)
• 
When I see someone being arrogant, I know that inside they feel very small and insecure.
• 
When I see Type A, Martha Stewart behavior, I think about how the need for perfection is a constant struggle to prove that you are good enough.
• 
When I see someone unable to stand up for themselves or who is constantly self deprecating, I know how much that person is struggling to believe that they matter in the world.
• 
When I spend time with that relative who is always mean, cranky and hating the world, I realize how much he actually hates himself.
• 
When someone cuts me off in traffic I wonder if they are having a hard time at work or if some emergency has them driving recklessly.
• 
When people are no shows at events without calling or saying why, I wonder what difficulties they might be dealing with at home.
• 
When someone is rude or abrupt to me, I send them kind thoughts because mean behavior screams unhappiness.  And I know how terrible unhappiness feels.
• 
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about." ~ Wendy Mass
      Trump controversy: Why many conservatives  (including this one) can't get behind the Donald (Fox 01/26/2016)
• 
One friend said he is convinced that Trump is "teachable and we can move him in the right direction." On June 14, Trump will be 70 years old.  By then, most people have long been settled in their worldview.
• 
"Trump's politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them.  But if you have no familiarity with the relevant details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled.  Trump has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution.  He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much manufacturing overseas for his taste.  His obsession is with ‘winning,' regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power."
• 
Those who worship Trump have an obligation to say why he is worthy of their faith.  Given his liberal background and poor explanations of why he now believes differently, how do his supporters know he will govern conservatively should he win the White House?
• 
Electing a president, especially in a dangerous world, is important work.  Anger and emotion should not govern the choice.  Considered judgment should.  Trump appeals to the former, but not the latter.
      Will America survive?  (INN 01/25/2016)
• 
For nearly eight years, the Obama Administration shamelessly exploited popular issues, turning them into major news stories whenever they suited a political purpose
• 
The intention was always the same: to weaken America by damaging its image and resolve.
• 
To accelerate the process, lawless citizens surfaced from their subterranean dwellings to make enormous demands on the country.  Whether they were leaders, neighbors, friends, or even students, each one in his own voice supported the same thing: something for nothing – without the slightest concern for the consequences.
• 
He was rapidly turning America into a socialist nation, in which dwindling numbers of workers were supporting growing numbers of non-workers.
• 
To accelerate the transition, his administration generously bought electoral support with bigger and grander entitlement programs, like Obamacare.
• 
... during Obama's presidency, the national debt nearly doubled, rising to a staggering $20 trillion.
• 
The Republican Party is hoping this growing disenchantment with the left will lead to what many citizens want: a strong swing to the conservative right.
• 
If that happens in the upcoming election, the Obama administration might prove to be the best thing that ever happened to America.
• 
Unfortunately, recovering from the Obama years won't be easy.  The new president will need to have Herculean strength to repair the damage the Obama administration has caused.
• 
America has always been the land of the free, protected by reasonable constitutional safeguards.  Today many of these safeguards have been trampled, exposing the country's raw vulnerability.
• 
Rioters have looted and firebombed stores, and the local government has ordered the police to "stand-down" (Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore); criminals have attacked police officers, and the police are punished for defending themselves (Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, and New York City); radical Muslims have murdered Americans and the government has refused to acknowledge the murders as terrorist acts (Fort Hood, Texas, and Moore, Oklahoma); and a flash mob of teenagers has run riot through a major shopping mall, and the political leaders have justified the rioters' actions with absurd excuses (Louisville, Kentucky).
• 
What is happening throughout the country can't be attributed to just one political party.  The Republicans and the Democrats are both responsible; they are both selling the country short for political and personal gain.
• 
... Obama has been sidestepping Congress by writing executive orders to avoid vetoes of his unpopular programs.
• 
Instead of withholding the monies for these programs, which Congress has the right to do by law, the Republican Congress has been giving the president exactly what he wants.
• 
The big question is: Why?
• 
Something big is on the verge of happening.
• 
In the meantime, a fear of impending disaster hovers over America.
• 
The only relief to it will come if a president is elected who respects liberty – and who is strong enough and willing enough to defend it with law and order.
      They came to bury Trump  (INN 01/24/2016)
• 
... if Trump runs the table and gets nominated there is no choice except to back him fully, 100 percent.
• 
If you don't like Trump, better to hold your nose for an instant rather than four to eight more years.
• 
Yes, Trump is no Reagan.  But he is no Hillary, and that is all that counts to save this country of ours.
• 
They argue that Trump is no Conservative.  Got it.  He waffles.  He cares only about himself.  He is no Reagan.  He must be stopped.
• 
Got that too, but I'll take an imperfect Conservative like Trump over a perfect Liberal like Hillary any day.
• 
In fact I'll take anybody, and I mean anybody so long as we do not get another Democrat in the White House. 
• 
A Reagan comes along but once in a lifetime and we have got to stop getting messianic waiting for Reagan to happen again.
• 
The voting process is always a wager.  Seldom are the choices ideal.  Trump is not ideal.
• 
With Trump we are only guessing how good or bad he'll be for America and Israel.  It's a toss-up, a roll of the dice.
• 
With Hillary we know EXACTLY the doom that awaits us all.
• 
So agreed, Trump is a gamble.  We don't know what we're getting.
• 
Hillary is no gamble.  We know exactly what we'd be getting and I am saying this to fellow Conservatives who've already declared that they'll be "staying home" if it's Trump.
• 
This means a vote for Hillary and this means doom for us and disaster for the only country holding it together for us in the tinderbox Middle East, the Jewish State of Israel.
• 
Have you thought this through?  The upcoming election is for all or nothing.
• 
Let's remember what we're talking about.  We are talking about the Presidency of the United States of America.
• 
Have we not learned?  The President holds complete power.  The President is everything.  The President is king.  Obama has taught us this if nothing else.
• 
There is no balance of powers.  Not anymore.
• 
It's his country and we're just traffic.  We're just in the way as he (and she!) transforms this country into what's happening in Sweden, in Merkel's Germany and what's already begun happening in burka-loving Trudeau's Canada.
• 
Am I hearing this right?  You're staying home to watch this happen?
• 
Is it really wise to skip the vote with so much at risk?
• 
Give it to Hillary (by staying home) or any other Democrat and all bets are off.  Our ruin is guaranteed.
      Civil War on the Right: National Review's anti-Trump crusade  (Fox 01/23/2016)
• 
Donald Trump, who uses the media as his personal megaphone, has spent this campaign savaging the press for treating him unfairly.
• 
Trump is not running as a true-blue conservative.  That is why media reports of the liberal positions he took and Democrats he befriended in the 1990s, a recent staple of Ted Cruz's attacks, have failed to dent his armor.
• 
He presents an amalgam of positions, from a hard-right stance on illegal immigration to a center-left view on protecting entitlement programs to a liberal appeal to tax hedge-fund guys.
• 
Rich Lowry and the editors of National Review are right: The Donald is not their kind of candidate.
• 
He has no interest in that.  He is selling an image of strength and success, packaged with plenty of bombast, that transcends the usual litmus-test politics.
• 
By recruiting 22 writers to attack Trump, by calling him an "opportunist" and a "huckster" and a "menace to American conservatism," National Review is standing up for what it believes.
• 
Trump responded in typical fashion, attacking the messenger as a faltering franchise...  National Review is "a failing publication that has lost its way," he said, with its influence "at an all-time low.  Sad!"
• 
And yes, Trump said the magazine's founder, William F.  Buckley, would be ashamed, despite the fact that Buckley described him in 2000 as a self-regarding demagogue.
• 
Trump benefits from a newer and brasher wing of the conservative media ... who may be more in touch with the grass roots than editors who live in Manhattan and Georgetown and attend conferences and cruises.
• 
National Review provides the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement, but it is also part of a cultural elite that many conservatives believe has let them down.
• 
Trump, the street fighter who emerged from a tabloid culture, has no interest, and no particular need, to win over the intellectuals.  He is a brawler fighting a populist campaign.
• 
Perhaps inevitably, things get personal between journalists and commentators who find themselves on opposite sides of the same movement.
• 
"Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him.  Count us out," National Review writes.
• 
It may have been a misstep for the magazine to go beyond using its ideological firepower against Trump and organize what looks like a political campaign to block him from winning the nomination.
• 
So far, at least, Trump has overpowered those who make their living with words, defying their predictions that he will inevitably implode. 
      Do Emotions Trump Facts?  (JWR 01/22/2016)
• 
Those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational can sometimes have a hard time trying to explain what is going on in politics.
• 
It is still a puzzle to me how millions of patriotic Americans could have voted in 2008 for a man who for 20 years — TWENTY YEARS — was a follower of a preacher who poured out his hatred for America in the most gross gutter terms.
• 
Today's big puzzle is how so many otherwise rational people have become enamored of Donald Trump, projecting onto him virtues and principles that he clearly does not have, and ignoring gross defects that are all too blatant.
• 
There was a time when someone who publicly mocked a handicapped man would have told us all we needed to know about his character, and his political fling would have been over.
• 
But that was before we became a society where common decency is optional.
• 
Yet there are even a few people with strong conservative principles who have lined up with this man, whose history has demonstrated no principles at all, other than an ability to make self-serving deals, and who has shown what Thorstein Veblen once called "a versatility of convictions."
• 
Some may see Trump's success in business as a sign that he can manage the economy.  But the great economist David Ricardo, two centuries ago, pointed out that business success did not mean that someone understands economic issues facing a nation.
• 
Trump boasts that he can make deals, among his many other boasts.  But is a deal-maker what this country needs at this crucial time?  Is not one of the biggest criticisms of today's Congressional Republicans that they have made all too many deals with Democrats, betraying the principles on which they ran for office?
• 
Bipartisan deals — so beloved by media pundits — have produced some of the great disasters in American history.
• 
You want deals?  There was never a more politically successful deal than that which Neville Chamberlain made in Munich in 1938.  He was hailed as a hero, not only by his own party but even by opposition parties, when he returned with a deal that Chamberlain said meant "peace for our time." But, just one year later, the biggest, bloodiest and most ghastly war in history began.
• 
If deal-making is your standard, didn't Barack Obama just make a deal with Iran — one that may have bigger and worse consequences than Chamberlain's deal?
• 
Doubtless other decisions that he would make as president would also be good for Donald Trump, even if for nobody else.
      ISIS cheerleader?  Kent State professor is poster boy for America-hating academia  (Fox 01/20/2016)
• 
Why is it not a not a big surprise that a history professor living off of taxpayer funds may have cheered on America's Islamist enemies — and is the target of an FBI investigation into whether he is linked with ISIS?
• 
Since-deleted social media posts attributed to him have praised Usama bin Laden and urged Al Qaeda fighters to merge with ISIS, of which he also allegedly approves.
• 
Pino shouted "Death to Israel" during a presentation by a former Israeli official, eulogized a Palestinian suicide bomber, and allegedly claimed to be one of two masked Islamist fighters in a picture posted online.
• 
One report says Pino told a Jewish student he would "burn in hell" for his religion.
• 
Whether we like it or not, and whether we recognize it or not, the USA is at war with radical Islam — including all of the groups Pino holds in high esteem.
• 
The tip of the Islamist spear is pointed at the free world on the battlefield, which in recent weeks has extended from Syria into a concert hall in Paris, a holiday party in San Bernardino, and a Starbucks in Istanbul.
• 
However, the rest of the Islamist spear relies on political and cultural subversion instead of bombs.
• 
Recently this has included a rape rampage in Cologne on New Year's Eve and the efforts of groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which uses political correctness to discredit opponents of Islamism and violent jihad.
• 
Whether or not the FBI finds evidence sufficient to charge Pino with a crime is a secondary issue.
• 
The real question is why men like him are allowed to teach American students.
• 
How could anyone possibly think he is qualified to teach history?
• 
... those who still believe in America must contend with "an entire academic left which is so anti-Western..  that they can't really imagine there is a threat to us that we haven't earned."
• 
Why must we tolerate this?
• 
Why do taxpayer funds support political activists posing as teachers?
• 
Why do middle class Americans donate each year to universities with legions of administrators and professors who hate their values?
• 
Why are those universities allowed to shelter endowments worth hundreds of billions from the taxes, even as they indebt students for life in exchange for decreasingly valuable degrees?
• 
If we ever want to turn the tide on radical Islam and end the perpetual cycle of war and terrorism, we have to get our own house in order first, and then take on the ideology of radical Islam globally. 
• 
People who think like Pino should be purged from universities.
• 
Liberals will moan about academic freedom, but it is blatantly obvious to any conservative who has set foot on a campus in recent decades that there is no academic freedom.
• 
Diversity to college administrators means a Benetton ad — an obsession with race and ethnicity — not true diversity of thought.
• 
Governors and state legislatures have got to step in to eliminate tenure and demand that taxpayer-funded colleges reflect the values of taxpayers.
• 
It would be better to have liberals moaning in the future about the supposed loss of academic freedom than to blind ourselves today to the Islamists' war on us.
      How an obscure adviser to Pat Buchanan predicted the wild Trump campaign in 1996  (The Week, 01/19/2016)
• 
What if you stopped calling yourself a conservative and instead just promised to make America great again?
• 
What if you dropped all this leftover 19th-century piety about the free market and promised to fight the elites who were selling out American jobs?
• 
What if you just stopped talking about reforming Medicare and Social Security and instead said that the elites were failing to deliver better health care at a reasonable price?
• 
What if, instead of vainly talking about restoring the place of religion in society — something that appeals only to a narrow slice of Middle America — you simply promised to restore the Middle American core — the economic and cultural losers of globalization — to their rightful place in America?
• 
What if you said you would restore them as the chief clients of the American state under your watch, being mindful of their interests when regulating the economy or negotiating trade deals?
• 
There are a number of Americans who are losers from a process of economic globalization that enriches a transnational global elite.
• 
These Middle Americans see jobs disappearing to Asia and increased competition from immigrants.
• 
Most of them feel threatened by cultural liberalism, at least the type that sees Middle Americans as loathsome white bigots.
• 
But they are also threatened by conservatives who would take away their Medicare, hand their Social Security earnings to fund-managers in Connecticut, and cut off their unemployment too.
• 
... a set of policies that really has enriched Americans on the top, and likely has improved the overall quality of life (through cheap consumables) on the bottom, has hollowed out the middle.
• 
... the response of the predominantly-white class ... has mostly been one of personal despair.
• 
In speeches, Trump mostly implies that the ruling class conducts trade deals or the business of government stupidly and weakly, not villainously or out of personal pecuniary motives.
• 
But the message of his campaign is that America's interests have been betrayed by fools.
• 
The huge infrastructure of the conservative movement in Washington D.C.  is aghast at Trump, and calls him an economic illiterate for threatening China with tariffs.
• 
They can't understand that this is not primarily an economic measure, but a nationalist one.
• 
It's a signal to voters that one man is here to fight for them, not to school-marmishly tell them that capitalism is helping them when in fact it manifestly helps others a lot more. 
• 
... look at these people calling themselves libertarians and conservatives, the ones in tassel-loafers and bow ties.  Have they made you more free?  Have their endless policy papers and studies and books conserved anything for you?
• 
And the most frightening thing of all ... is that the underlying trend has been around for at least 20 years, just waiting for the right man to come along and take advantage.
      Supreme Court Justice Judge Judy?  (Fox 01/19/2016)
• 
There's really no way to sugarcoat this, moms and dads – your recent college graduate may be dumber than dirt.
• 
A recent survey showed that nearly ten percent of recent college graduates say that television star Judith Sheindlin is on the Supreme Court.
• 
Yes, friends – our best and brightest seem to think that Judge Judy sits on the highest court in the land.
• 
Parents your child's B.A.  may in fact be a bunch of B.S.
• 
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni said their survey uncovered a "crisis in American civic education."
• 
Their findings reveal "that recent college graduates are alarmingly ignorant of America's history and heritage."
• 
That could explain why an avowed socialist like Bernie Sanders is giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money.
• 
In it's reporting on the study US magazine reports that students could not identify the father of the U.S.  Constitution or name one of our First Amendment Rights.
• 
And that could explain a why a frightening number of college students support curbing free speech.
• 
It should really not be that much of a surprise that our taxpayer-funded universities and colleges are churning out boatloads of ignoramuses.
• 
They've been too busy coping with micro-aggressions and finding safe spaces and making up new genders.
• 
We've gone from the Greatest Generation to the stupidest.
      What Are Elections For?  (JWR 01/19/2016)
• 
Polls let people vent their emotions.  But elections are held to actually accomplish something.
• 
The big question is whether the voters themselves will see elections as very different from polls.
• 
If Republican voters have consistently delivered a message through all the fluctuating polls over the past months, that message is those voters' anger at the Republican establishment, which has grossly betrayed the promises that got a Republican Congress elected.
• 
The spectacular rise, and persistence, of Republican voter support for Donald Trump in the polls ought to be a wake-up call for the Republican establishment
• 
Even valid criticisms of Trump can miss the larger point that Republican voters' turning to such a man is a sign of desperation and a telling indictment of what the Republican establishment has been doing for years — which they show pathetically few signs of changing.
• 
After seven disastrous years of Barack Obama, at home and overseas, the United States of America may be approaching a point of no return, especially in a new age of a nuclear Iran with long-range missiles.
• 
The next President of the United States will have monumental problems to untangle.  The big question is not which party's candidate wins the election but whether either party will choose a candidate that is up to the job.
• 
... anger may be justified, but anger is not a sufficient reason for choosing a candidate in a desperate time for the future of this nation
• 
Voters need to consider what elections are for.  Elections are not held to allow voters to vent their emotions.
• 
They are held to choose who shall hold in their hands the fate of hundreds of millions of Americans today and of generations yet unborn.
• 
Too many nations, in desperate times, especially after the established authorities have discredited themselves and forfeited the trust of the people, have turned to some new and charismatic leader, who ended up turning a dire situation into an utter catastrophe.
• 
The history of the 20th century provides all too many examples, whether on a small scale that led to the massacre in Jonestown in 1978 or the earlier succession of totalitarian movements that took power in Russia in 1917, Italy in 1922 and Germany a decade later.
• 
Eric Hoffer's shrewd insight into the success of charismatic leaders was that the "quality of ideas seems to play a minor role," What matters, he pointed out, "is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world."
      The truth about Donald Trump  (Fox 01/19/2016)
• 
He is personally, when the cameras are turned off, an incredibly gracious person.
• 
I know many people who do not believe that because all they see is the public Trump, but when the lights are down, the cameras are turned off, and Donald Trump, not "The Donald", is present, he's a good guy.
• 
Trump Hotels are some of the best I've ever stayed in.
• 
I'm more into candidates who try to lift us to the better angels of ourselves and I do not think his campaign is doing that right now.
• 
As a rule of thumb, I think anger burns out and it is tough to sustain over time.
• 
If Donald Trump really has become a conservative, I take St.  Paul to heart that we should not put new converts in charge.
• 
He needs some time helping the movement before he leads the movement.
• 
... a lot of people have legitimate grievances against the government and Trump resonates with them.
• 
Whether you think Trump is an opportunist or not is irrelevant.  All politicians are.
• 
Trump is a businessman who saw an opportunity and took it.  He has, in the process, done several commendable things.
• 
First, he exposed the consultant class of the GOP as profiteering charlatans.
• 
Second, Trump has exposed just how much contempt the GOP Establishment has for conservatives.
• 
Third, Trump has again blown the door off the idea that Super PACs are a cure all for Republicans.  They are not.
• 
Fourth, Trump has shown that Republican donors continue to be suckers.  Exactly how much money have these donors poured into losing causes that scratch their personal itches and no others?
• 
Fifth, Donald Trump has finally opened people's eyes to the dissatisfaction with Washington, D.C.  on a bipartisan basis.
• 
The voters have taken to Trump because he is an outsider and because he conveys a contempt of Washington that the voters have long had and the press has long ignored.
• 
I want a conservative President and, should Trump genuinely be converted to the principles of Hayek, Friedman, Kirk, etc., I think he needs time in the trenches of the movement to show his conversion sticks.
• 
But I would gladly vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat.
• 
He has bested the consultant class at its own game for now and the only one giving him a run for his money is Ted Cruz who, like Trump, has refused to use the D.C.  political class to advance in the field.
• 
... Republicans will owe Trump thanks for exposing their fault lines and flaws and showing just how inept, corrupt, and out to lunch the Washington Republican consultant class has become.
      The deadly dereliction of duty at the top  (JWR 12/18/2015)
• 
Now we are engaged in another great struggle ... testing whether this nation, or any nation conceived and dedicated to liberty and freedom as this one is, can survive and endure.
• 
Mr.  Obama is mortally afraid of offending Muslims, radical or otherwise, whom he imagines are the key to making America safe.  He's heard that evening music from the mosque.
• 
He finally recognizes the painful truth that domestic and sometimes homegrown terrorism is more than "workplace violence," but wants to put American safety in the hands of Islamic "partners" of dubious reliability.
• 
Americans traditionally expect more from presidents, and with this president they're resisting, as good citizens, the temptation to wonder whose side this guy is on.
• 
President Obama can't bring himself to consider that the enemy, now clearly establishing itself within the borders (porous as they are), won't be deterred by good wishes, good faith and good speeches.
• 
Mr.  Obama's strategy is to disarm everyone, take it easy on evil, and set an example of peace in our time that will transform enemies into docile friends.
• 
Mr.  Obama's latest expedition into the fantasyland where fools rule is to avoid bombing the propaganda centers identified by U.S.  intelligence as the source of effective ISIS recruiting.  To do that would "invade the privacy" of ISIS recruiters.
• 
The president didn't want to hurt the feelings of Islamic radicals.  Confronting the enemy can be so fatiguing.
      Robert Levinson, US citizen, left behind in Iran  (INN 01/18/2016)
• 
Has he already been tortured to death?  Or, like other infidel captives in Islamist hands, is he the still living plaything of monster sadists?
• 
If he is dead, why has Iran not at least returned his body for burial?  Can Iran actually have "lost" one of it's prize captives?
• 
Levinson has been described as a former FBI agent and as a CIA agent.  Is this true?  If so, why has America cut him loose?
• 
Has his own government suggested that Levinson was on a "rogue" mission to Iran?
• 
Can we, the people, really believe a word our President and Secretary of State tell us about the negotiations with Iran?
• 
I am glad these captives are now free.  Their freedom is being used to conceal a host of shameful and embarrassing details about lifting the sanctions, an agreement that cannot be enforced, recent Iranian weapons testing, Iran's recent arrest of American sailors in international waters — and much, much else.
• 
None of the four stories list the names of the fourteen Iranian prisoners whom America released as part of this swap or how many there were or what their crimes were.
      Why is the Republican Party taking shots at Donald Trump?  (Fox 01/17/2016)
• 
Their primary strategy as it relates to Donald Trump right now is dead wrong. 
• 
And it will cost them the election and the White House. 
• 
... this week Republicans took a direct hit at Donald Trump, their leading Republican presidential frontrunner in every national poll.
• 
Last I heard only animals eat their young — and maybe a few cannibals.
• 
Instead of taking the opportunity to identify how this Democratic administration has failed us, she takes a shot at — and chastises — Donald Trump. 
• 
Instead of commenting on how out of sync Democrats are with the American people how Obama's feckless foreign policy has turned us into an international joke repeatedly negotiating with terrorists, creating safety and security problems for Americans, the world has never been a more dangerous place the military never more shackled, the Second Amendment — never in more danger our children and grandchildren never in more debt.
• 
The most dangerous terrorist organization the world has ever known focused on us. 
• 
"Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference.  That is just not true.  Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume.  When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying."
• 
"Yes, Mr.  Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk."
• 
What you think?  Who anointed you to take a shot at the leading contender for president in your own party?  In a nationally televised historic rebuttal.
• 
When you could have laid out a strategy of how the very fabric of America has changed under this democratic so-called leadership.
• 
... How about you turn your unsolicited comments toward the president's incendiary comments against your party?  Why don't you tell him to tone down the rhetoric and by the way there was a time when you were one of the angriest voices.
• 
You came in-in a tea party wave-angry about what was happening in America.  And now you epitomize the very establishment you were going to change.
• 
So why would the republicans not want the lead candidate to advance?  ... Because Donald Trump doesn't do the Washington two-step.
• 
Where one hand washes the other.  Where you overlook my vulnerabilities and I overlook yours.
• 
And then we all get to come back.  Those more interested in serving their incumbency than the American people. 
• 
Why else would Republicans agree to a budget that includes federal funding for sanctuary cities that allow illegals who commit crimes — felonies, murders to not be arrested or even deported. 
• 
They all grandstanded about the lawless actions and that they were not going to reward them.
• 
But then they danced with the democrats, passed the budget and went home for Christmas.
• 
Nikki, you're worried about Donald's voice?  ....  I'll tell you who the angriest voices are... The angriest voices are the American people. 
• 
We've been gutted.  We're scared.  The American dream is not what it used to be, unless you're an illegal immigrant. 
• 
Maybe you and your establishment friends in the Republican Party ought to turn down your own volume and start listening to us.
• 
After all, in case you've forgotten, you work for us.  You, too, can be fired!
      Killing Babies  (JWR 01/21/2016)
• 
... the freedom to kill innocents violates all norms of civilized society.  It violates the natural law.
• 
It wasn't even condoned in the state of nature, before governments existed.
• 
It violates the 13th and 14th Amendments.
• 
Yet, the Supreme Court and numerous Congresses have refused to interfere with it.
• 
It is a grave and profound evil.  It is legalized murder.
• 
They, and their few Republican allies, have become the champions of totalitarianism as well.
• 
The removal of legal personhood from human offspring in order to destroy the offspring is only the work of tyrants.
• 
How long can a society last that violates universal norms and kills its babies in the name of "sexual freedom"?
• 
Whose personhood will the government define away next?
      My father, immigration and the responsibility America's president has to keep us safe  (Fox 01/15/2016)
• 
It may be hard today for Americans to believe, but there was a time when U.S.  presidents recognized that our immigration laws were designed to protect the American people from criminals and agents of enemy nations.
• 
Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy and their predecessors aggressively enforced those laws, denying entry to agents of enemies such as Nazi Germany and Communist dictatorships.
• 
Essential to enforcement was the careful screening of every would-be immigrant from an enemy nation in order to separate the legitimate ones from those who posed dangerous political or criminal threats.
• 
Gadiel was my father, a German Jew, a perfect target for murder by Hitler's government.  In addition, he and my mother, a German Protestant, had committed the ultimate "crime" of marrying in violation of the Nazi race laws.
• 
As prime targets for the Gestapo, they agreed that if they were somehow separated, each would try to reach safe haven in any country that would accept them.
• 
As a result, with a visa issued by the U.S.  charge in Lisbon, Portugal, my father arrived alone in the United States on April 25, 1941.  His German passport had a big red "J" for "Juden" (Jew) stamped on it.
• 
He was in proximate danger of being murdered, as legitimate a refugee as one could be.
• 
Despite that legitimacy, the FBI took him into custody as soon as he arrived.  He was held for over a week, during which time federal agents including a German-born psychiatrist carefully interrogated him to ensure that he was, in fact, a legitimate refugee and not a threat to U.S.  security.
• 
"They practically looked under my fillings to make sure that I was what I said I was," he told me years later.
• 
I asked him if he had been angry or offended that the U.S.  government treated him in this manner after he had evaded the Nazis.
• 
His response: "No.  Not at all.  I was glad.  I didn't want Nazis in this country any more than FDR did.  I came here to be safe."
• 
And for the rest of his life, he was.
• 
But not so his grandson – my son, James Gadiel, who was murdered at the age of 23 by Islamic terrorists as he worked in the World Trade Center on Sept.  11, 2001.
• 
James died because the screening of immigrants has been abandoned.
• 
That abandonment was begun by Pres.  Carter.  In 1980 he accepted 125,000 Cuban refugees with no inspection whatever.
• 
Fidel Castro exploited Carter's negligence by emptying his prisons of criminals and shipping them to us among the legitimate refugees.
• 
Later, Pres.  Reagan signed an amnesty which was exploited by criminals and illegal aliens using forged documents to remain in the USA and obtain citizenship.
• 
Illegal immigration (that is, immigration without screening) continued under George H.W.  Bush, and Bill Clinton permitted, even encouraged, ever more massive illegal immigration.
• 
It was during his administration that the 9/11 terrorists were admitted into the U.S.
• 
Even after the 9/11 attacks President George W.  Bush continued to refuse to enforce our immigration laws leaving our borders wide open to Islamic terrorists and other criminals.
• 
That reckless – even criminal – policy has been brought to its ultimate by President Obama who now imports, by the hundreds of thousands, people from nations whose cultures and governing entities are enemies of our values, religions and freedoms – all without screening.
• 
From FDR's policies designed to protect our people to Obama's policies of intentionally bringing in the enemy.
• 
What a sad descent from decency and sanity.
      The state of the presidency: spent  (JWR 01/15/2016)
• 
President Obama's Tuesday night address to Congress was less about the state of the union than the state of the presidency.  And the state of this presidency is spent.
• 
After taking credit for success in Syria, raising American stature abroad and prevailing against the Islamic State — one claim more surreal than the next — Obama was forced to repair to his most well-worn talking point: "If you doubt America's commitment — or mine — to see that justice is done, just ask Osama bin Laden."
• 
"Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office," Obama boasted.  Surveys, mind you.  As if superpower influence is a Miss Universe contest.
• 
As if the world doesn't see our allies adrift, our enemies on the march and our sailors kneeling, hands behind their heads, in front of armed Iranians, then forced to apologize on camera.  (And our secretary of state expressing appreciation to Iran after their subsequent release.)
• 
Do Obama's speechwriters not know that it was Richard Nixon who first declared a war on cancer — in 1971?
• 
But to see just how bare is the cupboard of ideas of the nation's most vaunted liberal visionary, we had to wait for the stunning anachronism that was the speech finale.  It was designed for inspiration and uplift.
• 
Obama did an undisguised, almost phrase-for-phrase reprise of that old promise.  Earnestly, he urged us to "see ourselves not, first and foremost, as black or white, or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native-born, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first."
• 
A cheap self-quotation, a rhetorical mulligan, from a man who had two presidential terms to act on that transformative vision and instead gave us the most divisive, partisan, tendentious presidency since Nixon.
• 
Rational discourse and respect for one's opponents?  This is a man who campaigned up and down the country throughout 2011 and 2012 saying that he cares about posterity, Republicans only about power.
• 
The man who accused opponents of his Iran treaty of "making common cause" with Iranians "chanting death to America."
• 
In a final touch of irony, Obama included in his wistful rediscovery of a more elevated politics an expression of reverence for, of all things, how "our founders distributed power between ... branches of government."
• 
This after years of repeatedly usurping Congress' legislative power with unilateral executive orders and regulations on everything from criminal justice to climate change to immigration (already halted by the courts).
• 
There is wisdom to the 22nd Amendment.  After two terms, presidents are spent.
• 
Nothing shows it like a State of the Union valedictory repeating the hollow promises of the yesteryear candidate — as if the intervening presidency had never occurred.
      Why Obama is oblivious to yet another American humiliation  (JWR 01/15/2016)
• 
The Obama administration was right when it insisted that the capture and release of 10 American sailors by Iran showed the benefits of a cooperative relationship with Tehran.
• 
The crux of the arrangement is simple: the Iranians agree to humiliate us (and pursue their long war against the United States and their hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East) and we agree not to care.
• 
It is, as Secretary of State John Kerry says, diplomacy at its best.
• 
What Vice President Joe Biden called "standard nautical practice" involved the Iranians making our sailors get on their knees on their captured boats, eliciting an apology from the commander, and photographing and videotaping all of it to broadcast for propaganda purposes — in clear violation of international law.
• 
Yes, the economy has had a long recovery, but it has been slow and weak and, by some measures, hasn't been felt in much of the country.
• 
Yes, we are the most powerful nation on earth, but our adversaries, from Putin to ISIS to Iran, have been gaining and eager to demonstrate our toothlessness — in the case of ISIS, with spectacular acts of evil.
• 
He touted the marginal gains against ISIS without coming to grips with the catastrophes that made its rise possible.
• 
He boasted of the Iran nuclear deal, with nary a hint that the pact hasn't moderated Iranian behavior as hoped.
• 
And he spoke as though "partnering with local forces and leading international efforts" in Syria is an effective response to that country's hellish meltdown.
• 
The president can wave off the discontent Trump in particular is tapping into as ill-informed or distorted, but an overwhelming majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.
• 
The day after the State of the Union, the images from Iran emerged to provide a picture that said far more than Obama's 6,000 words.
• 
The president has actively sought America's diminishment abroad.  For him, this is a shrewd play that avoids costly entanglements and makes us stronger.  But there's no doubt that we are less respected and feared around the world.
• 
The public feels it, and doesn't like it.  ... They look at the photographs and videos of those American sailors and it feels like a punch in the gut.
• 
The Obama administration looks at them and says to the Iranians, Thank you very much.
      The befuddled president without a clue  (JWR 01/15/2016)
• 
He seems to understand now, after it was explained to him at some length, that America is indeed the exceptional nation that Abraham Lincoln said it is, but not for the reasons Mr.  Obama thinks.
• 
That's rich, from the man who has starved the military for resources and has set out to inflict mortal damage on the great fighting machine by remaking it to answer the sighs and whispers of feminist wishes and dreams.
• 
Iran's seizure of two small U.S.  Navy boats in distress, and humiliating the crew in violation of international law, would have outraged any previous president.
• 
But Mr.  Obama answered only with craven thanks to the mullahs in Tehran, who lost no time to rub the president's nose in submission and humiliation.  The Iranians understand the game, even if Mr.  Obama does not.
• 
"This incident in the Persian Gulf probably will not be the American forces' last mistake in the region," says Major Gen.  Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of the Iranian army.
• 
"Were it not for the good intentions of the Iranian commanders the United States [would be] facing yet another crisis now."
• 
The incident, he says, showed the vigilance of the Iranian armed forces and should be a lesson to troublemakers in the United States Congress."
• 
This did not appear to bother either the president or his secretary of state, John Kerry, who were profuse with thanks to the mullahs.  This was the president's usual ceremonial bow when he confronts his Islamic betters.  He would have tugged a forelock if he had one.
• 
His countrymen were outraged even if their president was not.  ... "Do you know why they did this?  Because they know they can get away with it.  Because they know Barack Obama is weak, because they know he won't do anything about it."
      The US president rhapsodizes while US sailors bend to Iran  (INN 01/14/2016)
• 
Iran was happy to show our guys – hence the United States – trembling and humiliated.  One of the sailors can be seen apologizing to his captors.
• 
John Kerry (not John Wayne) counts the shameful episode as a victory, and credits himself that he got them out within 15 hours.
• 
The picture of US sailors on their knees to Iran provides the perfect image of America during the Obama years.  How's that for legacy!
• 
Over in Philadelphia a group of New Black Panthers stood menacingly on the steps of a polling station to intimidate white voters.  Holder found no reason to investigate or prosecute the bullies.
• 
In Europe white people are called hooligans.  That's what the politicians and the media call white people when they gather to protest against Muslims raping their daughters.
• 
Automatically this makes them racists and bigots.  They become instant "right-wing fanatics."
• 
This crooked lady is starting to slip in the polls against the Vermont communist Bernie Sanders, as a protest, I imagine.
• 
Democrats may be crazy but not suicidal.  I take that back.  Who can figure New Yorkers voting for Bill di Blasio?
• 
Philadelphia is a sanctuary city where, coincidentally, a man shot a cop in the name of Islam.  How did he get in?
• 
How do they get into New York?  New York is another sanctuary city and di Blasio can't welcome enough of those migrants.
• 
I need to ask – when did the Syrians become such good friends, either for America or for Israel?  They were on the wrong side during every conflict.  They were on the side of the Soviets long before Putin.  They fought, savagely, against Israel in every war.
• 
They cheered when the Twin Towers went down and they cheered for Arafat and for Abbas from one intifada killing spree to the next.
• 
I don't need Obama sharing his dreams and his successes while America is being duped and disgraced in Iran and throughout the world.
• 
Spare me your big speeches and spare me your hypocritical pieties.
      Why Hillary Clinton's legal woes are grave or even fatal: A tale of two smoking guns  (Fox 01/14/2016)
• 
The failure to safeguard state secrets is an area of the law in which the federal government has been aggressive to the point of being merciless.
• 
State secrets are the product of members of the intelligence community's risking their lives to obtain information.
• 
She was warned that the failure to safeguard secrets — known as espionage — would most likely result in aggressive prosecution.
• 
Department of Justice prosecuted a young sailor for espionage for sending a selfie to his girlfriend, because in the background of the photo was a view of a sonar screen on a submarine.
• 
It prosecuted a heroic Marine for espionage for warning his superiors of the presence of an Al Qaeda operative in police garb inside an American encampment in Afghanistan, because he used a Gmail account to send the warning.
• 
It also prosecuted Gen.  David Petraeus for espionage for keeping secret and top-secret documents in an unlocked drawer in his desk inside his guarded home.  It alleged that he shared those secrets with a friend who also had a security clearance.
• 
... to prosecute Clinton for espionage, the government need not prove that she intended to expose the secrets.
      El Chapo totally gets us: America's pity party  (Fox 01/13/2016)
• 
The world's most vicious drug lord, presumed to have rivers of blood on his hands, plays the sympathy card in his interview with Sean Penn, and finds a willing accomplice.
• 
He says his was a "very humble family, very poor"; he laments that where he came from there were no job opportunities, so "the only way to have food, to survive, is to grow poppy, marijuana, and... I began to grow it, to cultivate it and to sell it."
• 
El Chapo wants a pity party, and Penn, who describes Joaquin Guzman as a "simple man from a simple place", naturally obliges.
• 
Wait for it – any minute now some bleeding heart will decry his manacles as the go-to accessories of income inequality.
• 
Penn not only sympathizes with the drug kingpin's childhood, he falls backwards trying to paint him in a positive light, imbuing him with "charisma" and chivalry.
• 
Even his homicides are sanitized because, after all, "El Chapo is a businessman first, and only resorts to violence when he deems it advantageous to himself or his business interests." So comforting.
• 
Of course, Penn's real message is that Americans are responsible for El Chapo's drug empire; as consumers they are "complicit in every murder, in every corruption of an institution's ability to protect the quality of life for citizens of Mexico and the United States..."
• 
Yes, it's not El Chapo's fault; the murders and terror, the addictions and overdoses – someone else is to blame.
• 
... the increasing tendency to make excuses for bad behavior.  Worse, changing the rules so that what was unacceptable in the past is ok in the future.  Enabling is in; accountability is out.
• 
"Crime is not disappearing.  It's just that we're ignoring it."
• 
The same sympathy wave extends to how we view debtors.  If a student is unable to pay off loans taken out to fund a worthless diploma, sympathizers now think that the debt should be forgiven.  Students who borrow from taxpayers have become victims, not beneficiaries.
• 
If testing shows that students are not achieving even the meager requirements of our school systems...abandon the tests!
• 
If only 28 percent of graduating high school students are prepared for college, change the admissions requirements.  No one is held accountable.
• 
Not even people who break laws to enter the United States.  These people demand to be heard, demand their rights.
• 
What rights?  They are not citizens here.
• 
We can sympathize with their desire to improve their lot, but the Obama White House wants to grant them a pass.
• 
America is a generous and compassionate nation.  We want to help everyone, and that's a good thing.  But "helping" can slip slide into "enabling."
• 
Each one of these situations infantilizes Americans, and teaches them they are not responsible.  They are not responsible for their own behavior or for the choices they make.
• 
If our society continues to excuse everyone who gets into trouble, by dumbing down our expectations and rules, we will deserve the increasingly violent and uncivil country we live in.
• 
Here's one person who is responsible – El Chapo, for allegedly hundreds, possibly thousands of murders by his own hand or ordered by him, and Sean Penn, who would like us to think otherwise.
      Obama's last State of the Union address in three words: Disjointed, irrelevant and disappointing  (Fox 01/13/2016)
• 
It was to be a recap of what had been accomplished and an agenda for the future.
• 
This has historically been an opportunity for a dramatic speech to the nation and the world and without question as important as any that a president might deliver.
• 
For someone as skilled at giving a speech as our forty-fourth president, Mr.  Obama failed miserably at either inspiring or informing us of the real State of the Union.
• 
What he did do is give a political campaign speech.  It was disjointed, irrelevant and disappointing.
• 
He is not running for a third term and the agenda he laid out is not what the country wants or feels.
• 
He talked about how great we are as a nation.  True, but what he didn't do was set an agenda for his final year or for his legacy.
• 
He set goals but failed to explain how we can accomplish them.  He talked about leadership but has failed miserably as a leader.
• 
Now Iran is holding these sailors hostage.  Yet, there was no mention of this incident in the president's speech.
• 
This is an escalation of hostile behavior by the Iranians who just last month fired unguided missiles at our aircraft carrier , the Harry S.  Truman, in the same waters.
• 
With the country feeling that terrorism is one of our top problems, the president dismissed our concerns.  Don't worry!  We've got the strongest military in the world.  We got Bin Laden.
• 
"That's why we built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.  As we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has avoided another war."
• 
I don't think so.  Bad behavior by Iran is dismissed because President Obama wants to protect his sacred and risky deal.
• 
The number one concern of the country is fighting terrorism.  ... just this week the president is to release more prisoners from Guantanamo.
• 
It is still his top priority to close this prison in spite of strong objections from the Congress, the military and law enforcement officers.
• 
Many of the prisoners already released have returned to the terrorist battlefield.
• 
"That is why I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo: it's expensive, it's unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies."
• 
This is a speech that will not be remembered and will historically be irrelevant.
• 
The man who was the most partisan president in recent history, talked about how disappointed he is that the partisan divide has not healed.
• 
The office of the presidency has been diminished under Barack Obama's two terms.
• 
This is not an historic presidency and he exemplified his "leading from behind" with a very forgettable farewell State of the Union. 
• 
No wonder the country is desperately looking for new leadership.
      Radical Islam's fifth column  (INN 01/12/2016)
• 
Two days after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, the FBI correctly identified the attack as terrorism, although it was reportedly pressured by the White House to refrain from doing so.
• 
Mr.  Obama waited four days before addressing the nation with a short speech that conceded the shooters were terrorists, but which focused more on gun control than terrorism or the existential threat of radical Islam.
• 
There was a disconnect between harsh reality and partisan fantasy as Mr.  Obama attempted to associate gun control with the massacre.
• 
The depiction of the shooters as isolated actors was further controverted by evidence of longstanding Islamist sympathies, aborted plans for earlier attacks, and communications with other jihadists.
• 
... he downplays the influence of religion and international terrorism in order to minimize the significance and doctrinal underpinnings of the threat.
• 
Equally troubling is his rush to defend a single religion to the exclusion of identifying those who embrace its more extreme doctrines.
• 
His apologetic sentiments were echoed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who said her biggest concern in the wake of the shootings was preventing a backlash against Muslims (not cracking down on supporters of terror), and who advocated prosecution for anti-Muslim speech – although the First Amendment clearly prohibits government from restricting even repugnant expression.
• 
Lynch's comments reflect the administration's deference to Muslim sensibilities and conciliatory attitude toward radicals.
• 
If she is fearful of prejudice against Muslims and Arabs, who statistically suffer little discrimination in the US, why has she not expressed similar concern for Jews – especially on college campuses, where anti-Semitic speech is encouraged and Jewish students have been verbally abused and physically assaulted? 
• 
The president has been pandering to Islamist interests since his first days in office and has fostered a climate of political correctness that has crippled government's ability to deal with doctrinal extremism.
• 
His policies have made it difficult to identify and neutralize those who preach jihad and genocide for fear of insulting the ideology that mandates both.
• 
Napolitano announced that the administration would refrain from using terms like "Islamic terrorism" and instead refer to terrorist acts as "man-caused disasters."
• 
Since then, terrorism has been called many things except what it is.  The Fort Hood shooting and Oklahoma beheadings were identified as "workplace violence," the attacks in France last year were blamed on "violent extremism," and the assault on a kosher Jewish market in Paris was initially described by the president as "random."
• 
Terrorism against Jews and Israel is largely ignored, while Israel is excoriated for having the temerity to defend herself.
• 
The administration's foreign policy regards the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas as legitimate political entities and has facilitated Iran's nuclear ambitions.
• 
Domestically, it has prohibited the FBI from profiling Islamic radicals, mandated that NASA engage in Muslim outreach as an organizational priority, and restricted federal employees from drawing any connection between terrorism and radical Islam.
• 
Political correctness has diminished government's ability to monitor radicals and prevent terror attacks.
• 
Rather than acknowledge Hasan as a threat, the military promoted him through the ranks, even though he lacked the aptitude for advancement.
• 
After the San Bernardino massacre, witnesses reported having seen strangers of Middle Eastern appearance in the neighborhood, the delivery of unusual packages, and suspicious activity at the shooters' home just weeks before the attack.  However, they did not call the police for fear of being branded racists, thus illustrating the deadly consequences of knee-jerk political correctness.
• 
Progressives are quick to deny any connection between terrorism and radical Islam, but have no problem characterizing other kinds of violence as terror, as long as they can implicate and disparage their political opponents – no matter how silly or attenuated the connection.
• 
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines terrorism as "the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal."
• 
President Obama has been quick to attribute terrorism to workplace violence or nonspecific extremism, or to pontificate that climate change poses a greater threat to national security.
• 
When those tactics fail, he accuses the media – which has spent seven years ignoring his gaffes and protecting his image – of creating the perception of a global terror crisis by sensationalizing the story.
• 
The president seems to believe the problem is one of messaging, not substance, and that it can be defined out of existence by censorship and semantics, irrespective of any unpleasant facts on the ground.
• 
George Orwell could not have written a more absurd scenario, or a more frightening one.
      Hidden dangers in Obama's final year  (INN 01/11/2016)
• 
Barack Obama is entering a twilight of maybes, his presidency still driven by high ambitions but the power to achieve his warped radical ideology of systematically emasculating the United States is running out.
• 
Despite serious threats to our homeland, our increasingly feckless president gives more attention to 'petty squabbles' than to our nation's security.
• 
Obama has insidiously and deliberately caused much damage by his 'destabilizing policies.' His inaction and hesitation acts to embolden our enemies, endanger our allies, and undermine U.S.  strategic interests anywhere in the world.
• 
To an astonishing extent, Obama has shown that he abhors 'American exceptionalism,' despises traditional Judeo-Christian values and has displayed a foreign loyalty antithetical to America.
• 
... America's president is a determined enabler of America's enemies, and an equally determined betrayer of her friends.
• 
It must be said to those people who can't face the truth about Obama: the first anti-American, most anti-Israel president in history is a pseudo-Christian and Islamic sympathizer with a Marxist agenda, who will not sit idly by without a vindictive adieu in his final year in power.
• 
The antecedents of Obama's hatred of America are now well understood: Obama is not transforming the nation but terminating it.
• 
The more contrarian he becomes, and the more he opposes the wishes of the vast majority of the American people, all the more Obama envisions himself speaking truth to power and becoming iconic for something, while the reality is that he is becoming proof of nothing.
• 
Amidst widespread disenchantment with the Obama administration, the fear of a rigged electoral system is palpable.
• 
More than likely, Obama will use his final State of the Union address for another interracial melodrama, "meaningless" executive actions on ‘gun control,' amnesty to another million illegal aliens, gay rights - and the release of thousands more felons, murderers, rapists and Al-Qaeda terrorists, as well as closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp the top issues of his final year.
• 
... the student visa program's many vulnerabilities raise spying and terror fears.
• 
Recent attention has been focused on refugee programs and illegal border crossings but "the Achilles heel in America's immigration system may be the program that invites 1.2 million foreigners into the U.S.  each year."
• 
Whether it is potentially ISIS, Al-Qaeda or Iran ... "Why are we allowing dangerous enemies into the country to learn technical skills to use against us?"
• 
Another proposed new regulation, dramatically upping the annual inflow of foreign college-grads allowed to take jobs in the United States — reflects Obama's preference for foreigners over Americans.
• 
Many Americans still do not realize that this is one of the many reasons Obama continues pushing a well planned invasion, advancing jihad on U.S.  campuses and enabling its plan to overthrow America and the West.
• 
By allowing terrorists 'sleeper cells' to flood into the countries of Europe and America, we are being set up for our ultimate takedown of borders, language and culture.
• 
For the most part, the absurd Obama doctrine of 'leading from behind' promotes growing anti-Semitism, genocide against Christians and a global rise of terror.
• 
While Obama lashed out at requests that more Christian refugees be brought into America, why does the world do almost nothing about ISIS persecution and genocide of Christians?
• 
Instead of stopping the slaughter of Christians, Obama, who ironically claims to be Christian, is doing nothing except blaming America while vastly expanding the influx of Muslim migrants.
• 
Now we know that Obama's promised transparency and open government is a fraud: he has prosecuted more government whistleblowers than any other president — and the list is growing as he ramps up his war on dissent.
• 
It is a shame Obama has done much damage to America because the entire world believed his lies and deception about hope and change.
• 
And last but not least, the Obama era will be remembered for its obnoxious lists of questionable accomplishments, as well as, the expanding global Islamic terrorism, chaos and confusion unprecedented in modern history.
      Franklin Graham: It's open season on Christians in America  (Fox 01/11/2016)
• 
"I believe we are perilously close to the moral tipping point for the survival of the United States of America."
• 
"I refuse to be silent and watch the future of our children and grandchildren be offered up on pagan altars of personal pleasure and immorality."
• 
The Supreme Court has already redefined marriage.  The nation has become a killing field for Islamic radicals.  And Christians have become targets for practicing their First Amendment rights.
• 
"There now exists deep-seated antagonism and hostility toward Christianity in every seat of power in this nation – government, media, courts and education."
• 
"The only hope for America is not the Democratic Party and it's not the Republican Party.  The only hope for America is God."
      Obama cries over guns, then frees more terrorists  (Fox 01/08/2016)
• 
After President Obama cried while announcing a series of "commonsense executive actions" on gun control, his rare display of emotion stirred plenty of debate.
• 
Would the steps he outlined have prevented any of the recent mass shootings?  Why is he circumventing Congress again?  Were his tears even real?
• 
All good questions.
• 
Yet here's another one that we ought to consider: Why would someone cry over gun control and mass shootings while simultaneously freeing more terrorists?
• 
Seriously, does that make any sense at all?
• 
He knows our intelligence authorities report that nearly 1 in 3 ex-detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to terrorism, yet just this month he's releasing 17 more hardcore jihadists.
• 
And of the 107 left, we're talking about Bin Laden bodyguards, bomb makers, weapons trainers and other dangerous men still committed to kill Americans.
• 
So what's up? 
• 
Americans are being misled on a massive scale, that's what.  On gun control and terrorists.
• 
But why?
• 
Because the Obama White House is committed to a far left ideology — determined to transform America.
• 
Their vision of our nation was forged right here on university campuses, places now run by the anti-war, "flower power" generation of the 1960s.
• 
Indoctrination centers where the U.S.A.  is portrayed as a racist country known for slavery, Jim Crow Laws, decimation of Native Americans and the A-Bomb.
• 
Seen from that Ivory Tower, American power is the problem.  Therefore anyone challenging us must have a legitimate grievance, so the theory goes.
• 
Which explains the obsession to free terrorists, and one-sided peace overtures to hostile dictators in Iran and Cuba.  Weakness towards others, like in Russia, China, Syria and North Korea.
• 
Thankfully, the Congress has stood tough on both guns and Gitmo.
• 
Yet in his last year, President Obama and his inner circle will do everything in their power to rule by decree.
• 
So even though we've now seen a commander-in-chief who cries over strawman arguments, Americans ought to see right through it.
      The GOP establishment has ruined the Republican brand  (Fox 01/08/2016)
• 
Republican elites warned that if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz become the nominee it would ruin the Republican brand.
• 
The GOP brand is already ruined.  And they ruined it.
• 
The GOP brand was one that championed limited government.
• 
The second largest expansion of the federal government came under the stewardship of President Bush 43 with the GOP in control of both the House and the Senate.  ... And since 2010, the GOP leadership has approved every single spending measure.
• 
So much for limited government.
• 
The GOP brand championed family values. 
• 
They have done virtually nothing to uphold the American family in the face of relentless attacks from anti-family leftwing radicals.  ... And since 2010, the GOP leadership has approved every single spending measure.
• 
So much for family values.
• 
The GOP brand championed a strong national defense.
• 
Our adversaries are dangerous, threatening and on the march everywhere.  ... our military are being emasculated from within by a politically-correct deconstructionist agenda that is ruining morale.  The GOP is doing nothing about it.
• 
So much for the commitment to a strong national defense.
• 
For years the GOP elites, along with their high-priced consultants, have cynically manipulated the Republican base, constantly promising to deliver on one issue after another, in order to get elected, yet delivering on nothing because there was never the intention of doing so.
• 
Beyond welfare reform and the naming of two superb Supreme Court Justices, I can't think of any GOP accomplishment advancing the GOP brand over the past quarter century.
• 
These men really don't care enough about the disintegration of America to do anything about it.  They really don't care about the Republican party either.
• 
For them — the incumbents, the consultants and the Chamber — it is always about power.  Their power.
• 
The establishment is frightened.  They should be.  Donald Trump and Ted Cruz don't pose a threat to the GOP, they pose a threat to them.
• 
The current worry among Republican elites boils down to this, and this only: The GOP establishment is paralyzed by fear that it will be defeated by Trump or Cruz.
      Obama White House misfires on gun control and mental illness  (Fox 01/06/2016)
• 
... White House issued a "fact sheet" on new executive orders to reduce gun violence.  Among these is a plan to spend $500 million to "increase access to mental health care" and a reference to increased reporting of "relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons."
• 
First of all, $500 million isn't going to change the nation's access to mental health care without fundamental reform in the way that patients are treated (undertreated) by third-party insurers, who act as gatekeepers.
• 
$500 million will not transform mental health care in America and, thereby, reduce gun violence.
• 
The fact is that our mental health care system's safety net has been torn apart, such that even people who freely admit that they are considering harming others are not given comprehensive care, including ready access to psychiatry visits, medication and hospitalization.
• 
Even more important, the plan to make mental health care providers report "relevant information about people" who should not have guns is a hornet's nest of trouble for mental health providers and citizens.
• 
Mandating that clinicians report that certain patients should not have guns in their possession is a blunt instrument that could be used to deprive tens of millions of Americans of their fundamental Second Amendment rights.
• 
The president's plan to use mental health care providers to inform on gun owners is a Trojan Horse that could potentially undermine the rights of 60 million Americans every year.
• 
Those who currently pose a danger to self or others can already be hospitalized against their will.  And in that context, assessments can be made about whether family members should surrender guns to authorities.
• 
It should also be stated that those who commit acts of violence can certainly choose methods other than firearms, including motor vehicles, explosive devices (like the rudimentary ones used to kill and maim people at the Boston Marathon, in 2013), knives or poisons (like the Tylenol killings, back in 1982).
• 
President Obama's claim that suicides can be prevented by removing guns from the people who use them to kill themselves is absurd.  Sadly, those intent on suicide can find many ways to end their lives — and do.  People don't kill themselves because they own guns.  They kill themselves because they are ill.
• 
President Obama's early volley to make the make therapists and doctors gatekeepers for gun control is a misfire.  And his $500 million nod in the direction of increased access to mental health care wouldn't even add two impressive psychiatric centers to the nation's armamentarium of mental health care resources.
      History  (going back to Jefferson) proves we can't defeat extremists long distance (Fox 01/08/2016)
• 
President Obama was elected on a promise to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and avoid new wars.  But a funny thing happened on the way to peace – more terror attacks at home and the rapid rise of ISIS abroad. 
• 
No matter how much he'd rather focus on issues like global warming and gun control, the president has to rise to the challenge of this increasing Islamist threat. 
• 
He's certainly not the first president to have to shift priorities on the fly.  Many if not all of his predecessors entered office with a clear agenda,only to watch world events scramble their to-do lists.
• 
Consider our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who took office in 1801.  Like Obama, Jefferson was widely considered a pacifist who preferred diplomacy over war.
• 
But when Tripoli (now Libya) declared war on us because we refused to pay extortion and ransom to the pirates off the Barbary coast, Jefferson rose to the challenge. 
• 
He started with a display of strength to intimidate our enemies, sending the U.S.  Navy's newest frigates to the region.  When that show of power wasn't enough to get the Tripoli pirates to stop their attacks and release their hostages, Jefferson ordered bombardment from those powerful new ships.
• 
Unfortunately, then as now, long distance bombing didn't work.  To the Islamic extremists of any generation, surviving against a Western attack is considered as good as winning.  That's why airstrikes and a few ground advisors won't break the back of ISIS today.
• 
Three years into the Barbary Wars, he embraced a plan by one of America's finest officers, General William Eaton, to invade Tripoli over land, smash its army, and break the will of its leaders.
• 
Eaton and a detachment of Marines took the major city of Derne in less than 3 hours.  Yusef Qaramanli, the Tripoli leader, quickly surrendered.  A deal was cut, hostages were released, and America's merchant ships could finally pass safely near the Barbary Coast.
• 
President Obama still hasn't learned the key lesson that Jefferson and other presidents (most recently George W.  Bush) learned about the Middle East: You can't crush an outlaw Islamist regime from the air.
• 
The more we delay putting boots on the ground against ISIS, the more the American people will lose patience – and the more power and prestige ISIS will gain for surviving our attacks.
• 
... Obama needs to realize that winning a war is more important than his pledge to end a war.  He needs to empower our military and trust the experts at the Pentagon.
• 
He needs to end the irresponsible releases of terrorists from Gitmo, tighten restrictions on immigrants from countries that support terrorism, confront our enemies abroad, and do whatever it takes to keep us safe at home. 
      President Obama, guns and our Constitution  (Fox 01/07/2016)
• 
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." — Second Amendment to the U.S.  Constitution
• 
In 2008, the Supreme Court laid to rest the once-simmering dispute over the meaning of the Second Amendment.
• 
In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court articulated the modern existence of the ancient personal right to keep and bear arms as a pre-political right.
• 
A pre-political right is one that pre-exists the political order that was created to protect it.  Thus, the court held, the origins of this right are the ancient and persistent traditions of free peoples and their natural inclinations to self-defense.
• 
The court also characterized the right as fundamental.  That puts it in the highest category of rights protected by the Bill of Rights.
• 
... the intention of the Framers that its continuing purpose should be to recognize the right of people to keep and use the same level of technologically available arms that might be used against them.
• 
That, in a nutshell, is the history, theory and purpose of the amendment as the modern Supreme Court has found them to be.
• 
But as we have seen, the constitutional guarantees that were written to keep the government from interfering with our rights are only as viable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping.
• 
In our system, principal among those are the hands of the president; and sadly, today we have a president seriously lacking in this fidelity.
• 
President Obama announced that he will sign executive orders that expand the size and scope of federal monitoring of the acquisition and use of guns — traditionally a matter left to the states — and he will interpret the laws in novel ways, establish rules and impose obligations that Congress rejected, and prosecute those who defy his new system.
• 
The president has very little room to issue executive orders on guns because the congressional legislation in this area is so extensive, detailed and clear.
• 
In addition to ordering your doctor to report to the Department of Homeland Security any mention you may make to the doctor of guns in your home, the president has decreed on his own and against the articulated will of Congress the obligation of all people who transfer any gun to any other person to obtain a federal gun dealer license.  This is among the most cumbersome and burdensome licenses to obtain.
• 
Give a BB gun to your nephew on his 16th birthday without a federal license and you can go to prison.
• 
Can the president do that?  In a word: No.
• 
Under our system of government, only Congress can write federal laws and establish crimes.
• 
The president is without authority to negate the congressional will, and any attempt to do so will be invalidated by the courts.
• 
By requiring physicians to report conversations with their patients about guns to the DHS, the president will be encouraging them to invade the physician-patient privilege; and I suspect that most doctors will ignore him.
• 
Under the Constitution, fundamental liberties (speech, a free press, worship, self-defense, travel and privacy, to name a few) are accorded the highest protection from governmental intrusion.
• 
One can only lose a fundamental right by intentionally giving it up or via due process (a jury trial resulting in a conviction for criminal behavior). 
• 
We still have a Constitution in America.  Under the Constitution, Congress writes the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them.
• 
The president can no more write his own laws or impose his own interpretations upon pre-existing laws than Congress or the courts can command the military.
• 
The president is a progressive, and the ideology of progressivism is anathema to self-help or individualism.
• 
He really believes that the government can care for us better than we can care for ourselves.
• 
Any attempt to make it more difficult for people to keep and bear arms not only violates the fundamental liberty of those people but also jeopardizes the safety of us all.  Add to this the progressive tendency to use government to establish no-gun zones and you have the recipe for disaster we have recently witnessed.
• 
All of the recent mass killings in America — from Columbine to San Bernardino — have occurred in no-gun zones, where crazies and terror-minded murderers can shoot with abandon.
• 
That is, until someone arrives with a gun and shoots back.  Then the killer flees or is injured or dies — and the killing stops.
      Showman-in-Chief  (JWR 01/05/2016)
• 
As for the substance of what Obama said, there was very little substance, and much of it false, but one of the signs of great artistry was that the presentation overshadowed the substance.
• 
None of the things proposed by the president is likely to reduce gun violence.  Like other restrictions on people's ability to defend themselves, or to deter attacks by showing that they are armed, these new restrictions can cost more lives on net balance.
• 
... almost invariably, mass shootings occur in gun-free settings.  Yet gun control zealots seem determined to create more gun-free settings.
• 
How often have supposedly mentally unbalanced shooters opened fire at a meeting of the National Rifle Association?  They are apparently not that mentally unbalanced.  They pick places where people are not likely to shoot back.
• 
A mass shooting at a movie theater a few years ago took place at a theater farther away from where the shooter lived than other theaters in the area that were showing the very same movie.  The difference was that this theater had advertised that it was a gun-free zone.
• 
Who is more mentally unbalanced, those who are doing the shooting or those who refuse to examine the facts about what kinds of places attract such shooters?
• 
Schools and religious institutions are sitting ducks, and the shootings there have gone on until someone else with a gun showed up on the scene.  That is what puts an end to the carnage, not gun control laws.
• 
People who are prepared to defy the laws against murder are not very likely to be stopped by laws against guns.
• 
Only law-abiding citizens are likely to be stopped by gun control laws, and to become sitting ducks.
• 
... factual data on how many threats or attacks were deterred in a given year by displaying a firearm have long been available.  Seldom is it necessary to actually pull the trigger to get some thug or criminal to back off and go elsewhere, often in some haste.
• 
Are the only lives that matter those that are lost, usually because there is no gun immediately available to protect them, but not the lives saved because they did have a gun at hand to protect them?
• 
... concealed weapons protect not only those who carry them, but also to some extent those who do not, because criminals have no way of knowing in advance who does and does not have a gun.
      Unappreciated Tax on the Poor  (JWR 01/05/2016)
• 
It is by no means flattering to law-abiding black people that "black" has become synonymous with "crime."
• 
Crime not only imposes high costs on blacks but also sours race relations.  Whites are apprehensive of blacks, and blacks are offended by being subjects of that apprehension.
• 
That apprehension and offense are exhibited in many insulting ways to law-abiding blacks — for example, jewelers keeping their displays locked and store clerks giving extra surveillance to black shoppers.
• 
White people and police officers cannot fix this or other problems of the black community.  If blacks do not fix them, they will not be fixed, at least in a pleasing way.
      DR MANNY: Don't put doctors in middle of gun control policies  (Fox 01/06/2016)
• 
So any doctor who accepts Medicare or Medicaid payments will now be allowed to report certain demographic information identifying patients they believe to be subject to a federal "mental health prohibitor," thus preventing them from possessing a firearm.
• 
Personally, I'm sick and tired of physicians being placed in the middle of government politics and using us for political agendas that have nothing to do with being a doctor.
• 
Gun control is a legal and political problem that should be fixed by Congress and federal rulings — not a problem to put on the shoulders of health care professionals.
• 
There are laws in the books that we as physicians have grown up with that do not allow us to share personal and clinical information about a patient with anybody else without written consent.
• 
In other words, I cannot even talk to another medical colleague about a patient's condition without that patient's consent.
• 
But somehow, the president seems to be suggesting that if we even think a patient is suffering from mental illness, we should report them.
• 
Since 2013, Medicare and Medicaid have suggested patients be asked about gun ownership at their doctor's visits.
• 
First, not all physicians are qualified to diagnose mental health.  To diagnose mental health, credentialed doctors must perform specific tests.
• 
I hardly think that a kidney specialist is qualified to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia.  Now, I have nothing against kidney specialists, but we all go into different fields to focus on certain parts of the body!
• 
I believe we could be getting into murky waters with the proposed legislation as it could potentially compromise the credibility of otherwise innocent citizens.
• 
Better gun control must be instituted, but I believe it should first tackle the biggest problem: illegal guns.
• 
I'm also hoping that as the federal government and the Obama administration continue to debate how to keep America safe, that they pay better attention to mental health treatments and options for patients which — even with the proposed $500 million in federal funds — are still incredibly limited.
• 
Doctors just want to be doctors.  We want to deal with science and cure people of their ailments.  We don't want to be policemen for the federal government.
• 
... we already have enough to do, and if we continue to put more of a burden on our doctors, we're not going to have a lot of them left. 
      President Obama wants to disarm America  (Fox 01/04/2016)
• 
President Obama is plotting with his attorney general to get our guns.
• 
If the White House really wants to crack down on gun violence — maybe they should enforce the laws that are already on the books.
• 
But that's not the point.  This president ultimately wants to disarm the nation.
• 
The primary reason our Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment was to protect all the other amendments.
• 
The American people seem to understand what the president does not — guns keep our families safe.
• 
So instead of declaring war on law-abiding gun owners — maybe the president ought to declare war on the true threat facing our nation — radical Islam.
• 
"The president is a petulant child.  Whenever he doesn't get what he wants...this president acts like a king."
• 
"It is delusional, dangerous, not to mention unconstitutional.  We have a long list of criminals who own guns, who routinely purchase guns.  We know who these people are, and we are not prosecuting any of them."
• 
Texas Governor Greg Abbott summed up it up best in a tweet: "Obama Wants to impose more gun control.  My response?  COME & TAKE IT."
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      Open carry comes to Texas: Why the Lone Star state will be safer in 2016  (Fox 12/30/2015)
• 
Texas will join 44 other states that already allow people to openly carry handguns throughout the state.
• 
Amidst today's threats of terrorism and mass public shootings, it is a good thing when we enable people to legally carry guns and protect themselves.
• 
Under the new law, a person will need a concealed handgun permit to be able to openly carry a gun.
• 
If the experiences of other states are any guide, few people will actually openly carry their handguns.
• 
Moreover, businesses can still prohibit guns or request that they be concealed.
• 
But open carry has an important drawback.  It isn't as effective as concealed carry in protecting people against terrorist attacks and mass public shootings.
• 
Criminals and terrorists can strike anywhere and at any time.  They can attack someone who is openly carrying a gun.  Alternatively, they can select another target or wait for a more opportune moment.
• 
Concealed carry is the most effective way of counteracting this strategic advantage.  A killer can't attack a big grocery store in Texas without facing likely resistance.  And, of course, an attacker has no idea who might be packing heat.
• 
Time after time, mass public shooters openly admit to targeting gun-free zones.
• 
Since at least 1950, all but two of the mass public shootings in the U.S.  (and every single one in Europe) has occurred in a gun-free zone.
• 
In the U.S., over 13 million American civilians are licensed to carry concealed handguns.  Every day, permit holders stop crimes.  But they have also stopped a large and growing number of mass public shootings.
• 
A year from now, I predict that people will wonder why such a fuss was made about open carry.
      Inside the minds of 'affluenza' teen Ethan Couch and his mother Tonya  (Fox 12/30/2015)
• 
Back in 2013, Ethan Couch, then 16, killed four people on a highway outside of Fort Worth, Texas, was tried in juvenile court and given a sentence of 10 years' probation.
• 
The judge apparently accepted the testimony of a defense expert witness who asserted that Couch suffered from something dubbed "affluenza" – never having learned limits or respect for the lives of others from his overly indulgent parents. 
• 
I have never met or evaluated Ethan or Tonya Couch, but the facts known about them provide enough of a window for a psychiatrist to peek through.
• 
There may be no psychiatric diagnosis of "affluenza" in the official American Psychiatric Association handbook, but something infected Ethan Couch as a child and deprived him of his ability to know right from wrong or to abide by laws that govern adult behavior.
• 
And that wasn't the devil.  Couch wasn't a "bad seed." (There's no such thing, by the way.)
• 
The thing that infected him was probably his mother.  ... given that Couch ran away to Mexico with his mom.
• 
Long ago, long before age 16, he should have run away from her.  He should have run for his life.
• 
Tonya Couch is likely guilty of much more than being complicit in giving her son "affluenza."
• 
... she occupied her son's being so completely, probably from early childhood, that he never developed into anything like a full human being at all.
• 
... being owned and operated by another person psychologically is something worse than being a slave, since slaves at least have the freedom to consciously hate those who keep them captive.
• 
It's the psychological zombies among us who take the lives of others.
• 
And they weren't born zombies; they often just grew up with parents who feasted upon them and left them bloodless, spineless and wandering the highways of life, causing mayhem.
      'Affluenza' teen: Seven ways you can prevent this parenting tragedy from happening at home  (Fox 12/30/2015)
• 
... the attitudes and behaviors that are ascribed to him in the media loosely fit patterns of a condition called entitlement, which is an aspect of a narcissistic personality disorder. 
• 
I define entitlement as two attitudes: (1) denying responsibility for one's choices, and (2) demanding special treatment.
• 
The combination is destructive.  The first one almost guarantees life and career failures, and the second one, relational shipwrecks.
• 
So what can we do today, to keep even a trace of this sort of tragedy from occurring in the four walls of our homes?
• 
Here are some parenting tips that will go a long way in protecting your child from contracting the disease of entitlement.
• 
Combine love and limits.
• 
Praise that which requires effort.
• 
Conversely, avoid praising external attributed or natural giftedness, which the child didn't do anything to have. 
• 
Distinguish between "special" and "unique."
• 
Be "for", but don't collude with your child
• 
Distinguish between "acceptance" and "approval."
• 
We parents must disapprove, so our kids will know right from wrong.
• 
Have them develop empathy
• 
Entitled children have a deficit in empathy, meaning that they don't feel how much they hurt others by their behavior
      Remembering 2015  (JWR 12/29/2015)
• 
It is always hard to know when a turning point has been reached, and usually it is long afterwards before we recognize it.  However, if 2015 has been a turning point, it may well have marked a turn in a downward direction for America and for Western civilization.
• 
This was the year when we essentially let the world know that we were giving up any effort to try to stop Iran — the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism — from getting a nuclear bomb.  Surely it does not take much imagination to foresee what lies at the end of that road.
• 
It will not matter if we have more nuclear bombs than they have, if they are willing to die and we are not.  That can determine who surrenders.
• 
And ISIS and other terrorists have given us grisly demonstrations of what surrender would mean.
• 
More than anything else, 2015 has been the year of the big lie.  There have been lies in other years, and some of them pretty big, but even so 2015 has set new highs — or new lows.
• 
"What difference, at this point, does it make?" as Mrs.  Clinton later melodramatically cried out, at a Congressional committee hearing investigating that episode.
• 
First of all, it made enough of a difference for some of the highest officials of American government to concoct a false story that they knew at the time was false.
• 
Had Obama's lies about his triumph over terrorism been exposed on the eve of the election, that could have ended his stay in the White House.  And that could have spared us and the world many of Obama's disasters in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.
• 
That is why it matters, and will continue to matter in the future.
• 
Lying, by itself, is obviously not new.  What is new is the growing acceptance of lying as "no big deal" by smug sophisticates, so long as these are lies that advance their political causes.
• 
Many in the media greeted the exposure of Hillary Clinton's lies by admiring how well she handled herself.
• 
Lies are a wall between us and reality — and being walled off from reality is the biggest deal of all.  Reality does not disappear because we don't see it.  It just hits us like a ton of bricks when we least expect it.
• 
The biggest lie of 2014 — "Hands up, don't shoot" — had its repercussions in 2015, with the open advocacy of the killing of policemen, in marches across the country.  But the ambush killings of policemen that followed aroused no such outrage in the media as any police use of force against thugs.
• 
Nor has there been the same outrage as the murder rate shot up when the police pulled back, as they have in the past, in the wake of being scapegoated by politicians and the media.  Most of the people murdered have been black.  But apparently these particular black lives don't matter much to activists and the media.
• 
As for 2015, good riddance.  We can only hope that people who vote in 2016 will have learned something from 2015's disasters.
      Donald Trump and the fear we are losing America  (Fox 12/29/2015)
• 
President Obama and members of his administration assure us we have nothing to fear when it comes to terrorism.
• 
Whether you accept this, or not — and opinion polls show a majority do not — there is another fear that in large part is behind the phenomenon known as Donald Trump.  It is the fear we are in danger of losing America.
• 
I fear that those who will soon make up the majority will not embrace the values and traditions that have built and sustained America through wars, economic downturns and other challenges to our way of life.
• 
Yes, yes, I know about slavery and discrimination, but the principles laid down by the Founders, which allowed America's flaws to be addressed and corrected by their posterity, seem to be disappearing.
• 
As Ronald Reagan said, we are just one generation away from losing it all.
• 
That's because democracy and equal rights are not the norm in the world.  They must be fought for and maintained if we wish to pass them on to our descendants.
• 
Yes, we want immigrants to come to America, but we want them to come respecting our laws (otherwise what are laws for?), to learn English, our history and values and to become — as earlier immigrants did — fully American without hyphens.
• 
Many who are native-born want today's immigrants to leave behind ideologies and agendas that do not promote the general welfare.
• 
Earlier immigrants and the native-born have invested in America through taxes, blood and sacrificed lives.
• 
New immigrants will benefit from those investments and sacrifices and should respect them enough to make investments of their own to preserve what they admire and what has drawn them here.
• 
Two forces are at work, undermining our foundations.  One is apathy and the other is a determined assault on the beliefs, traditions, practices and faith that once characterized America.
• 
Fear can be a factor that motivates to action, or it can cause one to retreat.  It seems the people who embrace and practice our historic beliefs and traditions are in retreat, fearful of being called names by the forces of political correctness.
• 
"Racist," "bigot" and "intolerant" are three words that cause many to cower, in part because of their inability to disprove a negative.
• 
Whose values and beliefs have worked in the past to improve the lot of the people, and whose have failed?
• 
Traditionalists don't have to play defense.  They have only to remind Americans of the mess the secular progressives have made.
• 
Having been handed by the "greatest generation" a nation with numerous opportunities and a bright future, the baby boomers and their progeny set about destroying it on the altar of self-indulgence.
• 
"We the people" remains the most powerful force among us.  If our citizens don't pay attention to what is happening, future generations will rightly condemn us.
• 
Fear of losing what we have should motivate traditionalists to begin fighting back against an anti-American tide that is undermining truths once considered self-evident.
      The hardest gift to give at Christmas  (Fox 12/25/2015)
• 
What if you gave something wonderfully exquisite, something never to be forgotten, timeless and treasured, but in contrast, so terrifying to offer that the thought of it seems incredibly awful and virtually impossible to give?
• 
At Christmas, we want more than anything to offer a tangible expression to convey our gratitude, devotion and allegiance for the individuals who have enriched our life and walked in when everyone else was walking out.
• 
Although there will be obligatory, love-driven, gag, pay back and sympathy gifts handed out by millions this year, there is one of a different sort that will be in short supply because it is the most difficult to turn loose.
• 
Although it doesn't come in a box covered by sleigh red wrapping, it is the greatest, most significant present a person could ever offer... it is forgiveness.
• 
One of the ironies about this gift is that it is has dual benefits, the kind that ends up being a present to both the giver and the taker.  It also carries the rare quality of being an everlasting gift; its shelf life is without expiration.
• 
Forgiveness is usually dispensed only to people we think deserve it, have shown remorse, accepted responsibility and verbally apologized.
• 
The problem with these requirements is that while we wait for the offender to take action we poison ourselves with bitterness and anger.
• 
The pulse of true forgiveness is giving grace to those who least deserve it and without regard to their performance.
• 
Few things could be more meaningful during the holiday season than the mending of fractured relationships.
• 
Make peace with God, self and those you offended then move on with the determination to learn from mistakes.
      The true meaning of Christmas  (Fox 12/24/2015)
• 
Not for a long time has the world seemed so removed from the angelic proclamation of 2,000 years ago: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" (Luke 2:14).
• 
Millions have died in countless wars over the last 100 years.  People continue to die today as the result of worldwide terrorism and daily shootings in too many American cities.
• 
People speak of "the spirit of Christmas," or when observing some special act with which they approve or seek to inspire, refer to "the true meaning of Christmas."
• 
They are never asked what they mean by either.
• 
The true meaning of Christmas is this: God took on the form of a human to die in our place, paying for our sins, so that humans who receive Him might be forgiven and be with Him forever.
• 
You are free to reject that message and the One who delivered it, but what you are not free to do is to redefine or change the message into something that fits your own beliefs and choices.
• 
... C.S.  Lewis writes of a frozen land ruled by a "White Witch," devoid of hope.  In that world, it is "always winter, but never Christmas."
• 
It is a metaphor for a world that has rejected God and His redemptive power.  It is a world where humans choose to live as they please, rather than be transformed, even renewed.
• 
It is this world in which we now live, full of mendacity, envy, greed, lust, anger, terrorism, war, political divisions and confusion.
• 
We have forgotten who we are, because we have forgotten Whose we are.
• 
It is these and so many other human deficiencies the Christ child came to reset.  Like a gift under a tree, however, the transaction is not complete until the one for whom the gift is intended receives it.
• 
If anyone refuses a gift, the transaction is incomplete, its purpose thwarted.  Does it matter that so many reject Him?  Look around and consider the result.
• 
While some point to the occasional violence mistakenly done in His name to "prove" God does not exist, there are far more examples of good, such as charities, hospitals and inner-city missions that help the poor and homeless.
• 
If the bad disproves God, what does the good prove?
• 
These good acts rooted in faith are motivated not by selfishness, but selflessness, the kind of selflessness demonstrated by the One who left perfection and emptied Himself, taking on the form of a servant, to come to a fallen world and save us from the consequences of unbelief.
• 
Isn't that message worth celebrating?  Isn't that child worth worshipping?  Isn't that Man worth receiving?
      Immorality and Contempt for Liberty  (JWR 12/23/2015)
• 
American immorality and contempt for liberty lie at the root of most of the political economic problems our nation faces.
• 
They explain the fiscal problems we face, such as growing national debt and budget deficits at the federal, state and local levels of government.
• 
Our immorality and contempt for liberty are reflected most in our widespread belief that government ought to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American.
• 
Suppose there is an elderly widow in your neighborhood.  She does not have the strength to mow her lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks.  Plus she does not have the financial means to hire someone to perform them.
• 
Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the widow's lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks?
• 
Moreover, if the person so ordered failed to obey the government mandate, would you approve of some sort of sanction, such as a fine, property confiscation or imprisonment?
• 
I believe and hope that most of my fellow Americans would find such a mandate repulsive.  They would rightfully condemn it as a form of slavery, which can also be described as the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.
• 
Would there be the same condemnation if, instead of forcing one of your neighbors to actually perform the household tasks, your neighbor were forced to fork over $50 of his weekly earnings to the widow?  That way, she could hire someone to perform the tasks that she is unable to do.
• 
Would that mandate differ from one under which your neighbor is forced to actually perform the household tasks?  I'd answer no.  Just the mechanism differs for forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another.
• 
Most Americans would want to help this widow, but they would find anything that openly smacks of servitude or slavery deeply offensive.
• 
They would have a clearer conscience if government would use its taxing authority, say an income tax or property tax.
• 
This collective mechanism would make the servitude invisible, but it wouldn't change the fact that people are being forcibly used to serve the purposes of others.  Putting the money into a government pot simply conceals an act that would otherwise be deemed morally repulsive.
• 
Some might misleadingly argue that we are a democracy, in which the majority rules.  But a majority consensus does not make acts that would otherwise be deemed immoral moral.
• 
People like to give immoral acts an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding expressions, such as "spreading the wealth," "income redistribution," "caring for the less fortunate" and "the will of the majority."
• 
If one American can use government to force another to serve his purpose, what is the basis for denying another American the right to do the same thing? 
• 
Congress has completely succumbed to the pressure to use one American to serve the purposes of another.  As a result, spending grows.  Today's federal budget is about $3.8 trillion.
• 
At least two-thirds of it can be described as Congress taking the earnings of one American to give to another.
• 
I personally believe in helping one's fellow man in need.
• 
Doing so by reaching into one's own pockets is laudable and praiseworthy.
• 
Doing so by reaching into another's pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation.
      Gun control is the latest weapon of mass distraction  (INN 12/22/2015)
• 
Each and every act of Muslim terrorism is followed by a wave of denial.  The politicians who have done the most to cause the latest disaster are the eagerest to blame it on something, anything else.
• 
... despite Obama's claim in Paris that mass shootings don't happen in other countries because of gun control magic, they most certainly do.
• 
European gun control didn't stop a Muslim mass shooting in Paris that killed 130 people.  Syed Farook and Tasheen Malik had built pipe bombs.
• 
The latest attack in the UK involved a knife.  So did quite a few in Jerusalem.
• 
The Boston Marathon massacre used fireworks and a pressure cooker.
• 
The Muslim mass murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 was carried out with box cutters. 
• 
Gun control is a distraction.  A way to make something other than Islam into the problem that needs solving.
• 
Gun control, foreign policy and global warming are denialist gimmicks that reframe the problem.  ... They'll zoom in with great detail on weapons purchases while ignoring the ideology that motivated the attacks.
• 
They'll have a hundred different explanations for each attack that fail to account for the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism as a whole.
• 
These aren't reasonable arguments.  Taken together they form a pattern of conspiracy theories.
• 
Leftists did not want to deal with the fact that JFK had been murdered by one of their own.
• 
So they invented a bunch of alternative conspiracies involving the CIA, Cubans and other "right-wing" villains.
• 
These conspiracies allowed them to avoid dealing with the violence at the heart of the left.
• 
But that violence continued to spill over anyway leading to riots and terror plots.  In their alternate reality, none of it was their fault.
• 
Their response to 9/11 flirted with conspiracy theories.  A poll found that more than half of Democrats believed that George W.  Bush had carried out the 9/11 attacks or knew about them beforehand.
• 
Muslim terrorism can't be blamed on the government when both France and America are run by ridiculously notorious leftists.
• 
Today Muslim terrorists are attacking us because of the NRA.  Yesterday it was because it was too hot.  Before that, it was because of Israel.  And before that, it was because of Bush.
• 
But what if Muslim terrorists are attacking us because they're Muslim terrorists?
• 
The left's response to Islamic terrorism has been built around a frantic effort to distract and divert us from exactly that question, blaming anything and everything but Islam, while sharply denouncing anyone who ignores the distractions and addresses that central question.
• 
Attorney General Lynch responded to the San Bernardino terror attack by assuring Islamists that she intended to crack down on criticism of Islam.
• 
If Islamic terrorism is the problem, then the left and the Democrats who handed over their party to it are guilty of ignoring, minimizing and lying about a serious problem.
• 
They have to go on lying, ignoring and minimizing, and even threatening to dump the First Amendment along with the Second, because they have long since become complicit in the crimes of their Islamist partner organizations.
• 
Yesterday they blamed the weather.  Today they'll blame guns.  Tomorrow, it'll be something else.
• 
The issue may be anything so long as it isn't Muslim terrorism.  Those are the words that no Democrat will utter.  They will call it "man-caused disasters" or "violent extremism" or "hybrid workplace Jihad".
• 
The famous epigram, "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?  For if it prosper, none dare call it treason", expressed the absurd hypocrisy of a government of traitors.
• 
Islamic terrorism isn't caused by a thousand different problems, conditions, conspiracies and excuses.  It's caused by Islam.
• 
And we owe it to the victims of the latest attack and all the attacks to end the denial and the lies.
      ISIS as a symptom  (INN 12/22/2015)
• 
In October 2003 a Palestinian terrorist suicide bomber in Haifa killed 21 Israelis.
• 
During that same month a Flash Eurobarometer survey was carried out which revealed that around 60% of the citizens of the 15 EU member states believed that Israel posed the biggest threat to world peace.
• 
12 years have passed, meanwhile Spain, England and now France have witnessed Islamic terror, Northern Africa and the Middle East is on fire and despite the current wave of terror, Israel is still an island of freedom and stability.
• 
Some may hope the world is waking up after the latest tragic events in Paris and recognizing that the real threat is not Israel.  Sorry to disappoint them, but the world is still asleep.  And not just asleep but living in the same ignorance as it was in 12 years ago.
• 
... many still do not understand is that ISIS is not the root cause but a symptom and to deal with a problem, we have to deal with the root cause.
• 
If ISIS was eliminated, the ideology will still be there and this is the point that everybody seems to ignore.
• 
Radical Islam wants to eliminate everything that is not radical Islam while moderate Islam wants to eliminate only Israel and Judaism.
• 
In reality, it is the same issue: People shouting Allahu Akbar are killing people who don't shout Allahu Akbar and until the world stops continuing to ignore this and for as long as it continues to differentiate between terrorism in Israel and in the West, we are far from defeating Islamic terrorism.
      Is this headline safe?  (INN 12/20/2015)
• 
Looks like we may have to start whispering, or start passing notes under the table.
• 
Samizdat is what they called those secret messages when writers were forbidden to speak freely or write truly under the boot of Soviet repression.
• 
Terrible times for those who could not speak their minds or write without being monitored, hounded and imprisoned.
• 
Samizdat is coming.  It's already happening here.  We're being watched and we've been warned.
• 
Liberals want the entire floor to themselves.  "Safe spaces" for them have begun elbowing out the First Amendment for us.
• 
We could be talking about Loretta Lynch, our attorney general, who says she's more worried about Islamophobia than anything else, and threatens to prosecute anyone who speaks badly of Islam, although we have no specifics to let us know when we've crossed the line.
• 
Or, we could be talking about various publications and media carriers who threaten to cut us off at the headline if we fail to conform to specifications.
• 
Meantime what we are doing is pre-censoring ourselves, here in America, and you don't have to be a writer, anything anybody writes will do, will be enough to get you Indexed for Prohibited Books.  That was the term popular (or rather unpopular) during the age of the Spanish Inquisition.
• 
Torquemada was proud to say, "Show me 20 words written by the most honest of men, and I will find something in them to hang him."
• 
Take that for specifications. 
• 
This shop was somewhere on Fifth Avenue and word was out that the manager had taken Rushdie's book off the shelves fearing the fatwa.
• 
Fatwa This!  was our response.
• 
The poor manager did not know what hit him when 50 writers, from rich to starving, came at him all at once, righteous fury in their eyes.
• 
The reason all the books were gone was because... because they had sold out.  We left embarrassed and muttering that we should all be so lucky.
• 
Today we are being Indexed for different reasons.  Scary just the same.
• 
Banned speech, spoken or written, threatens us once again, for the columnist, the blogger, the novelist, the poet.
      See something, say something — unless a Palestinian is involved  (INN 12/20/2015)
• 
... if you take the time to look at www.RewardsForJustice.net, you notice something strange: one of the world's most prolific group of terrorists is almost completely absent from the site.
• 
There are plenty of Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and Taliban terrorists featured on the site, alongside killers from their various offshoots and all sorts of terror gangs whose names are barely known to the wider world.
• 
There are "most wanted" sections targeting various Saudis, Pakistanis, Qataris, Yemenis, Lebanese, Indians, Somalis, and practically every other national group under the sun.
• 
Yet the group that invented international airplane hijacking in the 1970s, that pioneered suicide bombings in the 1990s, and is now leading the new wave of terrorism-by-kitchen-knives, is almost nowhere to be found.  You almost need a magnifying glass to find any Palestinians on the State Department's website.
• 
Since the 1960s, Palestinian terrorists have murdered 138 American citizens, and wounded nearly 200 more, in 131 separate attacks.  Many dozens of terrorists were involved in the attacks.
• 
Some are dead, some are in Israeli prisons.  But many of them are alive and well — and some are serving in the Palestinian Authority's (PA) security forces, according to Israeli government reports.
• 
Of all these attacks, just two are described on the site — a 2003 attack on U.S.  diplomats in Gaza, and the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria in 2002. 
• 
The many other Palestinian attacks on Americans are all grouped together in a single paragraph headlined, "Violence in Opposition to the Middle East Peace Negotiations, 1993 to Present." There is no acknowledgment that the attackers were trying to kill Jews.
• 
The reader is told only that, "The intent of these attacks was to disrupt peace negotiations and to modify the attitudes of the leaders engaged in them."
• 
If their purpose was to "disrupt peace negotiations," then how does the State Department explain the purpose of attacks that took place before there any such negotiations?  Simple: it doesn't.
• 
That's why the listing uses the parameters, "1993 to Present" — so they don't have to talk about pre-1993 attacks.
• 
Palestinian terrorist fugitives who reside in the areas controlled by the PA are the ones whose photos should be on the site.  They are the ones who could be easily apprehended by the PA and extradited.
• 
But that appears to be precisely the reason that their photos do not appear on the State Department website.
• 
Imagine if a Palestinian living in, say, Ramallah, noticed his next door neighbor's photo on the site and decided to turn him in to get the reward money.
• 
What would the Obama administration do?  Would it demand that the PA extradite him to the U.S.  for prosecution?  Would it put a PA policeman on trial in U.S.  federal court?
• 
Not a chance.  Because doing so would undermine the administration's entire policy of promoting the idea that the PA is moderate and anti-terror and should be given a state as soon as possible.
• 
And so, even on a U.S.  government website whose purpose is to catch killers of Americans around the world, one group of killers of Americans remains politically untouchable.
      Inside Obama’s secret pity party  (NYP 12/19/2015)
• 
Poor Barack Obama.  Americans don't appreciate his wisdom, and those nasty Republicans are picking on him again.  Woe is the leader of the free world.
• 
That was the essence of his private meeting with friendly journalists, where the president gave his water-carriers talking points so he could jet off to Hawaii and still look as if he's engaged in national security.
• 
He blamed cable TV for whipping up fears over the Islamic State, and said, weirdly, that he missed the public mood swing because he doesn't watch much cable news.
• 
The session included his standard lecture about not sacrificing "our values," meaning we should keep pretending that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism.
• 
A more horrifying point is that the president confirmed the widespread perception that he is pulling punches in the fight against the Islamic State.
• 
"Obama doesn't think this is an existential battle that's worth the cost to the United States of an all-out war."
• 
... the only thing that would lead the president to alter his strategy "would be a big, orchestrated terrorist incident that so frightened the public that it began to prevent the normal functioning of America."
• 
Despite Obama's efforts to reassure the country that he is serious about fighting the bloodthirsty jihadists, in truth he is not.  He is merely committed to maintaining the status quo.
• 
His policy might be defensible if there were any evidence it was working.  But it has been a disaster and has given the terrorist army time to grow in strength and appeal.
• 
The view that Obama is clinging to now is the same one he had when he claimed that the Islamic State was "contained" a day before the horrific attack in Paris.
• 
And one week before the San Bernardino attack, he said, "We know of no specific and credible intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland."
• 
Those failures are not just perception.  They are real.  Add to this dangerous mix his nuclear coddling of Iran, and suspicion about his commitment to national security is valid.
• 
There is much wrong with Obama's approach, but two points stand out.
• 
First, it is an absolute dereliction of duty for a president to make a "cost-benefit analysis" that regards any attacks on Americans by foreign enemies as minor.
• 
Second, given his record, Obama's assurances that there are no credible threats now are not comforting.  Nobody saw Paris and San Bernardino coming, so who knows what we don't know?
• 
Precisely because it is impossible to be certain about what terror plans are in the pipeline, ­the Islamic State must be destroyed now.  Later may be too late.
      Legacy or bust  (JWR 12/18/2015)
• 
Last Saturday, Barack Obama gained the second jewel in his foreign policy triple crown: the Paris climate accord.  It follows his Iran nuclear deal and awaits but the closing of Guantanamo to complete his glittering legacy.
• 
You see, visionary thinkers like Obama cannot be bound by normal constitutional strictures.  Indeed, the very unpopularity of his most cherished diplomatic goals is proof of their prophetic farsightedness.
• 
Yet the climate deal brought back from Paris by Secretary of State John Kerry turns out to be no deal at all.  It is, instead, a series of carbon-reducing promises made individually and unilaterally by the world's nations.
• 
"This mandatory reporting requirement ... is a serious form of enforcement, if you will, of compliance, but there is no penalty for it, obviously."
• 
If you think that's gibberish, you're not alone.  Retired NASA scientist James Hansen, America's leading carbon abolitionist, indelicately called the whole deal "bulls..."
• 
Three months ago, the world's greatest carbon emitter, China, admitted to having underreported its burning of coal by 14 percent (later recalculated to 17 percent ), a staggering error (assuming it wasn't a deliberate deception) equal to the entire coal consumption of Germany.
• 
What the climate-change conference produced instead was hot air, applauded by 196 well-fed participants.  (Fourteen nights in Paris, after all.)
• 
China promises to begin reducing carbon emissions 15 years from now.  India announced it will be tripling its coal-fired electricity capacity by 2030.
• 
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is effectively dismantling America's entire coal industry.
• 
Looking for guidance on how the U.S.  will fare under this new environmental regime?  Take a glance at Obama's other great triumph, the Iran nuclear accord.
• 
Does the American public know that the Iranian parliament has never approved it?  And that the Iranian president has never signed it?  Iran is not legally bound to anything.
• 
As the State Department freely admitted ... the deal "is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document."
• 
But don't worry.  Its success "will depend not on whether it is legally binding or signed, but rather on the extensive verification measures" and our "capacity to reimpose - and ramp up - our sanctions if Iran does not meet its commitments."
• 
On Nov.  21, Iran conducted its second test of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in direct contravention of two U.N.  Security Council prohibitions, including one that incorporates the current nuclear agreement - which bans such tests for eight years.
• 
Our response?  After Iran's first illegal launch in October, the administration did nothing.  A few words at the United Nations.
• 
Weren't we repeatedly assured that any Iranian violation would be met with vigorous action?
• 
No worry, again.  As U.N.  Ambassador Samantha Power told a congressional hearing last week, "discussions are a form of U.N.  action."
• 
It was obvious from the very beginning that the whole administration promise of "snapback" sanctions was a farce.
• 
The Iranians knew it.  Hence their contempt for even the prospect of American pushback: two illegal missile launches conducted ostentatiously even before sanctions are lifted and before they receive their $150 billion in unfrozen assets early next year.
• 
Why not?  They know Obama will ignore, downplay and explain away any violation, lest it jeopardize his transformative foreign policy legacy.
• 
It's a legacy of fictional agreements.  The proliferators and the polluters are not bound.  By our own volition, we are.
• 
Only Guantanamo remains.  Within a month, one-sixth of the remaining prisoners will be released.  Obama will not be denied.
      What's eating America?  (JWR 12/18/2015)
• 
We live in an anxious age.  That anxiety runs like a river beneath the political landscape.  Different news events tap into that river and release a geyser of outrage and fear.
• 
... Americans — on the left and the right — think that the folks running the country have an agenda different from theirs.
• 
Christie says, "We have people across this country who are scared to death." No doubt that's true.  But for a great many of them, I suspect, the fear is not so much a fear of the Islamic State but a fear that our own government, starting with the president, just doesn't take terrorism seriously.  We now know he was very late in taking the Islamic State seriously.
• 
I suspect most conservatives think that if America marshaled the sufficient will to defeat the Islamic State, we'd make short work of it.
• 
Obama has no interest in such an undertaking.  He reserves his passion for attacking Republicans or pushing his other priorities, such as climate change, which persistently remains a very, very low priority for most Americans.
• 
But the president himself is a symptom.  The whole system seems to have lost its mind.
• 
That there's even a debate about whether security officials should be allowed to look at the social media posts of immigrants is a sign that our bureaucrats have such open minds their brains have fallen out.
• 
We should have seen this coming five years ago, when we learned that Obama told the new head of NASA to make one of his top priorities outreach to the Muslim world.
• 
Terrorism is a big concern, but this sense that the political system is unresponsive, unaccountable and operating on its own self-interested ideological agenda is bigger.
• 
The failure of credible politicians to address this anxiety created an opportunity for Donald Trump.  At least he's willing to say Washington is stupid.
      America's chickens have come home to reproduce  (JWR 12/18/2015)
• 
This column is dedicated to all those who voted for B.  Hussein Obama for a second term and all those stupid, so-called conservatives who sat glued to their couches instead of voting for Mitt Romney in 2012.
• 
I'm particularly miffed at fellow Jews, some of them relatives who voted for Obama the second time.  You mean you didn't understand his pandering deal plea to Iran and the implications to Israel's survival?  The Ayatollah and Mullahs won Powerball and the Lotto combined.  Step right up Khamenei and collect your $150 billion — with a clean road to a Muslim A-bomb!
• 
My conclusion is these disgraceful Hebrews are more Liberal than Jewish and don't give a Shiite whether Israel survives or not.  I see no redeeming rationalization for their treason.
• 
Obama and his Liberal hordes have gotten chaffed riding the jackass brays of "America is getting what it deserves — America is evil" long enough for the mass of the slow-to-react-lest-they-be-called-racist American people's patience to run out.
• 
People aren't censoring their words anymore.  They're cussing out Obama, Hillary, AG Loretta Lynch and any Democrat who sponsors the invasion of our country with a combination of South American and Mideast immigrants with ISIS infiltration all over the place.
• 
The leftists will do anything to this country including leading us into terror nightmare just to overwhelm the US with a surge of dependent Dem voters.
• 
America is done with Obama's lies and coddling of ISIS-infested illegals who would destroy this country.
• 
Obama not only co-created ISIS with Hillary, he brought an unscripted wild man into the fray, Donald Trump.  He's saying exactly what's on the mind of Joe and Jane American Citizen, much to the angst of the MSM and RINOS.
• 
Saudi Arabia recently announced a 34 country coalition to fight ISIS and Iran.  The Obama Administration is so distrusted by all parties in the Mideast that they weren't notified.
• 
We are so vulnerable to terror attacks, fraudulent emails from Germany closed down the LA school system, threatening death and disrupting an entire city.  They were forced to gather up some 700,000 students and get them to safety.
• 
Our vulnerable schools, from nursery through university campuses have no or little armed security.
• 
All government work places that carry the suicidal dictate of NO GUN ZONES.
• 
Multiply this in every state and you realize the Obama Administration has intentionally put this country into a terror spiral that's only going to grow.
      Families of terrorists see no evil, speak no evil  (JWR 12/17/2015)
• 
Amid all the furor over Islamic terrorism in the United States, a few themes are ignored: the role of friends and family of terrorists, and how well the U.S had treated many of those who went on to kill Americans.
• 
"My son said that he shared [Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi's ideology and supported the creation of the Islamic State.  He was also obsessed with Israel."
• 
If true, the elder Farook, who was welcomed into the United States as an immigrant from Pakistan, knew before the killings that his son was an advocate of the Islamic State.  He apparently kept quiet about it.
• 
For that matter, what are we to make of Farook's mother, who lived in the same rented townhouse with the two killers?  She claimed that she knew nothing of her family's bomb-making and stockpiling of weapons inside the small home.
• 
Farook, it should be noted, enjoyed a comfortable job with the state of California.
• 
The parents of the Boston Marathon bombers are Dagestan natives and former Chechnya residents who applied for asylum to the United States after spending time here on a tourist visa.  They claimed the family was in danger back in Chechnya.
• 
The Tsarnaev family was welcomed in Boston and at times enjoyed liberal public assistance — at least until the two sons, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, one a recipient of a college scholarship, murdered three and wounded more than 260 during the 2013 Boston Marathon.
• 
Shortly after the bombings, the Mr.  and Mrs.  Tsarnaev moved back to Chechnya, apparently without facing the dangers that they claimed had forced them to move to America in the first place.
• 
Zubeidat exclaimed in a social-media message to friends, would be "the ones who will rejoice when Allah grants us the chance to behold the U.S.  in the flames of an eternal and terrifying fire, an otherworldly flame."
• 
Perhaps no terrorist has done more damage to the United States after 9/11 than the late Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaida propagandist and U.S.  citizen whose father emigrated from Yemen after being awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in America.
• 
Before al-Awlaki was killed by a drone in Yemen in 2011, he had been the spiritual advisor to three of the 9/11 hijackers; to Army Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 of his fellow Fort Hood soldiers; and to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day 2009.
• 
Al-Awlaki's father, Nasser, frequently defended his son, denying that he had any ties to radical Islamic terrorism.
• 
In almost all of these cases there is a monotonous narrative.  Muslims arrive from abroad, often citing dangers at home and new opportunities in America.  They are treated well, frequently being offered public assistance, university admittance, scholarships or government jobs.
• 
Their children become "radicalized." (Note that this is a passive term rather than an active one — as if mysterious forces rather than free will turn someone into a killer.)
• 
After the murders, relatives claim that they knew little of such transformations.  On occasion, they contextualize the violence.
• 
The idea that close relatives do not know about the Islamic extremism of their kin is as absurd as it is dangerous to the security of the United States
      Ari Fleischer: Donald Trump, Barack Obama and a second wave terror threat  (Fox 12/15/2015)
• 
Fear of terrorism in the United States is helping drive Donald Trump's candidacy and it has led to Trump's breaking all previous boundaries in saying what he thinks needs to be done to stop it.
• 
"We never violated the Constitution.  But we knew after September 11, if we were hit by a second-wave attack, the American people would have risen up and demanded the Constitution be violated in order to protect the country.  And so everything we did was designed to protect the Constitution by preventing another attack."
• 
The desire for a strong response to protect the nation explains one reason Mr.  Trump is gaining traction, but it also shows how carefully the Bush administration worked to follow the Constitution without reverting to the extremes Mr.  Trump wants to follow.
• 
President Bush understood on September 12 that if we were hit again, the cry from across America to do "whatever it takes" would have been deafening.
• 
For fourteen years, a bipartisan foundation for how to prevent domestic terror has been built, started by President Bush and largely continued by President Obama, even though for political reasons he's loathe to credit his predecessor.
• 
So much for Bush violating the Constitution. 
• 
If these actions hadn't been taken, and the United States was hit again, or if we're hit now, the cries will grow for our government to go further and do more.  Support for Donald Trump will likely rise, across the political spectrum.
• 
If we're going to defeat ISIS and protect our homeland, we need Muslim allies helping us, domestically with intelligence and abroad with fighting forces, which makes Trump's call to stop Muslims from entering the U.S.  not only a bad idea from a moral point of view, but also a rotten idea from a security point of view. 
• 
We shouldn't drive away the very people we need to rely on to win.
• 
The best way to stop America's legitimate fears of terrorism from becoming Donald Trump's springboard to the presidency is to prevent another attack on our country and to defeat ISIS.
• 
If President Obama doesn't want to be succeeded by Donald Trump, he needs to increase surveillance at home and substantially step up our efforts abroad.
• 
If we're hit again, there's no telling how far the American people will want to go.
      Terror threat: When political correctness trumps law enforcement  (Fox 12/14/2015)
• 
... the Obama administration deliberately shuttered an investigation that might have thwarted the San Bernadino mass murder — because he was told the investigations were problematic because they were looking into Islamic groups...
• 
The Obama administration may be deliberately blinding our intelligence agencies' capacity to properly vet visa applications or to pursue domestic leads in terrorism investigations if those investigations focus on Islamic centers.
• 
Since when do law enforcement and intelligence agencies skip over religious motivations for murders in pursuing leads?
• 
Agencies are supposed to follow evidence and intelligence wherever it leads, not deny the obvious link between Islam and the killers because of political correctness.
• 
There is no First Amendment protection against investigating religiously motivated attacks.
• 
If this policy is widespread, it might help explain why Western intelligence agencies have been blind to the latest wave of attacks.
• 
... neighbors of the two Islamic terrorists saw something, but it was this exact fear of being labelled a racist that shut them up.
• 
Elsewhere, at Irving MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas in, there was the school official who encountered a student bringing a suitcase stuffed with wires and a timing device onto campus.
• 
When you "see something" and "say something" in that situation — by calling the police — you buy yourself international approbation as a racist and a proctology exam from the Obama Justice Department, not to mention a $15 million lawsuit from the offended child.
• 
The facts didn't matter, the full weight of the federal government, not to mention a national social media character assassination, follows the decision to say something after you see something.
• 
It was not lost on anyone that the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) seemingly had access to information about the killers before the public, as that group had a press conference with relatives of the brutal attackers even before the FBI briefed the public. 
• 
The next day, President Obama continued to press the line that it was possibly workplace violence, downplaying the obvious fact that it was terrorism.
• 
Obama did so in spite of the bomb found at the murder scene designed to kill first responders.
• 
He did so in spite of knowing that the Redlands home of the ISIS dream team was filled with bomb making materials. 
• 
... soul searching would have forced the Obama Administration to admit that their internal bias against investigating radical Islamic Centers around the world may have led directly to San Bernardino.
• 
Political correctness is getting people killed, and those who urge law enforcement and intelligence not to focus on the religion involved with these repeated attacks are playing a very dangerous game indeed.
• 
Anyone paying attention to the results of this resettlement program, the fears expressed by neighbors of the San Bernardino killers of being labeled racist, and the harassment facing officials in Irving, Texas can see what is happening.
• 
The only problem is who can they tell?
      President must stop limiting our military in fight to destroy ISIS  (Fox 12/14/2015)
• 
Rather than supporting legislation that would allow him to use all necessary and appropriate force to destroy ISIS, the President wants severe restrictions placed on him (and our next Commander-in-Chief) by limiting the use of force and timeline of any action.
• 
As we have seen with the President's Afghanistan strategy, placing limitations on military action will show our enemies they can wait us out and then continue their reign of terror upon our withdrawal.
• 
ISIS must know the President has the power and will to unleash the full might and power of the U.S.  military to do what it does best; destroy our enemies and protect our families from these barbarians.
• 
Make no mistake: ISIS has declared war on Western civilization.
• 
In the wake of the Paris attacks, the downing of a Russian passenger jet, the vicious bombing of civilians in Beirut, and the mass-shooting in San Bernardino, the world can no longer deny the true global reach of ISIS and the savage danger it poses to us all if not destroyed. 
• 
Every day that has gone by without a sufficient American response has led to ISIS reaching its tentacles further into the Western world.
• 
Kidnappings, beheadings, and public executions were just a taste of the evil committed by ISIS in the Middle East.  We've now seen their savagery up-close, at home.
• 
This is all proof of the ISIS threat to those who embrace freedom and decent society.
• 
We need a real strategy to effectively destroy ISIS and reclaim the territory it occupies rather than the President publicly ridiculing those who disagree with his non-strategy. 
• 
At a time of such great peril, I believe the use of force necessary to accomplish our tasks should be debated and granted to the President in order to not only contain the current threat, but to eliminate it altogether.
• 
More needs to be done to attack the problem at its heart, which includes taking the fight to ISIS, and putting an end to the reign of the man who incubated this cancer: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
      We aren't the world  (JWR 12/11/2015)
• 
To believe his critics, Donald Trump has ripped up the U.S.  Constitution and sprinkled its shreds on the smoldering embers of what was once the Statute of Liberty.
• 
Donald Trump's proposal is invidious; not all Muslims are a security risk.  It is unworkable; among other things, airlines would have to screen travelers from Europe for their religion.  It is imprudent; we don't want to send a message of generalized hostility to Muslims.
• 
But it's not unconstitutional.  Trump's detractors, and even some of his fellow Republicans, can't help making this charge, even though it betrays a misunderstanding, not just of the Constitution, but of the very nature of a sovereign nation.
• 
"We do not discriminate on people based on religion," Ben Carson said in response to Trump's proposal, "that's constitutional, that's in the First Amendment."
• 
Of course, he's right.  Except the First Amendment isn't a free-floating grant of rights to all of mankind.
• 
We are a sovereign country with the right to exclude whomever we want from coming here.
• 
"Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens."
• 
During the hostage crisis ... Jimmy Carter ordered that all nonimmigrant visas from Iran be invalidated and that no more be issued, absent a compelling humanitarian reason.  He also mandated that Iranian students in the United States report to the authorities, who queried them about potential radical sympathies.  Some students were expelled.
• 
On a much smaller scale, the Obama administration paused the Iraq refugee resettlement program in 2011 after it came to light it had welcomed two terrorists into the United States.
• 
It is different, and less disturbing, to target the nationality of potential entrants, rather than their religion. 
• 
Trump's ban would apply to an Iraqi interpreter who worked alongside U.S.  troops, as well as to a harmless Ph.D.  from Malaysia.
• 
The embedded assumption is that migrating here is some sort of global civil right.
• 
Trump may be ignorant and bombastic, but his supporters believe that, if nothing else, he understands that the security and interests of Americans must come first.
      Baffled by Trump?  (JWR 12/10/2015)
• 
The more reckless Trump's doses of scattergun outrageousness, the better the fix for his supporters.
• 
Trump's vague "make America great again" was the natural bookend to Barack Obama's even more vacuous "hope and change."
• 
The popularity of such empty slogans reflects a culture in which no one any longer trusts institutions, the media, government or politicians.
• 
Even the once-hallowed Secret Service has become a near laughingstock of incompetency, corruption and politicization.
• 
Is the purpose of NASA really Muslim outreach, as NASA chief Charles Bolden suggested in 2010?
• 
President Obama has exacerbated this current disconnect between the public and its officials.  In unserious fashion, he shares his selfies, parades his annual Final Four picks and jets off to Los Angeles to appear on late-night talk shows, even as he hectors Americans in sermons about their Islamophobia, their carbon footprints, their immigration xenophobia and their gun obsessions.
• 
Did the public earn such presidential rebukes because it believes that jihadism at home and the Islamic State abroad are more dangerous than global warming?
• 
Or because disarming law-abiding citizens will not prevent law-breaking criminals and terrorists from obtaining illegal weapons?
• 
Or because it is unwise to open the borders to anyone who can make it into the United States, few questions asked?
• 
The first reaction of Attorney General Loretta Lynch after the recent San Bernardino terrorist attack was to warn the country about Islamophobia.
• 
The government reports that a record 94.4 million Americans are not in labor force.  That is almost a third of the country.  How can the same government declare that the official unemployment rate is only 5 percent?
• 
It may or may not have been wise for the Supreme Court to sanction gay marriage, or for the Pentagon to allow women in the military to join all combat units, or for the president to tacitly end border enforcement.
• 
But these changes were not made by majority legislative decision.  And they have come thick and fast without time for the public to digest their consequences.
• 
In short, millions of citizens think the nation is headed for a financial reckoning.  They feel threatened by radical Islamic terrorism.  They sense that cultural and social stability has disappeared.
• 
And they know that expression of these worries can be a thought crime — hounded down by politicians, media, universities and cultural institutions that do not enjoy broad public support and are not subject to the direct consequences of their own ideologies.
• 
Amid these crises and the present absence of responsible leadership, if there were not a demagogic Donald Trump ranting and raving on the scene, the country would probably have to invent something like him.
      Steve Forbes: My advice for 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls: If you want to win, here's how  (Fox 12/10/2015)
• 
Americans are in an anxious, frustrated mood.  Most people on both the left and right feel we have lost our way.
• 
Since 2009, wage earners have suffered declines in their real incomes, with those who make the least suffering the largest percentage drop.
• 
Our national security is threatened by terrorists and dictators who lethally exploit the vacuum created by President Obama's abandonment of international leadership.
• 
... implementing big reforms in three critical areas — health care, taxes and monetary policy — would ignite a spectacular economic resurgence in the US that would astound the world.
• 
Repealing the abomination of Obamacare is essential, but not enough.
• 
We must address the fundamental problems that led to that failed policy.  Decades of government regulation have all but destroyed normal markets in both healthcare and insurance.
• 
What drives rising health care prices is our government-dominated "third-party payer" system, whereby employers, government, private insurers — but not the patient — are the ones that pay for most of health care.
• 
The market is therefore tailored to their needs and not to yours as the health care consumer.
• 
The next Big Reform crying out to be implemented is junking the entire Federal income tax code, a corruption-laden, incomprehensible, multi-million word nightmare that is doing immense harm to the economy and our standard of living.
• 
It has enabled the IRS to become an immensely powerful and abusive agency. 
• 
Going a simple flat tax that is also a tax cut would reduce the burden on productive work, risk-taking and success, stimulating a genuine boom of historic proportions.
• 
We spend over 6 billion hours a year filling out tax forms and over $300 billion to comply with the code.
• 
Imagine if over the years all that brainpower and all those billions of hours and trillions of dollars had gone to producing new products and services, new medical devices and new cures for diseases, how much better our lives would be today.
• 
The flat tax already exists in more than 30 countries around the world.  It really works.
• 
The third Big Reform would drastically overhaul the Federal Reserve System. 
• 
Money is like a claim check for your coat at a restaurant.  It is not wealth.  It is a claim on products and services.  Money has no value.  It measures value like a clock measures time or a scale measures weight.
• 
What if the Fed did to clocks what it does to the dollar: 60 minutes in an hour one day, 43 minutes the next, and so on?  Life would be chaotic.
• 
Similar to clocks, rulers and scales, money works best when it has a fixed value.  The best route to dollar stability is to restore its link to gold.
• 
Ultimately we must create a new gold standard, which served this country well from the time of George Washington's presidency to the early 1970s.
• 
While these Three Big Reforms focus on the economy, they have fundamental importance for our security.  An economically weak America — which always drags down the rest of the world — is like fetid water for mosquitos: extremists thrive.
• 
The grisliest example was the Great Depression, which originated from catastrophic economic mistakes in Washington.
• 
If there had been no Depression, there would have been no Nazi revolution (in 1928, on the eve of the Depression, Hitler's party got little more than 2 percent of the vote).  Without the Nazi revolution, there would have been no Second World War.
• 
Returning to our roots as a nation based on free people, free markets, equal opportunity (not equal outcomes), property rights is essential if we are to remain the greatest country in the world, that shining city on the hill.
• 
Ronald Reagan understood that.  His implementation of sound, pro-growth economic policies revitalized our economy and defeated our totalitarian enemies.
      Unnecessary Loss of Life  (JWR 09/30/2015)
• 
In our latest wars, many of the casualties suffered by American troops are a direct result of their having to obey rules of engagement created by politicians who have never set foot on — or even seen — a battlefield. 
• 
"We handcuffed our troops in combat needlessly.  This was very harmful to our men and has never been done in U.S combat operations that I know of."
• 
Collateral damage and the unintentional killing of civilians are a consequence of war.
• 
But the question we should ask is: Are our troops' lives less important than the inevitable collateral damage?
• 
The unnecessary loss of life and casualties that result from politically correct rules of engagement are about to be magnified in future conflicts by mindless efforts to put women in combat units.
• 
You may bet the rent money that the current effort to integrate combat jobs will not end with simply a few extraordinary women.
• 
... if the Navy SEALs cannot prove that staying up for 18 hours with no rest or sleep, sitting and shivering in the cold Pacific Ocean, running with a huge log on your shoulder, and being spoken to like a dog are necessary, then those parts of SEAL training will be eliminated so that women can pass.
• 
The most disgusting, perhaps traitorous, aspect of all this is the overall timidity of military commanders, most of whom, despite knowing better, will only publicly criticize the idea of putting women in combat after they retire from service.
      Donald Trump’s campaign is betting on another terror attack  (NYP 11/09/2015)
• 
My first reaction to Donald Trump's call to ban new Muslims from entering the United States was that he had simultaneously won the GOP nomination and lost the general election.
• 
My second reaction was that events will prove one of those predictions wrong.
• 
If there are no more terror attacks in America before the end of the primary season, most Republican voters will see Trump's plan as too radical and he will lose the nomination.
• 
On the other hand, if there are more attacks in the homeland, many more voters will move in Trump's direction and he would almost certainly win the nomination and maybe the presidency.
• 
In effect, Trump is betting his campaign on there being more attacks.  I hope he is wrong, but fear he will be right.
• 
To be clear, I don't support his plan.  Singling out all Muslims is vulgar and probably unconstitutional.  A religious test is unAmerican.
• 
The idea is so toxic that it has the unfortunate effect of making President Obama look right for once. 
• 
Yet Trump's proposal does not come out of the blue.  Obama and many Democrats actually favor changes in the visa-waiver program to keep some Muslims from entering the country.
• 
One measure would exclude those who had traveled to Syria or Iraq since 2011.  Other parts reportedly would focus restrictions on nationalities, such as people born in Sudan or Iran.  Clearly, most people in those categories would be Muslims.
• 
Trump's plan, then, despite its radical nature, reflects the bipartisan trend to prevent attacks by focusing on potential Muslim terrorists.
• 
The timing of his plan also matters — it would have been laughable two months ago.  But the Islamic State's spreading barbarism, and Obama's tepid response, are changing America's mood.
• 
Then came the slaughters in Paris and San Bernardino, sending the fear meter off the charts.
• 
The attacks were horrifying.  Especially incomprehensible is that the California killers shot the same people who had given them a baby shower, at a Christmas party no less.
• 
Obama's knee-jerk response was to call for more gun control, so the central issue of the campaign is who will best protect America from these savages.
• 
There are other related facts, too.  Our southern border is porous, and Obama won't close it.
• 
On top of that, the president wants to let in thousands of Syrian refugees, despite polls showing a large majority of the public is again opposed.
• 
These are extraordinary times, with much of the world on fire.
• 
Because Obama's presidency has been marked by lies and failure, he cannot summon the trust of his country at this crucial moment.
• 
His trust deficit is pushing the political pendulum in the opposite direction.  Depending on events, it may swing far enough to carry Donald Trump into the White House.
• 
In that event, a President Trump would be Barack Obama's true legacy.
      In an increasingly dangerous world, Obama has checked out as commander in chief  (Fox 12/07/2015)
• 
Ben Franklin said that death and taxes were the two certainties of life.  A third certainty in our country used to be strong leadership from the individual in the Oval Office.
• 
Abraham Lincoln, F.D.R, John F.  Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and many others have used their position as our commander in chief to exude America's strength on the world stage and promote our nation's unique exceptionalism.
• 
Following the attacks, instead of stepping forward and adopting an aggressive strategy to take the fight to ISIS, the president deferred and continued to give off the impression that our current strategy to combat radical Islamic terrorism is working.
• 
His response showed that he is either delusional to the real threat ISIS presents our nation or he is simply incapable of providing authentic leadership for the sake of the country and the globe. 
• 
While it seems President Obama has already checked out on his White House responsibilities and is looking forward to writing his memoirs and building his library, the absence of American leadership has now become a defining issue of the 2016 presidential election.
• 
On one side, there are Republican candidates who all know and understand that America must operate from a position of strength, and adhere to the ideas espoused by Ronald Reagan about leadership and action.
• 
On the other side, there is Hillary Clinton, President Obama's former Secretary of State and the architect of his disastrous foreign policy agenda who also jumped at the chance last week to put political points on the board, instead of promoting a strong strategy to defeat ISIS.
• 
For generations, when the world faced a dangerous force or an intimidating challenge, the United States of America has been the nation to step forward and provide leadership.
• 
If we want to continue being a unique and exceptional nation, that is a principle that we cannot abandon, especially right now with the seriousness of the threats facing our country and the world.
• 
For the past seven years, we have seen what it looks like when America doesn't take charge, but instead sits in the backseat as a global observer.
• 
As a result, our country is less safe, less secure, and people have a rational fear of another heinous act of terrorism coming to our shores.
      Obama speech: Reassurances about ISIS fall flat in Oval Office address  (Fox 12/06/2015)
• 
He could have explained why a long-feared arrival of low-tech, soft-target terrorism had occurred, and what he would do to rectify the problem — beginning with apologizing for giving a U.S.  visa to a jihadist from Pakistan and agreeing to stop his plan to bring more Syrian refugees here.
• 
He could have announced a plan to undermine the ideology of our enemies — radical Islam — which impelled Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik to wage war in San Bernardino last week.
• 
Instead he did what he always does with security threats: blame others for his administration's lapses and do the minimum to appear to be reacting to them without actually doing anything.
• 
The president instinctively wants to react to every security threat by assailing his domestic opponents.
• 
Obama's moralizing about avoiding "suspicion and hate" implied, once again, that Americans are bigoted — another attempt to shift blame.
• 
It echoed a statement last week by Attorney General Loretta Lynch that the government would prosecute anti-Muslim speech that "edges toward violence," whatever that means.
• 
Thus did our government reveal its contempt for us and our Constitution in the wake of an attack it failed to prevent.
• 
Obama's reassurances about the fight against ISIS fell flat.  In effect, a ragtag army of about 20,000 men have stood up to a year and a half of a U.S.-led war and prevailed — all the while expanding their influence around the globe.  Their success has inspired attacks like the ones in Paris and San Bernardino.
• 
Obama failed to climb down from his assessment that ISIS is "contained" — something that not even his own top general believes.
• 
Sunday nights' sad speech makes one wonder what the White House was thinking.
• 
The office awaits a new president who can confidently explain how a restored America with restored alliances can defeat ISIS rapidly and with overwhelming force, fight back in the cultural and ideological war radical Islam is waging against us, and defend rather than blame the American people.
      What will it take for Obama to admit this is Islamic terrorism?  (NYP 12/05/2015)
• 
During his tenure, President Obama occasionally has been inspiring, sometimes perplexing and, more often, infuriating.
• 
His recent appearances provoke another reaction.  He looks and sounds pathetic, a shrunken figure detached from reality.
• 
Always half-hearted about the war on terror, the President's stubborn refusal to call the atrocity in Paris "Islamic terrorism" has put him out of step with events.
• 
In listless, vapid remarks, he called the death of 130 innocent victims a "setback," and salted the wound by insisting that climate change is a greater threat.
• 
Always half-hearted about the war on terror, the President's stubborn refusal to call the atrocity in Paris "Islamic terrorism" has put him out of step with events.  In listless, vapid remarks, he called the death of 130 innocent victims a "setback," and salted the wound by insisting that climate change is a greater threat.
• 
America is at war and the Commander in Chief isn't even trying to lead from behind anymore.  He's gone AWOL at the worst possible time.
• 
His consistent failure to acknowledge the roots of Islam in the jihadist death cult always was peculiar.
• 
He insisted that the religion not be defined by those who hijacked it, but with the barbarism of Islamic State and the growing number of lethal attacks, his intransigence is downright weird.
• 
What's the harm of admitting a truth the whole world sees?
• 
Equally troubling, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told a Muslim advocacy dinner that "my greatest fear" is that anti-Islam "rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence."
• 
She threatened prosecution and said the First Amendment does not protect "actions predicated on violent talk."
• 
That was a warning to Donald Trump and other GOP candidates, as well as ordinary Americans, that speaking the truth could land them in jail.  Apparently the zeal for denial is boundless.
• 
We are witnessing a mistake of historic proportions.  The idea that the link between Islam and terrorism cannot be admitted is absurd, and it is backfiring.
• 
The refusal to concede the obvious is leading to greater suspicion about Islam.
• 
Denial is tainting all Muslims in ways the facts never could.
• 
Americans, including Muslims, deserve the truth, Mr.  President.  They can handle it.  Why can't you?
      A nation in search of leadership, not mush  (JWR 12/04/2015)
• 
Well, actually, we've got a pretty good idea of why they did it, based on the early look at the known facts.  The president has had access to these facts from the early minutes after the massacre.
• 
... it's obvious to the rest of us that serious and widespread damage has been done to what George W.  Bush famously insisted is "the religion of peace."
• 
Ignoring the obvious does no favors to the millions of Muslims who seek to be good and peaceful neighbors.
• 
"So the president thinks that when there are two terrorists sitting around planning a mass murder they might call it off because President Obama has put in place common-sense gun laws?"
• 
The answer he got was more mush: "Well, we're still learning the precise motives [of the gunmen]."
• 
The deadly duo were not a couple of kids skylarking in the woods, plinking tin cans and Coke bottles, and suddenly it occurs to one of them to leave the baby with Granny and seek more sporting targets, maybe live people.
• 
When the cops raided their home Thursday they found thousands of rounds of ammunition, 15 pipe bombs and the stuff to make more. 
• 
... the house was carefully sanitized of all traces of cell phones and other electronic gear that would have enabled the cops to trace whom they had been talking to during the days of careful, expert planning leading up to the massacre.
• 
The FBI confirmed that the lead gunman, Syed Farook, could have recently traveled to Pakistan in addition to Saudi Arabia, and he had been in contact with both domestic and international "extremists," which is politically correct soft talk for "terrorists."
• 
The real terror is that President Obama can't look the enemy in the face and order the things that would destroy that enemy.
      No room for politics in defeating terrorism  (INN 12/04/2015)
• 
... the timing of the revelation of the name of Syed Farook as the primary attacker says a lot.  His name was well known to all reporters within an hour of the attack...
• 
... notwithstanding the local police chief professing, in an early news conference, his lack of knowledge regarding the identity of the killer, he simultaneously revealed that a raid was under way on the killer's house – he didn't know the killer's name but knew where he lived?
• 
So the release of the name obviously was intentionally delayed.  Out of a purported need for "sensitivity" on account of the "Middle Eastern" identity of the killer...
• 
However, not all parties were kept in the dark about who was the killer.  ... CAIR went out ahead of the news and organized a press conference defending the peaceful nature of Islam that included an Imam, a Christian Minister, and the brother-in-law of the killer!
• 
Why CAIR was informed of the name of the killer ahead of the public in order to organize a self-serving news conference is, to say the very least, disturbing.
• 
As the investigation continued on that sad Wednesday, the police discovered multiple bombs placed around the Health Center designed to detonate by remote control.
• 
Later that night, the raid on the Farook home revealed all kinds of terrorist paraphernalia, as well as contacts between Farook and a known terrorist.
• 
President Obama took the lead on the messaging and used the opportunity, not to denounce terrorism, but rather to lobby for greater gun control.
• 
Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, the President chose to press a debatable and immediately irrelevant point – arguing without support that gun restrictions will make guns less available to bad people rather than simply denying their access to law-abiding good people – while ignoring the immediate crisis that threatens the homeland. 
• 
Am I the only one that thinks it is crazy for our leaders to be more concerned about the "sensitivities" of killers and their co-religionists than about the scores of innocent victims and their families, as well as a nation justifiably fearful of the next attack?
• 
The FBI's equivocation about whether this was a terrorist act (an instruction undoubtedly emanating from the commander-in-chief) should give us all real concern about whether this event is a domestic Benghazi ... and whether this approach compromises our safety.
• 
The hemming and hawing about the difference between terrorism and workplace violence among our leadership and the left-wing media frankly is maddening.
• 
If Syed Farook murdered his co-workers because they insulted him, so what?
• 
... we now seem to be evolving into a completely bizarre parallel universe where we need greater proof to label an act committed by a Muslim to be that of a terrorist than anyone else.
• 
If we can't all stand with one voice and identify this mass killing as a terrorist act, and if we choose instead to obsess over gun control and avoiding hurt feelings, God help us all.
      After San Bernardino: How political correctness could get us all killed  (Fox 12/04/2015)
• 
The FBI announced Friday that the San Bernardino massacre this week is an act of terrorism.  The California attack is now the single deadliest terrorist attack on U.S.  soil or on U.S.  citizens — since September 11, 2001. 
• 
Yet, throughout the week, the president stubbornly refused to acknowledge even the existence violent Islamic extremism.
• 
His willful blindness to the threat has left Americans more anxious about their security, and jihadists more confident about their prospects.
• 
The President may dismiss this and say we're not at war with Islam, but radical Islam is in a global war with us.  And it's a war we're not winning.
• 
First, there is no way we can defeat radical Islam, be it Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabab or any of the other witches' brew of violent religious extremism, unless we are willing to call it what it is.
• 
Second, there is no way we can assemble an effective alliance of the nations of Western civilization if we're not able to explain to them what the threat is and what we — and they — must do to defeat it.
• 
Third, our failure to articulate and respond to these increasingly frequent and lethal attacks only emboldens radical Islamist groups.
• 
These attacks are not workplace violence, or spontaneous random acts by a few disgruntled, unbalanced people.  They are well-planned, well-financed, and well-armed attacks that rely on larger networks.
• 
One of the most troubling things about the Paris and San Bernardino attacks was that we didn't see them coming.
• 
... this time there were no visible dots.  Why?  The reaction to the Snowden leaks has taken its toll. 
• 
Foreign intelligence agencies are less willing to cooperate with American intelligence because they worry we can't keep their secrets.
• 
The Snowden leaks also revealed sources and methods – they pulled back the curtain on how we spy on the bad guys.  They've learned and adapted.
• 
On top of that, we're adding another security burden with the vetting required to process the influx of Muslim refugees into Europe, and eventually the United States.
• 
Tashfeen Malik was ‘vetted' under our current system.  Yet she was a committed enough jihadist to abandon her six-month-old child while she went off to murder the same innocent Americans who gave her a baby shower.
• 
Two years ago, the president dismissed ISIS as the JV team.  Within weeks, they defeated the Iraqi army and established an Islamic State larger than the size of Great Britain.
• 
... when his only response is to make yet another speech blaming this violence on the Second Amendment, and scolding Republicans for not agreeing with his gun control plans, we get really worried. 
• 
The president's first responsibility is to do everything possible to keep Americans safe.  That starts with admitting we have a problem, coming up with an effective plan, and explaining it to us.
• 
There is a gnawing fear that this president isn't up to the job.
• 
Americans don't see this as a partisan problem, they see this as an America problem.
• 
So it's up to Congress and the rest of the government to give them what they need until we elect a new president who does.
• 
We're only a few steps away from a mass casualty, Paris-style attack in our homeland.
• 
Political correctness started out as something sort of innocuous — a modern day version of the old adage 'bite your tongue lest you offend someone.'
• 
But political correctness has gotten so absurdly extreme that it's putting our own people at risk.
• 
It's no longer about safeguarding some from some perceived verbal offense, it's about protecting the nation from a deadly attack.
• 
Political correctness isn't just silly, it's dangerous.
      Has the president lost his ability to discharge the powers and duties of office?  (JWR 12/03/2015)
• 
Anyone who listened to President Obama speak to reporters in Paris on Tuesday would reasonably conclude it is high time to start drawing up the papers to transmit to Congress for his removal.
• 
If you are one of the millions and millions of literate Americans out there who have simply tuned this president out the past three or four years, that is certainly understandable.
• 
But if you tuned in to the long, rambling, empty press conference, you would have been truly alarmed.
• 
Without the use of the teleprompter, his speech can be described only as "halting." It was impossible to count the number of times he seized up, able to deaden the silence with only a drawn-out "uh," "um" or "ahhh."
• 
This is not the same soaring speaker who inspired so many in 2008.  This is a broken-down man who has lost the only gift he ever had.  Hope and Change have been hijacked by Hopeless and Changed.
• 
Part of the looniness of it all stemmed from the giant scam he and other world leaders are trying to put over on advanced countries, punishing them for their industriousness by redistributing billions and billions of dollars from hardworking American taxpayers and handing it over to tin-pot dictators in disheveled Third World countries.
• 
Asked about the "mass shooting" where a nut job shot three people at a Colorado abortion clinic, President Obama once again became exasperated with the American people.
• 
"I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn't happen in other countries."
• 
He actually said this.  In Paris.  Not three weeks after gunmen mowed down 129 people enjoying freedom in the French capital.
• 
Either the man is incapable of remembering Islamist terrorist attacks or he's simply losing his marbles.
• 
Then, of course, there is this business of comparing radical Islamic terrorism to - global warming?  He actually insisted that global warming is an even greater threat than terrorism itself.
• 
Again, he said this.  In Paris.  Not three weeks after the worst terrorist attacks in a civilized country since 9/11.
• 
Someone alert the Senate president pro tempore.  Somebody call the speaker of the House.  And let's all dust off the 25th Amendment.
      Illogical spins on the logic of diversity  (JWR 11/30/2015)
• 
"From whence shall we expect the approach of danger?  Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow?  Never.  All the armies of Europe and Asia ... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years.  No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide." — Abraham Lincoln
• 
Everyone seems to be talking about those American "values" of tolerance, diversity and pluralism.  Obama has been on a tear about how rejecting refugees is "not American" and how those refugees are akin to the pilgrims who arrived on our shores.  He pays rote lip service to denouncing murderers in Paris.
• 
Meanwhile, back on our campuses, those very values are routinely denounced as little more than "white privilege." Needless to say, the people who want to see Columbus Day banned and call for an accounting of America's crimes against Native Americans don't think too highly of those Pilgrims.
• 
As for our values, student protestors and their enablers on and off campus offer a full-throated rejection of America's (classical) liberal principles and, at times, America itself.  By now you've heard it said that "free speech" is just code for "white privilege" or even "hate speech." Tolerance itself has become a dirty word for many.
• 
Many campuses have announced a zero-tolerance policy for "hate speech" and "racial insensitivity."
• 
Disagreement with the mob of right-thinkers is now deemed unacceptable.  There's a vaguely Maoist flavor to demands that liberal white professors and administrators confess and atone for their "white privilege."
• 
It's gotten to the point where even admiration for non-European culture is denounced as bigoted if that admiration blossoms into so-called "cultural appropriation."
• 
For generations, we've heard that "diversity makes us stronger." I'll leave it to another day to question whether this premise can withstand the test of reality.
• 
The relevant point is that many of the chief beneficiaries — or at least their self-proclaimed leaders — of what was once called "Diversity Inc." now reject the logic of diversity at the most fundamental level.  The famous "melting pot" is now derided as a kind of cultural genocide.
• 
By all means, we need more civilizational confidence.  But demonstrating it only to denounce partisan opponents isn't confidence at all.  It's a recipe for suicide.
      A Resurgence of Intolerance  (JWR 12/02/2015)
• 
Why then do so many colleges and universities not only tolerate storm trooper tactics on campus but surrender immediately to them?  That is just one of a number of questions that are hard to answer.
• 
Why do parents pay big money, often at a considerable sacrifice, to send their children to places where small groups of other students can disrupt their education and poison the whole atmosphere with obligatory conformity to political correctness?
• 
Why do donors continue to contribute millions of dollars to institutions that have become indoctrination centers, tearing down America, stifling dissent and turning group against group?
• 
There is no compelling reason for either parents or donors to keep shelling out money to colleges and universities where intolerant professors and student activists impose their ideology on academic institutions.
• 
Too often these are campuses with virtually no diversity of viewpoints, despite however much they may be obsessed with demographic diversity.
• 
One outstanding source of such information is a college guide which rates colleges and universities on their ideological intolerance, giving a red light rating to institutions where such abuses are rampant, a green light where there is freedom of speech and a yellow light for places in between.
• 
That college guide is "Choosing the Right College," which is by far the best of the college guides for other reasons as well.
• 
If parents and donors start checking out intolerant colleges and universities before deciding where to send their money, the caving in to indoctrinating professors and storm trooper students will no longer be the path of least resistance for academic administrators.
      Can We Learn From Europe?  (JWR 12/02/2015)
• 
"France has Europe's largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah."
• 
It appears that much of France's Muslim population has no intention of joining the French culture.  Many French Muslims are hellbent on importing the failed components of their motherland, such as Shariah, the subjugation of women, suppression of free speech and honor killings.
• 
"Since the Parliament decided in 1975 that Sweden should be multicultural and not Swedish, crime has exploded."
• 
"The situation is slipping from our grasp.  If we're in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patrol car simply cannot follow because we'll get pelted by rocks and even face riots.  These are no-go zones.  We simply can't go there.
• 
There are zones where the government has lost control in Germany, England and most other European countries, too. 
• 
"For us today, at stake are Europe, the lifestyle of European citizens, European values, the survival or disappearance of European nations and, more precisely formulated, their transformation beyond recognition."
• 
"Today the question is not merely in what kind of a Europe we would like to live but whether everything we understand as Europe will exist at all."
• 
Europe provides a valuable lesson for Americans.  Most Americans, including me, welcome people to our country who come here, as immigrants have in the past, to become Americans.
• 
We don't welcome people who wish to import the failed culture from which they fled.
• 
We could extend the welcome mat even further if we abandoned the welfare state.
• 
We have far too many Americans living off the earnings of others.  We don't need to encourage others to do the same.
      Blame for Planned Parenthood killings rests with shooter alone  (JWR 12/02/2015)
• 
Pretty much the only things we know for sure are that three innocent people were killed and that Dear is, by most people's standards, not right in the head.
• 
It is unlikely but not impossible that he was partly inspired by anti-abortion or anti-Obama rhetoric or by the undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress.
• 
But let's assume Dear was inspired by those videos.  My sincere question is, "So what?"
• 
... many abortion-rights activists don't want abortion rights to be up for debate, hence the effort to cast any opponents of unlimited abortion as not just wrong, but as anti-woman, anti-health and in some sense in league with someone like Dear: an alleged domestic terrorist.
• 
But that's not only ridiculous on the merits, it's not how the First Amendment works.
• 
Not all mass killers fit the technical definitions of mental illness.  But I would say that murder is by definition unreasonable; it follows that unreasonable people will find unreasonable excuses to kill.
• 
If Dear shot those people because he heard talk about Planned Parenthood's traffic in "baby parts," that doesn't mean criticism of the organization's traffic in baby parts is beyond the pale.
• 
After all, not even Planned Parenthood denies that the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress contained conversations about baby parts, though Planned Parenthood would obviously prefer not to use the word "baby."
• 
In criminal, civil and contract law, we have a reasonable person standard — how would a reasonable person react to a set of circumstances?
• 
If a car catches fire when it is driven one mile over the speed limit, a reasonable person would probably think the manufacturer was culpable.
• 
If a car is deliberately driven into a crowd, the driver, not the carmaker is to blame.
      Gen.  Bob Scales: Memo to President Obama: War is not caused by warmer air  (Fox 12/02/2015)
• 
The White House is always quick to line up legions of climate scientists all over the world to prove that climate change is real.  The arguments are over.  The science is fixed, finished and incontestable.  Scientists who disagree that the world is warming are either fools or Republicans.
• 
At the Climate Change Summit in Paris President Obama carried the war against climate change forward by claiming that rising global temperatures cause wars.
• 
While scientists agree on the dangers of global warming I have yet to find any respected social scientist that makes a causal connection between air temperature and war.
• 
First, they contend that a warming planet causes drought, which leads to mass migration away from areas of creeping desertification.
• 
To be sure rising temperatures combined with overgrazing in places like central Africa have caused displacement of peoples.  But the misery of these peoples leads to, well, misery, not war.  Tribes striving to exist have little energy left over to declare war against a neighbor.
• 
Central Africa is in the grip of often horrific conflicts started by Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Shabaab in Somalia.  But these terrorists are motivated by "the usual suspects" like religious hatred, centuries long tribal animosities, and political greed.
• 
One source for connecting war to temperature comes from the political closeness between environmentalists and the anti-war movement.  Their logic goes like this: "global warming is bad.  Wars are bad.  Therefore they must be connected."
• 
Remember, prior to the 1991 Gulf War, environmental wackos warned of a decade of global cooling that would come from burning Kuwaiti oil fields.
• 
Of course, this didn't happen.  More recently environmental radicals argued against bombing ISIS oil trucks fearing the environmental consequences.
• 
In fact, environmental activism aside, the three thousand-year historical record of human conflict argues conclusively against any causal relationship between war and temperature.
• 
Let me be more specific.  Never in the written history of warfare, from Megiddo in 1,500 B.C.  to the Syrian Civil war today, is there any evidence that wars are caused by warmer air.
• 
My real concern is that the administration might translate this silliness into a deflection of resources away from fighting a war against ISIS to a contrived war against global warming.
• 
That would cause real harm to our soldiers who are trying to win a real war.
• 
... General Joe Dunford, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, testified before Congress.  In contrast to his boss, he confirmed that ISIS, not climate change, is our greatest enemy and that ISIS is in fact not on the run.
• 
Perhaps now that a realist (and a proven combat Marine) is providing advice to the president we might amplify our campaign plan to kill the ISIS leadership rather than lower the global temperature.
      Huckabee: America needs a commander in chief, not a weather-obsessed meteorologist  (Fox 12/01/2015)
• 
President Obama's national security priorities are dangerous.  Two weeks after terrorist attacks rocked Paris, he is visiting France, not to focus on fighting global terrorism, but to tackle the global warming "security imperative."
• 
The federal government cannot control the weather.  Period.
• 
We can control borders, military assets, critical airspace, and American intelligence.
• 
We can also kill Islamic terrorists and radical ISIS murderers.
• 
America needs a president focused on what we can control, not fixated on weather patterns which we cannot.
• 
Even if we could control the weather, 95 percent of the world lives outside America, and we cannot control the behavior of seven billion people across the globe.
• 
So how does Obama expect to persuade massive polluters like China, Russia and Pakistan to embrace expensive, job-killing global warming regulations? 
• 
Obama's obsession with global, utopian collaboration and building a personal climate change legacy has made him allergic to common sense.
• 
Meanwhile, the real "security imperative" keeps metastasizing.
• 
Islamic radicals have established a treasury department with an elaborate system of taxes, public services and real estate rental agreements.  Between oil production, smuggling, antiquity dealing and kidnapping, ISIS is building a comprehensive infrastructure. 
• 
What will it take for Obama to wake-up to this menace?  Maybe he would take ISIS seriously if he discovered they didn't recycle.
• 
Homegrown terrorists and radicalized immigrants continue to pop-up across Europe.
• 
Illegal immigrants continue to cross our porous borders and thousands of immigrants overstay their visas each year.
• 
Now more than ever, America needs a commander-in-chief focused on the global war on terrorism, instead we have a community organizer focused on global warming.
• 
Obama's blindness is beyond baffling, it's dangerous.  It shouldn't take another Paris attack for this White House to open its eyes: radical Islamic terrorism is a much greater threat than a sunburn.
      Planned Parenthood fallout: Why it's unfair to blame abortion opponents  (Fox 12/01/2015)
• 
I say this to pundits and politicians after each tragedy: Don't demonize the other side because some crazy guy goes on a shooting spree.  But it's a temptation that many are unable to resist.
• 
Words matter, of course, and rhetoric can be incendiary.  But it's still unfair to draw a link between media and political debate and some violent sociopath who doesn't value human life.
• 
Inevitably, we're left with a wave of finger-pointing over which party is "politicizing" the situation, which unfortunately diverts attention from the victims.
• 
"We should be supporting Planned Parenthood, not attacking it...And it is way past time to protect women's health and respect women's rights, not use them as political footballs."
• 
... "we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.  Period.  Enough is enough."
• 
... "it is offensive and outrageous that some politicians are now claiming this tragedy has nothing to do with the toxic environment they helped create.  Even when the gunman was still inside of our health center, politicians who have long opposed safe and legal abortion were on television pushing their campaign to defund Planned Parenthood."
• 
... those opposed to abortion "have ignited a firestorm of hate" and "knew there could be these types of consequences." S
• 
Sorry, but linking the actions of a mentally disturbed gunman to the "toxic environment" that Republicans "helped create" is the old blood-on-the-hands argument.
• 
So is "firestorm of hate" language.  Opponents of abortion and critics of Planned Parenthood are in no way responsible for this terrible crime.
• 
... while the attack was "obviously a tragedy," "anyone who tries to link this terrible tragedy to anyone that oppose abortion or opposes the sale of body parts" is engaging in "typical left-wing tactics."
• 
... called the attack "domestic terrorism" that is "absolutely abominable, especially to those of us in the pro-life movement because there's nothing about any of us that would condone or any way look the other way at something like this."
• 
... denounced "some vicious rhetoric on the left blaming those who are pro-life...The media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life movement when at this point there's very little evidence to indicate that."
• 
... passions run high in these life and death cases.  But partisan blame-shifting doesn't help the situation and simply becomes one more political brawl in the wake of senseless violence.
      President tells students: This is not a day care.  This is a university!  (Fox 11/30/2015)
• 
This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt "victimized" by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13.
• 
It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love!
• 
In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.
• 
Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic!
• 
I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen.  That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience! 
• 
The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins — not coddle you in your selfishness.  The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization!
• 
If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.
• 
If you're more interested in playing the "hater" card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don't want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn't one of them.
• 
Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a "safe place" but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn't about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that's wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that's wrong with them.  This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up!
• 
This is not a day care.  This is a university! 
      University president rebukes 'self-absorbed, narcissistic' students  (Fox 11/30/2015)
• 
A chapel sermon on love left a student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University (OKWU), feeling "offended" and "victimized."
• 
"This is not a day care.  This is a university."
• 
"Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic."
• 
"Any time their feelings are hurt, they are victims!  Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them ‘feel bad' about themselves, is a ‘hater,' a ‘bigot,' an ‘oppressor,' and a ‘victimizer.'"
• 
It's refreshing to see a grown man with advanced degrees willing to stand up to a generation of perpetually-offended nincompoops and bullies.
• 
The student felt offended because the "homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love."
• 
"In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable."
• 
Dr.  Piper offered some wise advice for the young man.
• 
"If you want the chaplain to tell you you're a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you're looking for."
• 
"If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place."
• 
For weeks we've watched academically-castrated university presidents capitulate to the outrageous demands of students.
• 
"The bottom line is that at the end of the day I would argue that college is not about safe spaces or being a safe place."
• 
He said the nation's universities should be ashamed for educating a culture of "selfish individuals."
• 
"The university needs to recognize that our obligation is to challenge bad thinking and bad ideas and not coddle individuals in their self-absorption and narcissism."
• 
The modern-day collegian is a fragile snowflake – who needs psychological help for such atrocities as reading the works of a white author or attending Taco Night at the campus dining hall.
• 
"Do we want ideological fascism or do we want intellectual freedom and academic freedom."
• 
"Because really what we have right now is an argument for ideological fascism.  You must submit.  You must agree.  You must be one of us.  And if you don't, we will silence you.  We will crush you."
• 
The nation needs more academic leaders like Dr.  Piper – a grownup willing to say what needs to be said to coddled collegians.
• 
It's time to put on your big-boy pants, kids.
      Ex-Navy SEALS: Military service taught us how fortunate we are to be Americans  (Fox 11/26/2015)
• 
... one lesson we learned outshines all others and remains most important: How incredibly fortunate are we to be Americans.
• 
Once a service member has seen the horrors of war, they are thankful that our homeland exists, for the most part, in peace.
• 
When U.S.  military personnel see the radical economic inequality that exists in much of the rest of the world, they become grateful for the standard of living we enjoy in America and the unbounded opportunities that exist here for anyone willing to dream and work hard to fulfill that dream.
• 
Being in the military, deploying around the world, gives American service members insight into how a large part of the rest of the world lives: hungry, abused, uneducated, submissive, fearful, and hopeless.
• 
Of course, America is not perfect.  No nation is.  We must stay humble as a country and always strive to improve.  That is part of what makes America great.
• 
But know this: if you have seen war and its horrors, if you have seen the savagery of evil people against innocents, if you have seen what real class warfare looks like, or what truly unchecked domination from a despotic regime does to its people, then you cannot be anything but immensely thankful and appreciative for the right and privilege to be an American.
      The psychological abuse of Massachusetts public school students  (Fox 11/25/2015)
• 
I never doubted that political correctness could be used to stifle free expression, but I now have a chilling example of how it can be used to erode the rights of parents and the privacy of our homes.
• 
Last week, the Triton Public Schools ... made hundreds of high-school and middle-school students fill out a survey from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  It asked, among other things:
• 
Whether their parents are more likely to encourage them to make money than to do what makes them happy;
• 
Whether their parents think it's important to be around people of different races;
• 
Whether their parents have friends of different races;
• 
How many times their parents have done things to make them less trusting of people of other races.
• 
Another question asked the children to identify which groups their parents "talk about the mistreatment of": African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, Whites or Other.
• 
This dramatic invasion of students' privacy was administrated by Triton Superintendent of Schools Christopher Farmer, who has since apologized under courageous and unwavering pressure from a heroic mom whose kids took the survey.
• 
"I don't take it sitting down when my family is harmed," the woman told me.  (She wishes to remain anonymous, saying she has received harassing calls and emails and fears reprisals against her and her children.)
• 
"I've worked too hard to make sure they understand we stand up for one another."
• 
Well, thank God for her and any mother or father in America like her.
• 
Psychologically, the survey had the potential to do more than collect private information about the thoughts and feelings of children and their parents.
• 
It primed children to think it's appropriate for the state to replace communication that should be reserved for their families.
• 
It not only quizzed them about their feelings about capitalism and race, but it essentially instructed them to "tell on" parents by rating them as mute (and, therefore, presumably racist) on racial issues.
• 
It had the potential to drive a lasting wedge between the children and their parents. 
• 
To my mind, Superintendent Farmer orchestrated the serious psychological abuse of hundreds of students.  But rather than resign or be fired, he will probably keep his job.
• 
This is only further evidence, to my mind, that he and the people of the communities he serves miss or condone the grave act he committed — an act that clearly defines him as utterly unable to safeguard the well-being of public school students and their families.
      Free Speech  (JWR 11/25/2015)
• 
Contrary to the widespread belief of tyrants among college students, professors and administrators, the true test of one's commitment to free speech does not come when one permits people to be free to express those ideas that he finds acceptable.
• 
The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he permits others to say those things that he finds deeply offensive.  In a word, free speech is absolute, or nearly so.
• 
Like the true test of one's commitment to free speech, the true test of one's commitment to freedom of association does not come when he permits people to associate in ways he deems acceptable.
• 
The true test of one's commitment to freedom of association comes when he permits people to be free to associate — or not to associate — in ways he deems offensive.
• 
Permitting discriminatory association practices in publicly owned facilities — such as libraries, parks and beaches — should not be permitted.  That is because they are taxpayer-financed and everyone should have a right to equal access.
• 
But denying freedom of association in private clubs, private businesses and private schools violates people's right to freely associate.
• 
Christian Americans have been prosecuted for their refusal to cater same-sex weddings.
• 
Those who support such attacks might ask themselves whether they would also seek prosecution of an owner of a Jewish delicatessen who refused to provide services for a neo-Nazi affair.
• 
Should a black catering company be forced to cater a Ku Klux Klan affair?  Should the NAACP be forced to open its membership to racist skinheads?
• 
Liberty requires bravery.  To truly support free speech, one has to accept that some people will say and publish things he finds deeply offensive.
• 
Similarly, to be for freedom of association, one has to accept that some people will associate in ways that he finds deeply offensive, such as associating or not associating on the basis of race, sex or religion.
• 
I am all too afraid that most of my fellow Americans are hostile to the principle of liberty in general.
• 
Most people want liberty for themselves.  I want more than that.  I want liberty for me and liberty for my fellow man.
      Political Translations  (JWR 11/25/2015)
• 
... when President Barack Obama says that defeating ISIS is going to take a long time, how is that different from saying that he is going to do very little, very slowly?
• 
There have been thousands of these sorties, which sounds very impressive.
• 
But what is less impressive — and more indicative — is that, in most of those sorties, the planes have not fired a single shot or dropped a single bomb.
• 
Why?  Because the rules of engagement are so restrictive that in most circumstances there is little that the pilot is allowed to do, unless circumstances are just right, which they seldom are in any war.
• 
Politics produces lots of words that can mean very different things, if you stop and think about them.
• 
But politicians depend on the fact that many people don't bother to stop and think about them.
• 
Another fashionable phrase that evades any need for evidence is "disparate impact" — a legal phrase accepted in the Supreme Court of the United States, despite being downright silly when you stop and think about it.
• 
Whenever there is some standard for being hired, promoted or admitted to a college, some groups may meet that standard more so than others.  One way of expressing that is to say that more of the people from group X meet the standard than do people from group Y.
• 
But politically correct people express the same thing by saying that the standard has a "disparate impact" on group Y.  Once it is expressed this way, it is the standard that is suspect — and whoever set that standard has to prove a negative, namely that he is not guilty of discrimination against group Y.
• 
Often nobody can prove anything, so the accused loses — or else settles out of court.
• 
Stupid?  No.  It takes very clever people to make something like that sound plausible.
• 
But it also requires people who don't bother to stop and think, who enable them to get away with it.
      Islamist-Zombies have snatched the brains of Western leaders  (INN 11/24/2015)
• 
Muslim Islamist-Zombies are murdering non-Muslims and Muslims as if they are in a zombie trance.
• 
And, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry act as though Muslims murdering the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, Jews, and pretty much everybody else really isn't a big deal, and actually has a "rationale."
• 
It seems the Islamist-Zombies are not just "at the gates," but that a brain-snatched President Obama is purposefully holding the gates open so they can flood in.
• 
We are living through an actual horror movie from hell from which there is no waking up, and from which we cannot escape.
• 
First, why call these Islamist-murderers "terrorists." Even with terrorists in movies there is some negotiation.  These monsters are not out for negotiation, they are out to rampage, to maraud, and to bath themselves in others' blood.
• 
For seven years, Obama has so pandered to these Muslims and validated their ideals that he has whetted their appetite for more blood.
• 
Obama's actions have insured that would-be Islamist-Zombies are falling over themselves to kill more people.
• 
For one thing, Obama and Kerry and all the other brain-snatched Obama-Regime officials in a trance-like comatose tone exhort us to believe this has nothing to do with Islam or the Muslim religion.
• 
They don't stop trying to get us to believe that somehow, by our publically admitting that these Islamist-Zombies are Muslims we are "insulting all Muslims."
• 
Obama is telling normal law-abiding people who are afraid of them that normal people are the actual bad guys and racists.
• 
To make matters worse, Obama drones on and on and tries to brain-snatch the sane world to believe that "Islam is a religion of peace."
• 
Did Mohammad preach "turn the other cheek"?  or did Islam scorn forcibly converting people like Judaism does?
• 
No, in fact Mohammad in his own day did exactly what the Islamic State is doing now, he went on Holy Wars of rampage to take over land and convert people to his religion. 
• 
Islamic State and Islamist Zombies who are shedding torrents of blood are actually a modern-day incarnation of exactly what Mohammad did to the world, and exactly what the Muslim religion proscribes.  Islamic State is following in the very footsteps of Mohammad.  How can they not be "Muslims" if they are doing precisely what the historical Mohammad did to others?  Yet, Obama and Kerry tell us the Islamist-Zombies and Islamic State have nothing to do with the Mohammad's Muslim religion.  And they have the keys to the asylum.
• 
We have to stop calling Obama "incompetent" and "naive"!  Obama is neither incompetent nor naive; he's diabolical.
• 
Obama knows that and is trying to intellectually twist right into wrong and wrong into right.
• 
He is knowingly attacking the common sense necessity of stopping the flood of Muslim-Zombified mass-murderers into this country, and morphing it into a racist xenophobia.
• 
We have to start describing things as they are.  The Islamists are practicing true Islam as Mohammad preached and practiced it.
• 
The modern-day version of Islam has turned into a zombie producing death cult religion.
• 
And, President Obama is a highly intelligent person who is protecting the Islamist zombies at all costs and must be exposed and criticized non-stop.
• 
Otherwise, there will come a point where the brain-snatched politicians of this country are the majority of this country.  And then, there will be nowhere to hide.
      College campus protests: This is the generation that will destroy America  (Fox 11/24/2015)
• 
We have apparently raised a generation of snowflakes so fragile that their psyches can't handle offensive words or photographs or images.
• 
It seems the only free speech this perpetually offended generation supports is speech they agree with.
• 
And it appears our nation's public universities have become breeding grounds for such anti-American and un-Constitutional beliefs.
• 
Administrators, faculty and student government leaders who do not agree with the rampaging mob of anti-free speech protesters are threatened – their voices silenced.
• 
The University of Michigan added a three-year diversity requirement to its undergraduate curriculum in the school of business.  As Campus Reform reported, they will teach students "how race, gender and sexual orientation connect to larger systems of power, privilege and oppression."
• 
At Dartmouth, Black Lives Matter protesters invaded the library — verbally assaulting white students.
• 
"F** you, you filthy white f***s!"
• 
That's what they screamed at the kids trying to study for exams. 
• 
Universities are now judging students on the color of their skin, instead of the content of their character.
• 
We are watching the coming of age for a new generation — a generation of intolerance — a generation that will one day shutdown free speech, a generation that will purge dissenting viewpoints, a generation that will shatter our churches and burn our books.
• 
We are watching the generation that will destroy America.
      The America-Basher in Chief Rolls On  (JWR 11/24/2015)
• 
How could America have twice elected a president who not only can't stand America but also won't perform his constitutional duty of defending it?
• 
... there is something strange about a commander in chief who declines to listen to his advisers on terrorism, won't read their daily briefings and is uninterested in their threat assessments.
• 
It's sad that so many refused to take Obama seriously when he promised to fundamentally transform America.  It's inexcusable that the media and so many naive voters believed that his radical past and his ongoing affiliation with the Rev.  Jeremiah Wright's racist church were irrelevant.
• 
It's disgraceful that a man who pledged to unite America on race, gender and income groups has intentionally polarized us to a point not seen since the 1960s.  It's contemptible that he has used his office to alienate citizens from law enforcement officials throughout the nation.
• 
It's abominable that he is systematically dismantling our defense capabilities and approaching foreign policy as if his actions and inactions had no more consequences than a chalkboard exercise by a clique of airheaded leftist professors in their faculty lounge.
• 
Islamist terrorists are waging a global war against America and our allies, and the president won't even identify our enemy. 
• 
He continues to trash America on foreign soil at every opportunity.
• 
Yet his shameless defenders say he was just building bridges and alliances.  Talk about a bridge to nowhere.
• 
At a town hall meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Friday, Obama denigrated the United States for its hypocrisy, its "growing inequality" and the inadequacies of our political system.
• 
He particularly lamented our "growing inequality" and even blames it for our divisive politics and cynicism — two conditions to which he has been the greatest contributor for years.
• 
... Obama has no credibility in complaining about politicians who fail to listen to the American people — whether or not because of money.  No one listens less to the people than he does.  No one is more self-assured with less justification than he is.
• 
The American people are aghast at his arrogant refusal to defend America and listen to his advisers, his insistence on bringing terrorist-imbedded refugees and immigrants into this nation, his bizarre assertion that global warming is a greater threat to this nation than Islamic terrorism, his endless lies on Obamacare, his constant slandering of this country, and on and on.
• 
It will be a sheer joy when we have a new president, God willing, who genuinely loves this nation and sees it as a force for good throughout the world and begins to return it to that path.
• 
No, this nation is not over, but it needs to turn back to its founding principles and believe in itself again.
      Huckabee: Obama's idealistic and outright dangerous Syrian refugee relocation plan  (Fox 11/23/2015)
• 
Armed with grenades and guns, Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic radicals struck again, taking 170 people hostage at the Raddison hotel in Mali.
• 
These barbaric terrorists spared the lives of hostages who proved their Islamic bona fides by reciting the Koran, while 27 innocent civilians were killed.
• 
After this attack in West Africa, Obama's new domestic terrorism plan probably requires Americans to memorize Koran verses.
• 
Why does the Obama administration express more outrage at conservatives than at radical Islamic terrorists?
• 
President Obama seems more interested in protecting the reputation of Islam than protecting the American people. 
• 
... this administration is so naive, they refuse to speak the truth about Islamic terrorism.  Benghazi, Boston, Ft.  Hood, Paris, 9/11, Kenya, Tanzania, the USS Cole, the list of radical Islamic carnage keeps growing. 
• 
The FBI director has explicitly stated that we cannot conduct background checks on these people, yet nothing will stop Obama's obsession with pandering to the international community, even if it poses a direct threat to Americans.
• 
Europe's experiment with open borders collided with radical Islam, and the results are deadly.  How has Obama not learned these lessons?
• 
Republicans in Congress have stepped-up their efforts, but they lack the strength to hold this out-of-control president accountable.
• 
In the face of this chaos, America needs real strength, moral clarity and commonsense.
• 
Obama's politically-correct, press release foreign policy is a complete disaster, and it shouldn't take another Paris or Mali for the cartoonish clowns in the administration to wake-up.
      Why Trump?  Because he’s American  (INN 11/23/2015)
• 
"I'd bomb the hell out of them." Trump's response to Islamic terrorists everywhere.  (Hell of a world when al-Qaeda is now "moderate Islam.")
• 
Love him or hate him, Trump is an American – walks, talks, thinks like an American.  The brashness, the swagger, the Reagan tall-in-the saddle – Trump.
• 
"I want to make America great again."
• 
Music to the ears of millions who miss those days when it was okay to be straight-talking, right-thinking a bit cocky and altogether heroic.
• 
People wonder why he's become so popular (even if he is not first choice to you or me).
• 
"I will never apologize for America."
• 
That's why.
• 
He'd never bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia.  Not Trump.  Too outspoken?  Probably.  Outrageously opinionated?  Yes.  But he's no sneak.
• 
Reuters Survey (thanks Breitbart) says a majority of Americans "feel like strangers in their own country." No surprise.
• 
Someone in this country makes a video somewhat uncomplimentary to their prophet and is imprisoned.
• 
"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." Our leader says this.  Not Trump.
• 
Not for Trump the overthrow of Judeo/Christian principles in favor of Islamic doctrines.
• 
President John F.  Kennedy was an American, like this: "It may be different elsewhere.  But Democrat society, in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.  In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves the nation."
• 
We have forgotten that once we were confident and proud of ourselves.  We were on the side of G-d and righteousness when we sacrificed ourselves to rid the world of Nazi and Soviet tyrannies and as we buried our dead in distant lands nobody told us that we ought to be ashamed of our past.
• 
No apology tour for Trump.
• 
Months ago Islamic terrorists lost a multi-million-dollar court battle in Manhattan Federal Court brought by 11 American families citing damages for murder inflicted by the PA and the PLO.
• 
The Obama administration, arguing mercy for the terrorists, intervened to bring the cost down to a pittance.  The killers got off nearly scot-free.
• 
Shared values – with Islamic terrorists?  That, as the man says, "is who we are."
• 
JFK: "America will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
• 
Under today's leadership, which tastes and smells entirely too foreign, Americans feel lost, abandoned, strangers in a strange land.  Jews, Christians, cops, Israel, Republicans, getting pushed around, shouted down and English fast becoming a second language.
• 
Lopsided priorities now render foreigners first; citizens second.
• 
Next president, Trump or anybody else, it's time we get it right, time we get an American.
• 
Is that asking too much?
      Down with Wilson, up with Che: Wimpy colleges surrender to lunatic fringe  (Fox 11/20/2015)
• 
In a month when Western Civilization has come under renewed attack from jihadists, that other bastion of opposition to the economic and political freedom the West embodies has gone haywire: college campuses.
• 
While it's tempting to blame precious students who are demanding safe zones and freedom from unwelcome ideas, the real culprits are wimpy college administrators.
• 
The latest chapter of political-correctness lunacy comes from Princeton's campus, where a group of students staged an illegal sit-in at the offices of university president Eisgruber.
• 
The students were outraged that the man who ran Princeton before becoming our 28th president in 1913, Woodrow Wilson, was unable to see a century into the future during his life and comply with our contemporary racial sensibilities.
• 
Despite a tenure that made him commander-in-chief during World War I and which fundamentally changed America's role in the world, aggrieved students now demand safety from buildings and murals bearing Wilson's name. 
• 
Princeton's Black Justice League also wants a space on campus for "cultural affinity" groups and and a diversity and "cultural competency" training program.
• 
(Incidentally, China had a nationwide version of this beginning in 1966.)
• 
In the past month, kids at Yale made headlines for demanding administrators make them safe from potentially insensitive Halloween costumes and an email that dared suggest independent thought.
• 
At the University of Missouri, students protested a lack of handholding after alleged racial incidents.
• 
In each of these cases, administrators indulged out-of-line students who should have been rebuked.
• 
Administrators aren't just kowtowing to fringe students in assaulting free speech and political rights, they're also attacking economic freedom.
• 
At all of these colleges, PC thugs represent just a tiny minority; the vast majority of American students want to use college as a foundation for success and a good life, not a career of indulging grievances.
• 
The real culprits are weak administrators who, rather than pander to the bottom 5% of future alumni, ought to stand up for the political and economic freedom that made America great — and which are crucial to critical reasoning and the attainment of knowledge.
• 
No one expects students not to do stupid things on occasion, like hanging out at a collective or thinking they're oppressed by a building named by someone who wasn't culturally sensitive by standards a century after his death.
• 
But it's time for college administrators to start reflecting the values and judgment of parents and taxpayers who foot the bill for college — and for that matter the silent majority of students who want to learn to succeed in the great nation that pioneered political and economic freedom.
      Syrian refugees: In desperation, Obama offers statistics and lies  (Fox 11/20/2015)
• 
Mark Twain once said there are lies, damned lies and statistics.  We saw all of these from the Obama administration this week as it desperately tried to defend its foolhardy plan to bring Syrian refugees into the United States without adequately vetting them for ISIS terrorists.
• 
The Obama administration told reporters this week that roughly half of all Syrian refugees admitted to date have been children.  It claims around 25% are adults over 60 and only 2% have been single males of "combat age."
• 
So where did the statistics come from?  A U.S.  government report?  Congressional testimony?  No, these numbers were given to the press in a private briefing by three unnamed senior officials.  This means there's no way to check the accuracy of this data or to hold these officials accountable for their claims.
• 
... example, what percentage of Syrian refugees applying for admittance to the U.S.  were men of military age?  And if it is true that only 2% of military-age men were admitted over the last year, are there others still being processed?  How many were arrested or deported for non-terrorism charges?
• 
We also should assume that the set of refugees admitted over the last year is different from the recent refugee surge, about 72% of which have been men of military age.
• 
How will the composition of this new set of refugees change the future number of Syrian military-age men admitted as refugees?
• 
The administration's claims about the refugees screening process are also hard to believe.
• 
House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul has called the president's plan to bring in Syrian refugees a "federally sanctioned welcome party" to potential terrorists because the screening process is so inadequate.
• 
FBI Director James Comey has said the federal government does not have the ability to conduct thorough background checks on Syrian refugees.
• 
The reasons for this are that most Syrian refugees have no documentation, the U.S.  has no information on them and there's no way to consult their records in Syria. 
• 
We also should assume ISIS is coaching potential terrorists on how to pass the interview screening process.
• 
?I believe the U.S.  should be compassionate and welcoming to refugees fleeing persecution.
• 
I support admitting Syrian refugees who are women, children, disabled or elderly.
• 
We also should be admitting Syrian Christians and Yazidis who have been systematically targeted with brutal persecution and murder by ISIS.
• 
The president's claim that giving Syrian Christian refugees priority amounts to bigotry is ridiculous.
• 
I would like to see an effective vetting process to ensure Syrian military-age men admitted to the U.S.  as refugees are not potential terrorists, but I have no confidence the Obama administration will do this.
• 
Mr.  Obama and his foreign policy team are desperate to admit Syrian refugees and have resorted on too many occasions to defending controversial foreign policy initiatives with claims that are at best questionable and in many cases outright false.
• 
"Refugees are pouring into our great country from Syria.  We don't even know who they are.  They could be ISIS.  They could be anybody.  What's our president doing?  Is he insane?"
• 
Mr.  Trump, the majority of American governors, the House and most Americans recognize the danger from the President's determination to bring Syrian refugees to America without vetting them for ISIS terrorists.
• 
Americans wants to be safe and are tired of the Obama's administration's damn lies on national security.
      Obama is importing Muslims, deporting Christians  (Fox 11/18/2015)
• 
The nation was forced to endure yet more pious prattling from President Obama this week who spent time berating Americans who are worried about Islamic jihadists hell-bent on blowing us all to kingdom come.
• 
"When individuals say that we should have a religious test and that only Christians – proven Christians should be admitted – that's offensive and contrary to American values, the president said – just one day after he called such behavior un-American.
• 
What's offense and contrary to American values is refusing to properly investigate those wanting to come to our nation – especially those coming from regions that are hotbeds of Islamic extremism.
• 
But the president says such prudence only further enflames the Islamic jihadists.
• 
"ISIL seeks to exploit the idea that there is a war between Islam and the West."
• 
"When you starting seeing individuals in positions of responsibility suggesting that Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are – in a war torn land – that feeds the ISIL narrative."
• 
Those of us who fear that Islamic radicals might be lurking among the refugees have been called every name in the book: bigots, Islamophobes and un-American.
• 
But the cold hard reality is that Protestants, Catholics and Jews aren't the ones beheading people.
• 
The Lutherans and Nazarenes aren't gunning down young folks in concert venues.
• 
Nevertheless, the president remains steadfast.  The Muslims will come.
• 
"We don't have religious tests to our compassion," he told journalists from high atop his soapbox
• 
But that's not entirely accurate.
• 
Last year, the Obama administration led a fierce legal battle to have a German Christian family thrown out of the United States.
• 
And just a few months ago a federal immigration judge ordered a dozen Iraqi Christians deported from a facility in San Diego.
• 
So the next time President Obama wants to lecture the nation about religion maybe he could explain why his administration is importing Muslims and deporting Christians.
• 
See related Leaving Mosul (Gary Varvel, 08/05/2014) cartoon from World picture album
      Contrary to Obama claim, US has history of admitting refugees based on faith  (Fox 11/18/2015)
• 
Russian and Ethiopian Jews, Armenians Christians and Catholics from Vietnam have all been moved to the front of the line in previous eras based on their faith.
• 
"Clearly, there have been policies that said we will consider certain people from certain religions."
• 
"When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who's fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution — that's shameful," Obama said.
• 
"That's not American.  That's not who we are.  We don't have religious tests to our compassion."
• 
But under the 1990 law known as the Lautenberg Amendment, the federal government initially granted a presumption of refugee eligibility for Jews and Christians fleeing the former Soviet Union and Southeast Asia.
• 
Nowadays, the amendment, extended last year by Obama, prioritizes the resettlement of Jews, Christians, Baha'is, and other religious minorities who flee Iran.
• 
"Due to the unique needs of vulnerable religious minority communities, the State Department has prioritized the resettlement of Syrian Christian refugees and other religious minorities fleeing the conflict.
• 
"I don't know that I would say put Christians at the front of the line in every case, but I would say, as a policy, to put religious minorities first."
• 
"In Iraq and Syria, Christians and Yazidis are the minority, and their situation is dire."
• 
The whole argument may be moot anyway, given that determining anyone's true identity – much less their religion – may not always be possible in the chaotic and war-torn region where phony documents are everywhere and desperate people and evil terrorists will both say whatever they must to achieve their goal.
• 
"It would not be unprecedented to choose refugees in part on the basis of their religion."
      Radical Islam is our enemy: It's time for us to leave political correctness at the door  (Fox 11/17/2015)
• 
The terror attacks in Paris last Friday were sickening.  During this difficult moment, our nation's oldest ally needs our support now more than ever, and we need to ensure that we are ready to help them in any way.
• 
As we look to assist France, we must also look to the perpetrators of this cowardly attack, ISIS, and ensure that they can never bring their deadly ways to our shores and harm Americans.
• 
Despite the serious attacks that ISIS has already committed, the actions and rhetoric from President Obama and Hillary Clinton show that they are unwilling to take the difficult but necessary steps needed to keep us safe.
• 
At the Democratic presidential debate in Iowa on Saturday, Secretary Clinton refused to even acknowledge who we are fighting in this battle.
• 
Unlike every Republican, and most rational thinking Americans who understand that we are fighting radical Islam, for whatever reason, Secretary Clinton can't bring herself to mention this.  What block of voters is she trying to placate?
• 
Let's not kid ourselves; it's time to check our political correctness at the door and recognize that radical Islam is our enemy, and our government needs to do the same.
• 
We are not at war with Islam or Muslims, but our message for the radicals, who have killed innocent civilians and want to cause the collapse of our country, about our intention to eliminate them and their terrorist networks has to be unwaveringly clear.
• 
If Hillary Clinton won't do this, it is just more proof that she has the wrong experience and wrong policies to serve as commander-in-chief.
• 
... one step we can take right now to make our country safer — and stop making it easier for ISIS to attack innocent Americans — would be to strip the citizenship of any American who joins the terrorist group.
• 
Any U.S.  citizen who chooses to join this murderous group has, without a doubt, left their citizenship at the door.
• 
They should not be able to hide behind the United States' laws and protections while being a part of ISIS, and we can prevent this by stripping them of their citizenship.
• 
We simply can't trust Secretary Clinton or President Obama when they talk about ISIS.  This is the same candidate that refuses to call them "radical Islamic terrorists," and the same president that said ISIS was "on the run" and "contained."
• 
Unfortunately, the danger ISIS poses to our country is not going anywhere and we now have to make a choice: confront them or be confronted by them.
      Paris attacks: Black Lives Matter drops F-bomb on City of Light  (Fox 11/17/2015)
• 
What happens if your army of hate-filled crazies gets upstaged by another army of hate-filled crazies?  Apparently you go nuts — ideally in pubic.  At least that's what the racialists of Black Lives Matter movement did when ISIS terrorists in Paris went on a killing spree last Friday.
• 
Rather than sympathize with those were actually oppressed in Paris by rampaging jihadists, Black Lives Matter aficionados took to Twitter with the hashtag, "#F***Paris."
• 
Such was the degree of upset that an attack on a NATO ally might temporarily distract the stream of liberal politicians pandering to the cop-hating Black Lives Matter movement.
• 
The logic of the #F***Paris tweets is a little hard to follow, but there were many allusions to France's colonial past in Africa.
• 
One activist lamented that French law prevents people from covering their faces, which is a bummer for those wishing to don headwear for religious or criminal purposes.
• 
The fact that France, like America, has become one of the greatest multicultural societies in history, with equality before the the law for all, seemed entirely lost.
• 
Sensing that using the F-word on a European ally under attack by ISIS might not be great politics — even among today's "progressive" Democrats — some of the higher-ups in Black Lives Matter intervened.
• 
After all, it's not like these victims were just stabbed Israelis, whom some liberals see as simply getting their comeuppance, but in fact came from France, the socialist icon lefties most want America to become.
• 
He no doubt wishes his minions would have retreated to safe spaces at Yale and other universities where the precious may find solace from unhelpful ideas and facts — rather than positing their repugnant views on the Internet.
• 
As usual, those involved accused the local police of murder and unwittingly played into the hands of politicians who would prefer attention be applied anywhere other than failed liberal policies that have dominated urban America for decades. 
• 
All of this might be amusing if it were limited to the fringes of political debate.  However, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have pandered increasingly to Black Lives Matter, and they have been joined by a string of other Democrats.
• 
Maybe this latest act of crazy by Black Lives Matter will get politicians to pause before pandering.
• 
But probably not, which means that cops who put their lives on the line for us will keep getting hung out to dry by urban liberals. 
• 
Meanwhile, the biggest losers are minorities in these cities who want safer neighborhoods and better lives.
• 
There's not even a hashtag for them.
      We're not Islamophobic, Mr.  Obama, we just don't want to get blown up  (Fox 11/17/2015)
• 
Republican and Democratic governors are thwarting President Obama's plan to move thousands of Syrian refugees into your neighborhood.
• 
It is a prudent measure to take – especially in the aftermath of the Islamic terrorist attack in Paris.  And it is especially prudent now that ISIS has warned that America will be next.
• 
"We need to take ISIS at their word.  Their goal is world domination.  They want to control us – they want to destroy us."
• 
President Obama and the Council for American Islamic Relations called the moratorium on Syrian refugees un-American.
• 
"That's shameful," the president said, referring to suggestions that only Syrian Christians be allowed to enter the United States.  "That's not American.  That's not who we are.  We don't have religious tests to our compassion."
• 
CAIR went on to say that such actions were "driven by fear and Islamophobia."
• 
Well, if wanting to keep the radical Islamists out of our nation makes me an extremist — then so be it.
• 
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee delivered the harshest critique of President Obama's response to the Paris terrorist attacks – calling it wimpish.
• 
"We have a Cub Scout for commander in chief."
• 
"It's embarrassing when a left-wing socialist French President shows strength and determination to eradicate animals who are slaughtering innocent civilians while our president lectures us on the moral necessity to open our borders to tens of thousands of un-vetted people from the Middle East.
• 
But President Obama remains steadfast in his defense of the Muslim faith.  He said the world has a terrorist problem – not a Muslim problem.
• 
"ISIL does not represent Islam.  It is not representative in any way of the attitudes of the overwhelming majority of Muslims."
• 
I really want to believe that Islam is the religion of peace.  I really do.  But it's hard to do when there is not overwhelming condemnation of the terrorist attacks from the majority of Muslims.
• 
Where are the voices of the Muslims outraged that their faith has been hijacked?  Where are the thousands of Muslims marching in the streets denouncing the terrorists?  Where are they?  Why have they chosen to remain silent?
• 
I'm all for welcoming the huddled masses yearning to be free.  It's the ones yearning to wage jihad that I'm worried about.
• 
We are not Islamophobic, Mr.  President.  We are not un-American.  We just don't want our kids to get blown up.
• 
See related Iraqi Christians (Glenn McCoy, 08/08/2014) cartoon from World picture album
      Krauthammer: Governors refusing Syrian refugees 'deserve some respect'  (Fox 11/17/2015)
• 
... those governors refusing to allow the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states "deserve some respect.  A lot more than what the president gave them with the preening address he gave yesterday."
• 
"He's the one who decided against the begging, the advice, the recommendations of all his top advisers, to do nothing at the beginning of the Syrian civil war."
• 
"He could have established, easily, a safe zone the way that we did for over a decade, in Kurdistan in Iraq.  It wouldn't have cost boots on the ground.  And he decided, because he didn't want to sully his reputation as the man who ends wars and doesn't start them, he denied them."
• 
"Given the new circumstances, you allow the women and the children and the men over 50, as you did in the past.  But you're extra careful, extra scrutiny for the men of fighting age.  The ones who do this stuff, and for each of them you require a positive vetting not just the absence of a negative one."
      To defeat ISIS we need grownups  (Fox 11/16/2015)
• 
On the day ISIS-related terrorists spread out across Paris and killed more than one hundred people, Barack Obama claimed ISIS was "contained."
• 
After the attacks, liberals actually tried to argue that the attacks in Paris showed how successful Barack Obama had been because ISIS was having to lash out to get attention.  Yes, liberals actually argued this.
• 
Earlier this year, while President Obama still considered ISIS to be a junior varsity team, he said the greatest threat to humanity was global warming.
• 
At Saturday night's Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders reaffirmed that global warming was the greatest threat to humanity and was also the root cause of terrorism in the Middle East.
• 
Martin O'Malley said he still wanted to bring 60,000 Syrian refugees into this country, though we now know some of those refugees were involved in the Paris attack.
• 
Then there is Hillary Clinton.  ... the former Secretary of State's policy solutions amount to a jumble of contradictory platitudes:
• 
We must "root out" ISIS, she said, and implicitly criticized Obama when she said it "cannot be contained, it must be defeated." At the same time, she said, "it cannot be an American fight." However, "American leadership is essential." And yet, she said, "I don't think that the United States has the bulk of the responsibility."
• 
These are children and we need grownups.
• 
The Republican Party rarely wins domestic policy elections.  But when it comes to foreign policy, it turns out the American people want someone in the White House who is willing to kill bad guys while suffering no delusions.
• 
The Democrats are infantile and delusional.  They have reached a point where no evidence contrary to their world view will ever be allowed to pierce their bubble and get them to change their ways.
• 
Barack Obama and the Democrats have no intention of protecting us or killing ISIS.
• 
They instead want to wreck our economy with global warming regulations.
• 
They think if we wind up having to become powerless tent dwellers like ISIS, maybe then they'll leave us alone.
• 
The United States needs adults leading it right now.
      It’s time for Obama to make a choice: Lead us or resign  (NYP 11/14/2015)
• 
In any time and place, war is fiendishly simple.  It is the ultimate zero-sum contest — you win or you lose.
• 
That eternal truth is so obvious that it should not need to be said.  Yet even after the horrific slaughter in Paris, there remains a distressing doubt about whether America's commander in chief gets it.
• 
President Obama has spent the last seven years trying to avoid the world as it is.  He has put his intellect and rhetorical skills into the dishonorable service of assigning blame and fudging failure.
• 
He refuses to say "Islamic terrorism," as if that would offend the peaceful Muslims who make up the vast bulk of victims.
• 
He rejects the word "war," even as jihadists carry out bloodthirsty attacks against Americans and innocent peoples around the world.
• 
He shuns the mantle of global leadership that comes with the Oval Office, with an aide advancing the preposterous concept that Obama is "leading from behind."
• 
Having long ago identified American power as a problem, he continues to slash the military as the enemy expands its reach.
• 
In an accident of timing that captures his cluelessness, the president actually declared on Friday morning that the Islamic State had been "contained."
• 
Paris is the final straw.  Obama's exemption from reality has expired.  He must either commit to leading the free world to victory, or step aside so someone else can.
• 
There is no more time to avoid the truth of war.  America must organize the combined forces of the civilized world before the Islamic State makes good on its vow to "taste" more American blood.
• 
In fact, they already are here.  Law enforcement officials say the FBI has as many as 1,000 investigations open into Islamic State sympathizers inside the US.
• 
While sparing no effort to stop them here, we must simultaneously destroy them in their foreign bases.
• 
World War III began when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States, though we did not grasp the significance until 9/11.
• 
The collapse of the Twin Towers, a smoking hole in the Pentagon and a downed jetliner in Pennsylvania revealed the price of our inaction.
• 
After a heated 2011 meeting on Afghanistan, Gates concluded that Obama "doesn't believe in his own strategy, and doesn't consider the war to be his.  For him, it's all about getting out."
• 
The hard-won gains in Iraq were reversed, Syria descended into hell and the Islamic State was born in the vacuum.
• 
Its ruthlessness and success in capturing territory enabled it to supplant al Qaeda as the most dangerous terrorist network.  It has become the proverbial "strong horse," with each terrifying attack bringing more recruits and more financing.
• 
Its ability to inflict unprecedented casualties in such far-flung locations marks a growing strength and sophistication.  The terrorists smell weakness and have increased the pace of their aggressive expansion.  Their aim of global conquest must be taken seriously.
• 
So we are back to square one again, facing a stronger and more emboldened enemy.  The time has run out for half measures and kicking the can down the road.
• 
The enemy must be destroyed on the battlefield before there can be any hope of peace.
• 
If Obama cannot rise to the challenge of leadership in this historic crisis, then, for the good of humanity, he should resign.
• 
Those are the only options and it is his duty to decide.
      'Act of War': Will Congress finally vote to declare war on ISIS, after Paris attacks?  (Fox 11/14/2015)
• 
"It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army," declared French President Francois Hollande about the chute of terror that flooded the streets of Paris on Friday night.
• 
There it is.  That word.  "War." And those words.  "Act of war."
• 
"It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside."
• 
"France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked will be unforgiving with the Barbarians from Daesh."
• 
And there lies the question.  How will France challenge these thugs?  How will the United States and the rest of its allies combat them?  Talk is cheap.  Prayers and "Je Suis Charlie" and flowers and candlesticks outside the French Embassy in Washington are all nice.  But what is the U.S.  willing to do?
• 
"There should be no doubt that ISIL poses a direct threat to the United States.  If the administration does not get more serious about combating it, our nation and our people will pay a grave price."
• 
"They are at war with us.  This will be coming to America."
• 
There's little doubt a "war" is on between radical Muslim terrorists and the West.  And "this" has already come to America.  9/11.  The Boston Marathon.  Fort Hood.  Foiled plots in Times Square and at LAX.  An attempted shoe bomber.  An attempted underwear bomber.  Two separate sting operations netting suspects who aimed to blow up the U.S.  Capitol.
• 
"War" may have been declared by one side as Hollande and Cruz suggest.  But not by the other.
• 
So that question rages on Capitol Hill: must Congress "declare war" or, at the very least, approve an authorization that grants the president and the Pentagon authority outlined in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to take the fight to the enemy?
• 
Though Congress hasn't voted to "declare war" since 1942, it has elected to do so on five occasions since the beginning of the republic.
• 
After the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences, lawmakers don't want to be on the hook voting for another war.  By the same token, they don't want make the wrong call and vote against war should a resolution hit the floors of the House and Senate.
• 
So Congress remains in this glaciated state, afraid of war, wanting war.  But not really doing much about it.
• 
... this is not so much a battle over real estate — but over hearts, minds and ideology.
• 
"Are we capturing, killing or dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
• 
... a vote for war or an AUMF would undoubtedly focus the public and the U.S.  on the seriousness of the situation.
      Paris attacks: Four important lessons world must learn from French tragedy  (Fox 11/14/2015)
• 
First, the Paris attacks were not "senseless violence" as some media commentators observed as the news coverage unfolded. 
• 
Second, we should not view the appropriate American and Western response as "bringing these terrorists to justice," in President Obama's words.
• 
Third, in light of Paris and the continuing threat of terrorism it so graphically conveys, we need a more sensible national conversation about the need for effective intelligence gathering to uncover and prevent such tragedies before they occur.
• 
Finally ... the United States is already in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign.  America's proper place in the world should be at the very center of the debate.
• 
We should discard the conventional wisdom of political operatives and commentators who routinely say that American voters do not care about national-security issues.
• 
The first responsibility of the president is to keep the country safe.  While there are many important issues at stake next November, all of them come second when the safety of the country is at risk.
• 
As part of our shared obligations as U.S.  citizens, we should work to make 2016 a national-security election.
• 
Either we do it, or our adversaries will do it for us.
      'Safe spaces' on college campuses run at odds with First Amendment, say law experts  (Fox 11/14/2015)
• 
"I think the problem is they're trying to use this word 'safe' – which conveys the image of a violent attack – and turning it into safe from ideas and statements we find offensive.  There is no right to be safe from that."
• 
The controversy over such zones comes after a string of recent, racially-charged incidents at universities nationwide that — while different — share a common denominator: the promotion of a "PC culture" where real or perceived threatening thoughts or ideas should not be tolerated.
• 
"...  if you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended.  Talk to each other.  Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society."
• 
"Demanding that someone step down for expressing an opinion for which you disagree is patently illiberal."
• 
"The idea that people have the right to absolute emotional comfort at all times is very troubling.  And it's anti-intellectual."
• 
"This is destructive to the university as a place for debate and the pursuit of truth.  If we allow this to happen — as citizens, as alumni — the results will be very bad for higher education and for the country."
• 
"The more you try to insulate yourself from contrary ideas, the weaker your arguments are going to be."
• 
... "fog of fascism is descending quickly over many American universities."
• 
"These are the same people who claim they are seeking diversity.  The last thing these students want is real diversity, diversity of ideas.  They may want superficial diversity, diversity of gender, diversity of color, but they do not want diversity of ideas."
• 
"It is the worst kind of hypocrisy.  They want complete control over their personal lives, over their sex lives, over the use of drugs, but they want mommy and daddy dean to please give them a safe place, to protect them from ideas that maybe are insensitive, maybe will make them think."
• 
"It is free speech for me, but not for thee.  Universities should not tolerate this kind of hypocrisy, double standard."
      Meantime – Obama is still president  (INN 11/06/2015)
• 
... are we so desperate to be rid of Obama that we're counting the days...when actually we're looking at more than a YEAR!
• 
That's plenty of time to do mucho damage because guess what... Obama is still president.
• 
They give you the latest polls on the hour as if nothing else is happening and even the mainstream networks now lead with who's on top.
• 
Nothing else going on, like people being stabbed for being Jewish and still another "Death to America" gathering over there in Tehran?  Guess not.
• 
Nothing has changed and nothing will change for quite some time.
• 
Iran is in.  Israel is out.  Our enemies laugh.  Our friends weep.  Obamacare is in ruins.  Our borders are wide open to people we don't know.
• 
Racial animosity is worse than it's ever been in modern times.  Groups like "Black Lives Matter" feel justified calling for the murder of our law enforcement officers.
• 
Jewish kids on campus are being harassed and beaten by Arab imports who feel empowered and entitled to "express" themselves.
• 
Orthodox Jews are being stabbed, cursed and beaten in Crown Heights Brooklyn.
• 
This should be enough to prove that while Republican candidates take the stage and grab the headlines – Obama is still president.
• 
He can still do whatever the hell he wants and if that is not enough, Hillary is waiting to finish us off.
• 
On the airwaves, from one hour to the next we're talking Republicans, but meanwhile it's the Democrats who run the White House and our world.
• 
Trump says he wants to keep them out and he may well be true to his word but come on, aren't we getting ahead of ourselves?
• 
The other candidates, all have different slogans, different plans, different dreams, good, wonderful, but Obama is still president.
• 
The debates keep providing lively entertainment but neither Obama nor Hillary has been touched. 
• 
The Republicans (our only hope) must be careful lest they turn themselves into a travelling circus.  We need any one of them to prevail.
      When will Obama defend Christians and defeat radical Islam?  (Fox 11/06/2015)
• 
While President Obama sits silently, the same soil that sustained our Biblical forefathers is now stained with blood.  Anyone who who defies these evil Islamic radicals risks death.
• 
The White House abandons Christians and denies, disguises and hides the existence of Radical Islam, but I will not!
• 
You don't negotiate with sin and evil, you destroy it.  You don't contemplate what to do with cancer, you kill it before it kills you!
• 
What will it take for President Obama to wake-up and realize radical Islam is at war with the civilized world?
• 
"Hope" is not a national security strategy and "press release foreign policy" is not a plan to keep Americans safe.
• 
The idealism and incompetence from this White House is beyond breathtaking.
• 
Whether empowering Iranians with a path to a nuclear bomb, freeing terrorists from Guantanamo prisons so they can rejoin the fight against America, or grossly underestimating ISIS, President Obama lacks the spine and common sense to serve as commander in chief.
• 
America has the strongest fighting force and most advanced military technology on Earth.  There's no reason we should be losing to these evil thugs.
• 
Obama is a recklessly inept, ineffective President who has failed our nation.  Americans are sick of this mess, and our troops are tired of being exploited and abused.
• 
We control our destiny — not dictators, despots, mullahs or militants.
• 
It's time we accept responsibility, lead with moral clarity, and kill every last one of these ISIS snakes.
      White House still not telling America the truth about jobs, economy  (Fox 11/02/2015)
• 
The reason Reagan was able to create so many more jobs — in a much smaller economy — is quite simple.  It wasn't just lower taxes and less spending but rather, a reliance on private decisions to guide recovery.  He cleared a path for businesses, large and small, to invest as they deemed fit and raise wages as they decided they could afford, and encouraged the unemployed to get out and look for work.
• 
Whereas from subsidies for solar energy projects and mandatory health insurance to incessant preaching that ordinary folks are victims of racism, sexism and the evil machinations of the well-off, Obama has sought to micromanage business through an explosion of regulations and to pacify a middle class under siege and Americans underemployed or not working at all with giveaways from free contraception to forgiving college debt.
• 
... whereas Reagan's social safety net assisted the unemployed, Obama's pays the unemployed to be idle.
• 
The 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 who are neither employed nor are looking for work are rewarded with food stamps, the earned income tax credit if their spouse is a low-income worker and federal healthcare subsidies — and even virtually free health care through Medicaid in many states.
• 
For folks refusing to do anything productive with their lives, Obama is offering an even more attractive benefit — free money in the form of a government pension.
• 
For hard working families, the results are predictable — annual family incomes have declined about $1650 during the Obama years, whereas those increased $3900 during Reagan's tenure.
• 
For the indolent, this is the Second Age of Pericles but for those who toil for their daily bread, Obama's pronouncements that the economy is much improved and performs better with Democrats in control have a decided Orwellian ring.
      The Midwife to Chaos and Her Perjury  (JWR 10/29/2015)
• 
The public record is fairly well-known.  In March 2011, President Barack Obama declared war on Libya.  He did this at the urging of Clinton, who wanted to overthrow Libyan strongman Col.  Moammar Gadhafi so she could boast of having brought "democracy" to the region.
• 
She and Obama conspired to do this even though former President George W.  Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had publicly praised Gadhafi as an ally in the war against terrorist groups and even though the U.S.  was giving the Gadhafi government more than $100 million a year in foreign aid.
• 
Obama did his best to avoid constitutional norms.  He deployed American intelligence agents on the ground, not troops, so he could plausibly deny he had put "boots" on the ground.  He did not seek an American national consensus for war because Libya presented no threat whatsoever to the U.S.  He did not obtain a congressional declaration of war as the Constitution requires because he couldn't get one.  And he did not seek United Nations permission, which is required to attack a fellow U.N.  member.
• 
... she exercised her authority as secretary of state to authorize the shipment of American-made arms to Qatar, a country beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood and friendly to the Libyan rebels and a country the U.S.  had no business arming — unless the purpose of doing so was for the arms to be transferred to the rebels.
• 
Once this plot was hatched, Clinton and her fellow conspirators realized that some of these rebel groups were manned by al-Qaida operatives; and selling or providing arms to them is a felony — hence the reason for months' worth of missing and destroyed Clinton emails.  How could someone running for president possibly justify providing material assistance to terrorist organizations in the present international climate?
• 
She later angrily dismissed questions over this cover-up by arguing, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
• 
The difference it makes goes to the heart of the American electoral process.  Every four years, we entrust awesome power to a person who swears to protect the Constitution.
• 
How could we give that power to a consistent public liar who, for personal political gain, midwifed terror and chaos in a country that was our ally and whose words and behavior have continually demonstrated that she is utterly unworthy of belief?
      Why family structure is so important  (JWR 10/28/2015)
• 
... "most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes."
• 
On most economic indicators ... "the share of parents who are married in a state is a better predictor of that state's economic health than the racial composition and educational attainment of the state's residents."
• 
"From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos."
• 
... every sweeping statement that the traditional family is best must come with a slew of caveats, chief among them: "Compared to what?" ... A kid raised by two biological parents who are in a nasty and loveless marriage will likely benefit from her parents getting divorced.
• 
Of course, that point can be made about almost every human endeavor, because we live in a flawed world.  And just because we don't — and can't — live in perfect consistency with our ideals, that is not an argument against the ideals themselves.
• 
The family, far more than government or schools, is the institution we draw the most meaning from.  From the day we are born, it gives us our identity, our language and our expectations about how the world should work.
• 
Before we become individuals or citizens or voters, we are first and foremost part of a family.  That is why social engineers throughout the ages see family as a competitor to, or problem for, the state.
• 
And the family wars will never end, because family matters — a lot.
      Who's Responsible?  (JWR 10/28/2015)
• 
Hillary Clinton told a mixed audience, "I mean, if we're honest, for a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear"
• 
Would well-meaning, open-minded white people have a similar fear at the sight of an elderly black man using a walker and wearing a hoodie?
• 
Whether we like it or not, easily observed physical characteristics — such as race, sex, height and age — convey information.  That's because there is often a correlation between those characteristics and other characteristics not so easily observed.
• 
If you said it's the behavioral reputation of that demographic as a group, you'd be absolutely right.
• 
So what are we to make of Clinton's observation?  Who is responsible for "a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people" experiencing a "twinge of fear" at "the sight of a young black man in a hoodie"?
• 
... in cities such as New York, Chicago and Washington, black taxi drivers often avoid picking up young black males.  A black female commissioner in Washington once warned cabdrivers against picking up "dangerous-looking" characters — for example, a "young black guy ... with (his) shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, (and) unlaced tennis shoes."
• 
A black and Hispanic president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers told his drivers to "profile" their passengers.  "The God's honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics," he said.
• 
So we have black taxi drivers who get the same "twinge of fear" as Hillary Clinton's liberal white people.  Who is responsible for creating that fear?
• 
I hope you won't say black taxi drivers and well-meaning white people.
      Liberal hero James Comey now the enemy for telling the truth about cops  (NY Post, 10/28/2015)
• 
When James Comey threatened to quit the Bush administration over a wiretapping dispute, he was an instant liberal hero.
• 
But now that Comey is resisting Obama's party-line claims about police brutality and mass incarceration, the White House is furious with him.
• 
Same Comey, same streak of independence, but now he's goring the wrong ox.  Thou shalt not contradict Dear Leader!
• 
In two speeches, the FBI boss said he believes crime is rising in much of the nation in part because growing criticism of cops has emboldened criminals and caused law enforcement to retreat.
• 
"I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year."
• 
That's putting it mildly.  Baltimore's mayor admitted her cops were ordered to stand down and give "those who wished to destroy space to do that" during riots last April.
• 
"They have pulled back from the ability to interdict .  .  .  They don't want to be a news story themselves, they don't want their career ended early, and it's having an impact."
• 
Some call the trend the "Ferguson effect," after the Missouri case where white Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen.  Riots followed there, too, when a grand jury declined to indict Wilson.
• 
The oddity is that Brown was a thug who tried to grab Officer Wilson's gun.  Even Obama's Justice Department, which aimed to file civil-rights charges against Wilson, was forced to admit no charges were warranted.
• 
Yet Wilson still lost his job, and Brown somehow became a civil-rights martyr whose case helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement.
• 
Obama, as I wrote Sunday, supports that movement, an example of his growing radicalism on racial issues.  His embrace of Al Sharpton, the most polarizing racialist in America, pits the president against police officers and others in law enforcement who risk their lives to protect the innocent.
• 
Recognizing a threat to its narrative that all cops are racist brutes until proven otherwise, the Times denounced Comey under a headline, "Political Lies About Police Brutality."
• 
It called his remarks "incendiary" and said they "imply that for the police to do their jobs, they need to have free rein to be abusive."
• 
"Each drug dealer, each mugger, each killer, and each felon with a gun had his own lawyer, his own case, his own time before judge and jury, his own sentencing, and, in many cases, an appeal or other postsentencing review."
• 
"There were thousands and thousands of those individual cases, but to speak of ‘mass incarceration' I believe is confusing, and it distorts an important reality."
• 
Comey's right again, and that makes him dangerous.  He must be silenced before the truth spreads.
      U.S.  Liberal Jews Continue to Support Obama, Abandon Israel  (INN 10/24/2015)
• 
Barack Obama pledged on the campaign trail in 2008 "to fundamentally transform" the United States, and perhaps consistent with that promise his presidency has been marked by a transformative indifference to legal process and constitutional procedure.
• 
... many American Jews – including the majority of Congressional Jewish Democrats – supported the deal, just as they have supported the most anti-Israel president ever to occupy the White House.
• 
No matter how often Obama excuses Islamists, insults Israel, or spits in the face of Jewish history, progressive Jews continue to support him with Pavlovian devotion.
• 
And in justifying his corrosive Mideast policies, they demean Jewish historical rights and national aspirations – often repeating anti-Semitic slanders that have been embraced by the political left. 
• 
When Obama's minions besmirched the patriotism of the deal's critics, insinuated that Netanyahu was orchestrating domestic opposition to it, and identified its opponents with those who "rushed to war with Iraq," they cagily invoked traditional canards of undue Jewish influence and warmongering.
• 
Many Jewish progressives sold their souls by rationalizing or agreeing with such comments, or simply failing to chastise the evocation of classical stereotypes while the president claimed with faux innocence to be hurt by accusations of anti-Semitism.
• 
The willingness of Jewish progressives to whitewash left-wing anti-Semitism reflects their estrangement from traditional values, ignorance of history, and failure of moral resolve.  It also connotes their attachment to a political ideology that excuses Jew-hatred and radical Islam with trite homilies about the evils of colonialism.
• 
They falsely regard Israel as a colonial creation and western imperialism as the cause of Islamic radicalism, but ignore the long history of Islamic holy war, conquest and subjugation.
• 
Likewise, they overlook the fact that civilizational friction between the Muslim and western worlds started not with the Crusades, but with the spread of jihad across Europe hundreds of years earlier. 
• 
The compulsion to rationalize the president's treatment of Israel and progressive anti-Semitism may be rooted in a ghetto mentality or the same pathological impulse that triggers Jewish self-loathing.
• 
Lack of knowledge does not necessarily imply bad faith, but willful ignorance and knowing distortions do.  Those who advocate the revisionist Palestinian narrative, rationalize Islamism as a response to western provocation, or deny the Holocaust are not simply naive or misguided.
• 
The persistence in applying one standard to Israel, which respects individual rights and the rule of law, and another standard (or none at all) to Arab and Muslim nations that suppress minorities, women, and political dissent, is malicious and dishonest.
• 
The belief that unbalanced criticism of Israel reflects Jewish values is fostered by a mainstream press that actively promotes the Palestinian cause and delegitimizes the Jewish State.
• 
Evidence of Jew-hatred on the left abounds, and yet progressives deny its existence or rationalize it as a response to Jewish transgressions.  They often disparage Israel in the vilest of terms and support Islamists who preach genocide, but deflect accusations of prejudice by pointing to Jews who do the same.  They ask how they can be considered anti-Semitic when there are Jews who also condemn Israel, repudiate Jewish history and snub tradition; and this rhetorical deceit is abetted by those liberals who fail to expose its calculated dishonesty. 
• 
There can be little doubt that self-hatred is a potent form of anti-Semitism, which for generations has motivated turncoats and apostates to emulate their aggressors, torment their own people, and degrade their own communities. 
• 
One need only consider how American retreat and weakness have empowered Russia, China and ISIS – and how Iran has been emboldened by the nuclear deal – to see that Obama's policies have set the stage for geopolitical disaster on a global scale.
• 
Those who believe that "Jewish heart" mandates support for policies that threaten the US and Israel – or for a president who finds moral equivalence between knife-wielding terrorists and their Jewish victims – need to question their own purity of heart, clarity of vision, and soundness of priorities.
      Hillary Clinton showed us a glimpse of her soul at Benghazi hearings.  It was chilling  (Fox 10/23/2015)
• 
Secretary Clinton did not disappoint in her performance on Thursday.
• 
She admitted to no wrongdoing, nor to breaking any laws.
• 
She brushed off blame by saying security decisions were handled at lower levels of the State Department professional staff, not by the secretary.
• 
She didn't receive Ambassador Stevens' requests for more security — implying that if only she had things might have turned out differently.
• 
It was a masterful performance.  She showed enormous discipline and nearly super-human stamina.
• 
She let nothing slip.  But in the end she let everything slip.  She got a perfect score, but failed the test.
• 
She didn't mean to, but she showed us a glimpse into her soul.
• 
It was chilling.
• 
She always knew they died from a planned terrorist attack from an Al Qaeda-like group.  That's what she told her family and foreign leaders according to newly released emails.
• 
So why support the false narrative at the start?  Because the Obama administration had an election to win eight weeks later, and a terrorist attack that killed four Americans didn't fit into that plan.
• 
President Obama asked voters to reelect him because he had killed Usama bin Laden.  Al Qaeda was on the ropes.  Qaddafi was dead and the Libyan war a success.  The wave of war was a receding.  President George W.  Bush's War on Terror was over because Obama and Clinton had won it.
• 
A terrorist attack that killed Americans at Benghazi did not fit into that campaign narrative, so it had to be retold and spun into a different story.  It wasn't radical Islamist terrorists, but a spontaneous demonstration that got out of control in reaction to an obscure Internet video.
• 
It wasn't about negligence or criminality or incompetence.
• 
Instead it was — and still is — about character.  And Secretary Clinton has been found wanting.
• 
The even greater tragedy is Secretary Clinton doesn't think she did anything wrong.  In today's Washington integrity and truth telling — even to mourning families — take a backseat to the relentless pursuit of power. 
• 
No wonder the rest of the country wants to throw all the bums out.
      Obama's veto of defense bill offers conservatives opportunity to think hard about spending  (Fox 10/23/2015)
• 
The Congress finds itself dealing with a veto of the National Defense Authorization Act from the president and has no reason to act surprised.
• 
A redistributionist president, chafing under the restrictions of the 2011 Budget Control Act, wants authority to raise social and entitlement spending in an equal amount with defense.
• 
He is gambling that conservatives will be so dedicated to protecting the nation against immediate threats from Russia, China and Iran that they will forgo their concerns about the threat to the nation's long-term security created by a $18 trillion debt and give him carte blanche to spend on his social priorities.
• 
Conservatives of all stripes should take the opportunity presented by the president's veto to borrow from Churchill and say to the Pentagon, "you have run out of money, it's time to start thinking."
      Benghazi: My questions for Hillary Clinton  (Fox 10/22/2015)
• 
I have framed the questions in traditional cross-examination style, though I doubt that the politicians on the committee will have the self-discipline to adhere to it.
• 
The theory of cross-examination — particularly of a high-profile, intelligent, belligerent or ruthless witness — is for the questioner to tell a story by asking questions that suggest answers that challenge the witness's version of events or impeach the witness's credibility.
• 
The questioner's version of events must be based on credible evidence.  In a courtroom, the questioner's audience for his version of the events is the jury.  In a congressional hearing, the audience is the American people.
• 
Mrs.  Clinton, when you first became secretary of state, you were briefed on the proper use of emails, right?  And you were informed of your obligation to preserve all governmental records that came into your possession and not destroy any of them, right?  And you also were briefed on the proper handling of classified materials, weren't you?
• 
In fact, Mrs.  Clinton, you were presented with a written government oath that every federal employee who handles classified materials receives and must sign, correct?  Isn't it also true, Mrs.  Clinton, that you never signed that oath?
• 
Didn't you pay a State Department employee — not an outside vendor — to install a private email server in your home in New York?  And when you did that, you knew the practical effect of it would be to divert all your emails — governmental and personal — away from the government, right?
• 
Isn't it true that you received and sent emails on your personal system that included satellite photos of foreign surveillance; intercepts of telephonic and email communications of foreign agents; travel plans of U.S.  Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the Benghazi attacks; and the true name of a CIA agent operating under deep cover in the Middle East?
• 
Mrs.  Clinton, haven't you stated a few dozen times that you never sent or received emails marked "classified"?  Now, Mrs.  Clinton, you were the country's chief diplomat for four years, right?  Don't you know that nothing is marked "classified" — that the national security markings are "confidential," "secret" and "top secret"?
• 
Mrs.  Clinton, you knew that the war you were waging against Moammar Gadhafi was causing great instability in Libya, right?  And you knew that instability had led to the need for private security firms to protect Libyans and Americans in Libya, correct?
• 
And didn't you also know that your friend and confidant Mr.  Blumenthal had a financial interest in one of those firms while he was advising you?  You didn't see anything illegal about an employee of your family's foundation's receiving secret data from you while he was advising you and trying to get business for his security firm in Libya, did you?
• 
Mrs.  Clinton, isn't it true that you put the travel plans of Ambassador Stevens onto nongovernmental Internet venues?  Isn't it true that at the time you did that, he asked you for more security in Libya and you did not provide it?
• 
Mrs.  Clinton, isn't it true that to fight your secret war against the government of Gadhafi, you sent American arms into the hands of his opponents?  And you did this without a congressional declaration of war, right?
• 
Didn't you know that many of Gadhafi's opponents were Al Qaeda operatives, who are America's sworn enemies?  Weren't you reckless in getting arms to them?  Didn't you realize that you were arming the very people against whom your ambassador was seeking more protection?
• 
Mrs.  Clinton, do you know it is a felony to provide arms to terrorist organizations?  Do you know that Ambassador Stevens was murdered by al-Qaida operatives using American arms and American bullets?
• 
Mrs.  Clinton, do you think anyone but the most hardened Democrats and your husband's old friends could trust you in public office?
      Gates says Putin might be ‘doing us a favor,’ urges more defense spending  (Fox 10/22/2015)
• 
Gates, speaking on Capitol Hill, cast Moscow's actions as a needed wake-up call.
• 
He said Putin's recent airstrikes in Syria and perhaps more importantly his intervention in eastern Ukraine should alert America's European allies to increase military spending "because the world has not gone on to broad sunny uplands where there's peace and tranquility all the time."
• 
... NATO countries committed many years ago to spending 2 percent of their Gross Domestic Product.  However, just five of the 28 countries were complying when he left the department in 2011.
• 
"What Putin has been most impacted by ... is the collapse of the Russian empire.  Putin is all about lost power, lost glory, lost empire.  He is not crazy.  He is very much an opportunist."
• 
... Putin's two basic objectives are to "restore Russia to great power status" so that his country becomes an integral part of every international situation and to "build a buffer of friendly states."
• 
When asked what the United States should do about Putin, Gates said he was "not a madman" and would "hesitate" and "pull back" when faced with resistance. 
• 
"We should decide what we want to do in Syria and basically ... just tell the Russians, 'This is what we're going to do.  Just stay out of the way.'"
• 
"The primary question right now before the Congress and [President Obama] is the priority you give to defense, which is the lowest percentage of the federal budget since before World War II."
• 
"The failure of the Congress ... because of the partisan divide to pass timely and predictable defense budgets has not only greatly increased the cost of defense, it has contributed to weakening our military capabilities."
      Benghazi: The fundamental question that still hasn't been answered  (Fox 10/21/2015)
• 
... fundamental question: What were the Americans doing in Benghazi in the first place?
• 
Were we working with and arming Libyan rebels who turned out to be Al Qaeda-type terrorists?
• 
The committee should focus on what happened in the weeks leading up to the Benghazi attack.
• 
They should ask why Ambassador Stevens' repeated calls for more security were ignored.
• 
They should question why there was no rescue mission mounted while our men were under attack.
• 
... they should ask who decided to lie about the events on September 11, 2012 being a planned terrorist attack and instead of using the lame excuse that they were the result of a YouTube video sparking a demonstration that got out of hand.
• 
These questions have all been asked before but they have never answered.
• 
Finally, and perhaps the most fundamental question of all – was the fiasco of the Libyan war another example of the Obama administration's love affair with moderately radical Islamists?
• 
Has the Obama administration been willfully blind — from the start — to the dangers posed by all radical Islamists in Libya, in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq, in Iran?
      Open Season on the Police  (JWR 10/20/2015)
• 
"He was only a kid" is an almost automatic reaction of the parents and the media.  "He didn't deserve to be killed" over a traffic violation, or because he didn't drop a toy gun when ordered to, or some other minor infraction.
• 
Are we so addicted to talking points and sound bites that we can't be bothered to use common sense?  If you are killed by a teenager, you are just as dead as if you had been killed by the oldest man in the world.
• 
It doesn't matter how minor the law violation was that caused the young guy to be stopped.  He wasn't shot for the violation — which could have been jay-walking, for all the difference it makes.  He was shot for attacking the police, after having foolishly escalated a routine encounter into a personal confrontation.
• 
Irrational statements by the young man's parents may be understandable when they discover that their son is dead.  But for media people to make such mindless statements to a nationwide audience is just grossly irresponsible.
• 
Someone in the media recently complained that a policeman shot a boy who had a toy gun "within seconds" of arriving on the scene.  When someone has a gun, and refuses to drop it, a policeman can be killed within seconds.  A dialogue under these conditions can be a fatal luxury he cannot afford.
• 
There is something grotesque about people sitting in safety and comfort, blithely second-guessing at their leisure what a policeman did when he had a split second to make a decision that could cost him his life, leaving behind a widow and orphans.
• 
You cannot have law without law enforcement.  If cops are supposed to back down whenever they are confronted by some brassy young thug, that may indeed save a few lives among the thugs.  But that just means that a lot of other lives will be lost under "kinder, gentler" policing.
• 
After this year's widespread indulgences in anti-police rhetoric by politicians, the media and race hustlers, how surprised should we be by the dramatic upsurge in murders after law enforcement had been undermined?
• 
Maybe the parents who are so bitter over the loss of a son in a wholly unnecessary confrontation with a policeman doing his job might ask themselves if they did their job, when they raised a child without teaching him either common sense or common decency.
      The Democratic Party is leaning far to the left and racing for the cliff  (Fox 10/15/2015)
• 
The scary part for me was the advocacy of more government programs and higher taxes, the socialist philosophy of Bernie Sanders and the unabashed trashing of business, Wall Street and individuals who have done well by their hard work, special genius.
• 
Redistributing the wealth or creating government programs to make all things free and equal is a tried and failed formula. 
• 
This leftward trend of the Democratic Party is not shocking to me, but the speed at which it is racing for the cliff is surprising.
• 
America is a land of opportunity, not a land of equality.
• 
Black lives matter and so does every other child or adult in this country.
• 
Because someone has achieved certain things and others have not is not necessarily the fault of either.
• 
Regulating Wall Street and business and taxing the well-to-do have been functions of government since the earliest days of this country.
• 
Educating our young, caring for our old and sick and providing for those in need are what make our country great.
• 
But the socialist rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party is not a road to success or equality.  It is a road to failure, as we have seen in the demise of Cuba, the old Soviet Union, pre-reform China and many other communist/socialist nations.
• 
"Our party was founded on the irresistible idea that the Declaration of Independence applies to everyone.  Mr.  Lincoln inspired our party with the conviction that the ultimate source of progress and prosperity is the equal freedom of all Americans to fulfill their hopes and dreams for a better future."
• 
"The American idea never was that everyone would be leveled to the same position in life.
• 
The American idea was that each individual should have the same opportunity to rise as high as his effort and initiative and God-given talent could carry him.
• 
If the Republican nominee, whoever that may be, emphasizes that philosophy, we can compete for the presidency against Hillary or any other Democrat that may be nominated.
      The 'Gun Control' Farce: Part II  (JWR 10/14/2015)
• 
Why anyone would think that criminals who disobey other laws, including laws against murder, would obey gun control laws is a mystery.
• 
A disarmed population makes crime a safer occupation and street violence a safer sport.
• 
The "knockout game" of suddenly throwing a punch to the head of some unsuspecting passer-by would not be nearly so much fun for street hoodlums, if there was a serious risk that the passer-by was carrying a concealed firearm.
• 
Being knocked out in a boxing ring means landing on the canvas.  But being knocked out on a street usually means landing on concrete.  Victims of the knockout game have ended up in the hospital or in the morgue.
• 
If, instead, just a few of those who play this sick "game" ended up being shot, that would take a lot of the fun out of it for others who are tempted to play the same "game."
• 
... concealed weapons protect not only those who carry them, but also protect those who do not, for the hoodlums and criminals have no way of knowing in advance who is armed and who is not.
• 
People who know nothing about guns, and have never fired a shot in their lives, much less lived in high-crime areas, blithely say such things as, "Nobody needs a 30-shot magazine."
• 
Really?  If three criminals invaded your home, endangering the lives of you and your loved ones, are you such a sharpshooter that you could take them all out with a clip holding ten bullets?  Or a clip with just seven bullets, which is the limit you would be allowed under gun laws in some places?
• 
Are there dangers in a widespread availability of guns?  Yes!  And one innocent death is one too many.  But what makes anyone think that there are no innocent lives lost by disarming law-abiding people while criminals remain armed?
• 
Among the cherry-picked statistics is that England has stronger gun control laws than the United States and much lower murder rates.  But Mexico, Brazil and Russia all have stronger gun control laws than the United States — and much higher murder rates.
• 
It was not the laws that made the difference in murder rates.  It was the people.  That is also true within the United States.
      When a phobia is rational  (JWR 10/13/2015)
• 
It is irrational ... to ignore the threats posed by Islamic jihadists and illegal immigration because left wing punditry and multicultural advocates dub our fears as phobias.
• 
All one has to do to raise one's blood pressure is to Google the list of Islamist terrorist attacks since 1980 and also the criminal charges against illegal, oops, undocumented immigrants.
• 
In spite of the clear and credible threats to our national security by a confirmed jihadist community, we seem to have bent over backwards so as not to offend all Muslims.
• 
I've also never forgotten the exuberant celebration that broke out in the Middle East for the 9/11 attack.  Posters in the U.K.  advertising a Muslim conference depicted the Towers burning as a wonderful event for Islam.
• 
I would be more inclined to agree with Bush's advice if more outrage of the attacks came from the Muslim community.  Their outrage came out instead as this, "The attacks were terrible but....." In other words, we deserved it.
• 
That judgment squared with the left wing media's agenda of anti-Americanism and their pundits and the bleeding hearts did everything possible to bolster the image of Muslims as victims of American imperialism.
• 
This made it possible in spite of all odds to elect a president with the middle name Hussein, who was raised by communists and Muslims who sealed his education records so we'll never ever know who he really is.
• 
The radical Marxist group La Raza is behind all those Hispanic protests demanding removal of American flags and hoisting up Mexican flags in schools.  Multiculturalism has turned us into blithering fools.
• 
Now mass immigrants have invaded Europe under the guise of refugees from Syria and the blind Euros ignore the facts that most are able-bodied young males not women and children.
• 
"I always advise my patients to face their fears to the best of their abilities.  It empowers them.  An extreme example is the 3 brave Americans on that French train.  Did they face their fear?  I would say so."
• 
When we are called racists and bigots whenever we acknowledge our real enemies, let's take comfort in the fact that we are not the ones with our heads in the sand.  We are empowered with the truth and that is a good thing.
      'Bridge of Spies': What Obama could learn from Spielberg and Hanks  (Fox 10/12/2015)
• 
With Russia escalating its attacks on U.S.-trained rebel forces in Syria, some speculate that we are on the brink of another Cold War.
• 
Americans wonder: is President Obama, who has shown weakness in confrontations with Syria, China, Iran and Russia, up to the challenge?  Does he have a plan?  Does he even understand the nature of the conflict?
• 
The movie carries us back to the titanic confrontation between rival economic and political systems that began in 1947.
• 
It hints at the elements that ultimately put the Soviets out of business — the freedoms and resulting prosperity of the United States, compared to the inefficiencies and corruption of the Soviet state.
• 
President Reagan took advantage of the long-term economic slump of the U.S.S.R.  by challenging Moscow to an arms race they could not win.  Ultimately, the empire collapsed of its own weight.
• 
President Obama sees the fall of the Soviet Union differently: "Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation.  The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."
• 
Obama's naivete about the downfall of the Soviet Union is alarming; so is his conviction that endless talks – instead of a show of force — will stymie Putin's aggression in Syria.
• 
History tells us that Obama should raise the price tag for Russia's adventurism.
• 
Just as the Soviet Union's failing economy buckled under the demands of an arms race, so may Russia's incursions into Syria and Ukraine strain its already-stretched budget.
• 
Like Reagan, Obama can and should raise the ante, taking advantage of Russia's weakening economy.  He can ramp up our arming of rebel forces and increased our air support, which the administration has been reluctant to do.  But, to play this hand, President Obama has to buy into the trump cards held by the U.S.
• 
"Bridge of Spies" reveals those cards – the individualism and bloody-minded quest for justice that characterize the best of American heroes, and the freedom that allows such a quest.
• 
Critics will doubtless play up the harsh orders given the U-2 pilots, who were told to destroy their top-secret spy planes and to kill themselves if they risked being caught.
• 
They will draw parallels to today, with politics and bias infecting our law enforcement and courts, and our intelligence operations dancing on the edge of legality.
• 
That we are the good guys in the drama, however, is indisputable.  Those who doubt it should consider the countless people who risked death to escape to the west.
• 
Try to recall the last time the United States had to forcibly prevent people from leaving our country.
• 
We thank Steven Spielberg for telling this story, which might well inform or inspire our leaders.
• 
Let's hope Obama scores a front-row seat, and sits through the show.
      Republicans are at war — with themselves  (NYP 10/10/2015)
• 
Ah, remember the good old days when Republicans only hated Democrats?  Now they hate each other, too.  And apparently with even more venom.
• 
The chew-'em-up-and-spit-'em-out orgy in the House is the political version of a circular firing squad.  The search for ideological purity apparently requires that the car be blown up because it squeaks. 
• 
Numbers-wise, these are the Golden Days of the GOP.  They enjoy big margins in both houses of Congress, a huge advantage in statehouses and a broad, deep and diversified presidential pool.  It's the Democrats who are old and tired.
• 
Yet the Republicans couldn't take yes for an answer and chose fratricide.  Ignoring Ronald Reagan's commandment to never speak ill of a partymate, his would-be heirs adopt the playground attitude of "he hit me first."
• 
Conflict, anger and bitter schisms, where factions fight factions, are becoming as American as apple pie used to be.
• 
Yesterday's fresh face is today's dead wood.  Perhaps we could save time by throwing them out before we put them in.
• 
Politics, of course, only pretends to lead society.  Its role is captured by a tried and true definition of a politician: someone who sees which way the parade is marching and rushes to get in front of it.
• 
That's getting harder to do as the parade marches faster and makes more sudden turns.  The volume of social change is staggering and, driven by technology, the speed is overwhelming.
• 
Like the Republicans, the nation is tearing itself apart without a clear plan for what comes next.
• 
Before we despair, remember that America has had greater, more perilous ruptures.  From the Civil War to the Great Depression, and through all the economic ups and downs and sweeping social changes, predictions that doomsday was imminent always proved premature.
• 
Was that divine destiny?  Or was it because individual Americans summoned their better angels to accept the burden of leadership and unite the nation?
• 
What else are we going to do with our lives except protect and preserve the one indispensable nation?
• 
Your country needs you now.  Otherwise, we soon won't have a country worth preserving.
      Why don't our leaders care?  ISIS threatens to execute 250 Assyrian Christians  (Fox 10/10/2015)
• 
A few days ago ISIS executed three Assyrian Christians, and I bet you haven't heard a thing about it.
• 
... the three Assyrians are predictably crouched in orange jumpsuits as they are forced to state their name and their Christian faith before they are shot in the back of the head.
• 
Before their execution they were literally forced to say "I am a Christian."
• 
They were killed for their faith, yet there remains a prevailing sense of denial in Washington that Christians are particularly threatened.
• 
In fact, there has been dismal – if not, zero — attempts by the United States government to provide special treatment to Syrian and Iraqi Christians who are endangered by the threat of total extinction.
• 
As opposed to joining with the voices of international leaders - like Pope Francis — in calling this a Christian "genocide," our president has again and again avoided even referencing the particular threat being endured by these ancient Christian communities, if not denying it.
• 
Let's be frank: the United States has a Democratic administration and a Republican Congress that doesn't appear to care about a Christian genocide unfolding across the world.
• 
Every act of terror that is met by indifference fuels the resolve of those who believe they can wipe out Christian communities without retaliation.
• 
Now, ISIS is threatening to kill all of them if a ransom isn't paid.  They should never have been able to get them in the first place.
• 
All of this, on our watch and in our generation.
• 
Historians will lament our indifference.
      Charlatans and Sheep: Part III  (JWR 10/09/2015)
• 
The prevailing social dogma of our time — that economic and other disparities among groups are strange, if not sinister — has set off bitter disputes between those who blame genetic differences and those who blame discrimination.
• 
Both sides ignore the possibility that groups themselves may differ in their orientations, their priorities and in what they are prepared to sacrifice for the sake of other things.
• 
Back in the early 19th century, an official of the Russian Empire reported that even the poorest Jews saw to it that their daughters could read, and their homes had at least ten books.
• 
This was at a time when the vast majority of the population of the Russian Empire were illiterate.
• 
During that same era, Thomas Jefferson complained that there was not a single bookstore where he lived.
• 
There is no economic determinism.  People choose what to spend their money on, and what to spend their time on.  Cultures differ.
• 
Those who are celebrating the ghetto culture might consider what the cost is to those being raised in that culture.  And they might reconsider what they are hearing from charlatans parading statistical disparities.
      The cipher in the White House  (JWR 10/09/2015)
• 
... Mr.  Obama promised the United Nations General Assembly earlier this month "a different type of leadership," he prescribed "a leadership strong enough to recognize that nations share common interests and people share a common humanity."
• 
Well-meaning he may be (or not), but he doesn't have a clue about how such leadership would deal with people who do not share the common humanity.
• 
Israel, which has seen pain and death in in every guise, was stunned this week by a round of stabbings and shootings, including the murder of an American and his Israeli wife, seated in their car on the road near Nablus, by Palestinian gunmen who required their four children - aged 9, 7, 4 and 4 months - watch while their mother and father bled out their lives.
• 
The Palestinians celebrated the slaying with what Palestinian newspapers described as "joy" over the "heroics" of the gunmen.
• 
In Washington, the government of the "leader from behind" said it was "monitoring" the violence with a "growing sense of alarm."
• 
"We are deeply concerned about recent violence and escalating tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and we condemn in the strongest terms violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians."
• 
"We call upon all parties to take affirmative steps to restore calm, and refrain from actions and rhetoric that would further escalate tensions." Memo to Israel: "This means you."
• 
Those parents with their four children should have known their presence on the road was a provocation.  Why else assess the not-so-subtle blame for both killer and prey?
• 
President Obama and his friends dismiss as canard the logical conclusion of a reasonable man that this president just doesn't like Jews very much, and scorns Israelis in particular.
• 
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrated with devastating effect his dilemma in getting a fair hearing for Israel at the U.N.  when he observed that only 70 years after the Holocaust, Iran, guaranteed by Mr.  Obama's deal to get a nuclear bomb, threatens anew to annihilate the Jewish state.
• 
There was no response from the General Assembly audience — not a cheer, not even a rumble of aplause, nothing but the silence of frightened churls. 
• 
The same audience had wildly cheered President Obama the day before as he took a victory lap for his deal with the mullahs, and for making sure a docile Congress took nothing away.
• 
The delegates now sat again in stony silence when Mr.  Netanyahu observed that Iran continues to spread fear and terror, opposing every interest of America and the democracies, and works without rest toward establishing dominion over the region.
• 
Worst of all, there was no silence more profound and more frightening than in the ranks of the American delegates.
• 
Mr.  Obama, humiliated by Vladimir Putin's seizure of the initiative in the Middle East, seems not to understand what has happened to him.  No one fears him or respects him.
• 
He has become a harmless cipher in an empty suit in the affairs of serious men.
• 
The nation pays the price.
      Why Ben Carson is right about Jews, the Holocaust and guns  (Fox 10/09/2015)
• 
Dr.  Ben Carson recently asserted that if guns had not been confiscated from Jews then Hitler would have had more trouble orchestrating the Holocaust.
• 
The mindset that Jews surrendered with their guns is far more important than the hardware they turned over: They surrendered the demonstrated intention, at all costs, to resist being deprived of liberty.
• 
Must not we all be ready to sacrifice ourselves to stand in the way of evil?
• 
It was a bad idea for any Jew to have boarded a train.  It was a bad idea for any Jew to have passed through a gate into a camp.  It was a bad idea for any Jew to do any work at any such camp.  It was a bad idea for any Jew to not attempt to crush the skull or scratch out the eyes of any Nazi who turned his back for one moment.
• 
And every bullet that would have been fired into a Nazi coming to a doorway to confiscate a gun from a Jew would have been a sacred bullet.
• 
The wisest answer to a government that insists its citizens disarm is, "Over my dead body." It would seem to be the end of any discussion and the beginning of active, heroic resistance.
• 
... it is very hard to imagine that disempowering citizens by having them render themselves defenseless can lead to anything good.
• 
It is very likely a sign that the culture has fallen ill and that an epidemic of enslavement of one kind or another is on the horizon.
      An Open Letter to President Obama as he travels to Oregon: We hear your deafening silence  (Fox 10/08/2015)
• 
Mr.  President, this past Thursday, Chris Harper Mercer entered a classroom at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, and proceeded to ask his fellow students to stand up if they were Christians.  When they stood, he shot them in the head.
• 
Your remarks lasted slightly over twelve minutes and in those comments you said absolutely nothing about Christians.  Nothing.  A twelve-minute speech and not one word about those who were targeted for execution.
• 
What would you have said, Mr.  President, had the victims been Muslims?  What would you have said had they been targeted because they were transgender, gay, or wearing a hoodie?  Would you have condemned it? 
• 
Would you have called for hate-crimes legislation?  Would you have confronted the ideology that led to the crime?  Would you have lectured us about phobias and bigotry?
• 
Mr.  President, perhaps you can understand why, after we have watched time and time again as Christians are singled out for execution, we are not joining you in celebrating your desire to disarm the citizenry while arming the criminals.
• 
If the solution is a gun free country, then why did this shooting just happen in a "gun free zone?"
• 
Could it be, Mr.  President, that the problem is not guns but rather ideas?  Could it be that preaching victimization and fomenting class resentment is the problem?  Could it be that race baiting and mocking our God and our guns is the problem?  Could it be that belittling Biblical morality and dumbing down the value of life by creating a culture of death is the problem?  Could it be that worshiping government rather than God is the problem?
• 
Mr.  President, you don't stop evil by teaching victimization and revenge.  You stop evil by teaching virtue and repentance.
• 
When you take away a culture's soul, there is nothing to stop the evil that lurks in every human heart.
      Hillary Clinton and your right to self-defense  (Fox 10/08/2015)
• 
She who has ripped into Republicans for seeking political gain from the four American deaths in Benghazi, Libya, now seeks her own political gain from the dozens of murdered children and young adults in Newtown, Connecticut, and Roseburg.
• 
On the heels of the latter and referring to both tragedies, she launched an emotional attack early this week on the two most recent Supreme Court decisions upholding the personal right to keep and bear arms.
• 
She offered to "fix" them should she be elected president.
• 
Her so-called fix consists of a dead-on-arrival legislative proposal making gun manufacturers financially liable for the misuse of their products and an executive order determining the meaning of certain words used in federal statutes.
• 
The liability-shifting proposal is akin to punishing General Motors whenever a drunken driver misuses his Chevy and injures someone.  The courts would surely reject that.
• 
The executive order proposal assaults the Constitution.  Those in the gun sale business must conduct background checks via computer services offered by the FBI.  The background checks look for reports of crimes of violence, domestic violence and mental illness.
• 
We are 13 months from Election Day 2016, and Clinton has already promised that she would rule by pen and phone rather than govern by consensus.
• 
As a lawyer, Clinton should know that only the federal courts — not the president — can decide what statutory language means. 
• 
Moreover, if she knew anything about FBI background checks, she would know that they are only as good as the database on which they rely.  If a madman hides his mental illness, no database will reveal it.
• 
Her attacks on the Supreme Court decisions were direct.  She rejects their characterization of the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right — meaning that it is akin to thought, speech, press, association, worship, travel, etc.
• 
Yet if she were to become president, she would take an oath to uphold the Constitution; that means the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court.  ... She apparently has no intention of fulfilling the presidential oath of office.
• 
We are 13 months from Election Day 2016, and Clinton has already promised that she would not enforce Supreme Court decisions with which she disagrees.
• 
What did both the Newtown and the Roseburg tragedies have in common?  Both murderers were madmen.  Yet neither had a record of mental illness, so the background checks ... would not have prevented either of these killers from buying a gun and using it to murder indiscriminately.
• 
If killers are prepared to murder innocent children, does Clinton really think they would obey the laws regulating gun ownership?
• 
Both mass murders occurred in no-gun zones.  A no-gun zone is the most dangerous place on the planet when a madman intent on killing enters.
• 
No-gun zones are arbitrarily designated on public property by local authorities, stripping law-abiding folks of their lawfully owned guns — their natural right to self-defense — and exposing them to terror and death.
• 
The Constitution does not permit public no-gun zones any more than it does public no-free-speech zones.  If the right to keep and bear arms is truly fundamental, the government cannot interfere with it based on geography.
• 
If the Army veteran/college student who stopped seven bullets with his body last week and saved the lives of his classmates (and survived!) had been permitted to carry a gun into the school building, the madman who murdered nine innocents would have been stopped long before police arrived — long before he completed his killings.
• 
The right to keep and bear arms has more than just the Second Amendment to protect it.  By characterizing the right as fundamental and pre-political ... this right is merely a modern extension of the ancient right to self-defense.
• 
And the right to defend oneself does not come from the government; it comes from our humanity.  It is a natural right.
• 
Who among us, when confronted with the terror of nearly certain annihilation, would concern himself with the niceties of the law?  Life itself is at stake.
• 
The right to self-defense is a manifestation of the natural instinct for survival, borne in the hearts of all rational people.
• 
But Hillary Clinton rejects that instinct because she prefers we become dependent upon the government — as long as she is running it.
• 
The police cannot stop mass killings, because they cannot be everywhere all the time.  And madmen willing to kill do not fear being lawbreakers.  Guns in the hands of the people give not only tyrants second thoughts but also madmen.
      Mr.  Obama, real leadership requires more than just a torrent of talk  (Fox 10/06/2015)
• 
Before barely any facts were known, there was President Obama on camera (when isn't he?) making a 12-minute address — a relatively short time for him — about the school shootings in Roseburg, Oregon.
• 
The president referred to himself 28 times, according to Grabien.com, again proving that whatever happens in this country, or the world, it really is all about him.
• 
He talked about the need for "common sense" gun laws, and yet in the case of the Oregon shootings, as in so many other similar tragedies, he never mentions the responsibility and moral guilt of the shooter.
• 
Someone intent on killing other human beings will not be deterred by more gun laws.  Law-breaking is what criminals do; otherwise they would be law-abiders, a word that applies to responsible gun owners.
• 
And those "gun free zones" are just advertisements to potential killers not to expect armed opposition to their shooting spree.
• 
Perhaps the president might consider telling us what law, short of gun confiscation, would prevent, or substantially reduce, gun violence.
• 
And what of the mentally ill?  The Oregon shooter's neighbors recognized that something was a little off about him, but no one said anything to authorities. 
• 
Every last gun in the shooter's arsenal, according to reports, was legally acquired.
• 
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.  It is a sign that the U.S.  government can't pay its own bills ... I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit."
• 
... a record 94.6 million Americans not in the labor force (the lowest participation rate since 1977 during the Carter administration).
• 
If President Obama were paid according to the number of words he uses, he would be a multi-billionaire.
• 
If that pay were reduced by the number of untruths he told — from "climate change," to federal spending and the debt ceiling and budget, to the supposed effectiveness of more gun laws — he would be broke and in debt, like the nation he so poorly leads.
      Israel’s Lonesome Fight to Protect America  (INN 10/06/2015)
• 
We think it is far away.  But it is closer than we think.  Every stabbing, every firebombing, every gun shot from Palestinian Arabs against Israelis in and around Jerusalem, now happening day after day, is meant for us here in the United States, Jew and Christian alike.
• 
Those Palestinian knives and bullets are meant for us as we comfort ourselves thinking we are protected by geography.  They don't know geography.
• 
They only know how to kill.  They create nothing.  They produce nothing.  They invent nothing.  They contribute nothing.  They have no heart and they choose the best, the most beautiful among us to do the most harm and spill the most blood.  They laugh and rejoice at their own deeds of depravity.
• 
It is difficult to think of them as human.  There are no signs of it.
• 
The jihadist Palestinian murderers – they make no distinction among man, woman or child.  Borders mean nothing to them.  Watch them as they swarm one country after another.  These same men intoxicated by jihad in Israel have their crazed eyes set on America.  They have already taken Europe.  What happens in Israel does not stay in Israel.
• 
On 9/11 we were warned, but still we think it is Israel that has a problem.  Not our business, we say.
• 
No, we have the same problem and it is very much our business if we care about the wellbeing of the United States.
• 
Their debauched customs are nothing new in Israel and are becoming familiar within our own country of open borders.
• 
Schools in America now try to drop allegiance to the American flag for fear that it may offend or "exclude" others.
• 
The FBI tells us that there are jihadist terror cells in every state.  Is this enough?  No, 200,000 more of them are being brought in.
• 
Are they harmless?  But even if only one causes us harm our government has failed its sworn duty to preserve and protect.
• 
If you care about the safety, prosperity, liberty and security of the United States of America, it is your patriotic duty to support Israel with all your heart, your soul and your might.  Israel and only Israel stands at our frontier to fight our fight, which it does every day.
• 
The BBC was not troubled by Jewish blood running through the streets of Jerusalem.  Nor was the BBC troubled by Jewish tears throughout the Land.
• 
Those images were not shown – only sullen and inconvenienced Arabs were on display.
• 
The EU is troubled.  Those ministers never miss a chance to blame "both sides" when it is only one side that does the killing.
• 
In fact nearly the entire gutless world keeps shaking hands with Fanatical Islamic Terrorism in order to pretend that nothing is happening, and if it is, let someone else, let Israel – let the Jewish State stand and fight for us so that we can sit back and worry about Palestinian Arabs being so terribly inconvenienced.
      Our mental health system is shattered, on its knees and a profound national embarrassment  (Fox 10/05/2015)
• 
The recent mass shooting in Oregon might well have been prevented if the mental health care system were appropriately robust and paid special attention to those at risk for violence.
• 
... psychiatrists must be placed back at the center of the mental health care system.
• 
Psychiatrists are trained during four years of college (preparing to meet stringent medical school admission requirements), four years of medical school and four years of residency training in hospitals to properly diagnose mental disorders, properly consider the impact of underlying medical problems on those disorders and properly balance the potential impact of treatments, including psychotherapy and psychopharmacology and new technologies...
• 
Social workers, psychologists, nurses and non-psychiatry physicians can each have an extremely important role to play in rendering care to psychiatric patients, but they should not be the orchestrators of such care.
• 
Largely to save money, insurance companies are most responsible for decimating the mental health care system in America by demanding such low payment scales that social workers and nurses have been trying to do the heroic work of trying to act like psychiatrists, while psychologists have been agitating for the right to prescribe medications so they can make more money and while internal medicine physicians and family physicians have too often tried to treat complex mental illnesses with medications alone, ignoring the fact that psychological factors fuel those illnesses and must be addressed.
• 
The pharmaceutical industry has vigorously pursued this downstream transfer of knowledge — with online "educational" symposia, for example — to place as much prescribing power in the hands of non-psychiatrists as possible.
• 
A psychiatrist, therefore, should be — by state legislation — available to any psychiatric patient, no matter what that person's insurance coverage. 
• 
That psychiatrist should be — by legislation — compensated not only for quick medication visits, but also as the coordinator of the patient's care, being duty-bound to check in and advise on the work of anyone treating a psychiatric condition.
• 
This coordinator role should include not only paid outreach to counselors, social workers, nurses or internal medicine (or other) physicians by phone or confidential email, but also actual, hour-long meetings with each patient, not less than monthly (even if medication visits by the psychiatrist are ongoing at the rather indefensible clip of 10 or 15 minutes a month).
• 
The practice of medication management being limited to once every 90 days by insurance companies should be prohibited by law.
• 
In order to prevent psychiatrists from emerging from training only prepared to write prescriptions, psychiatry residency training programs should not be certified if they do not provide sufficient training to residents in psychotherapy techniques.
• 
It is a profound loss to the American people that a profession based in empathy has been coerced to abandon its listening arts in favor of turning out many graduating psychiatrists who have never been in psychotherapy themselves and do not know how to perform it reliably, either.
• 
Non-psychiatrist clinicians (other than psychologists) should also be advised by state departments of public health that it is undesirable for them to treat complex cases of major mental illness without the direct supervision of a psychiatrist.
• 
The only real reason such contact is now made while a person is being treated is so that insurance companies can pressure psychiatry units into prematurely discharging patients.
• 
Once a decision to admit the patient has been made, the insurer should get out of the way and prepare to pay the bill.
• 
Intermediate care "crisis units" should be established in much greater numbers within community mental health centers and in as many private hospitals as wish to create them.
• 
... I propose that each inpatient hospitalization result in a complete psychiatric history being generated that includes documentation of outreach to outpatient clinicians currently treating the individuals, outreach to prior outpatient clinicians who have treated the individuals, interviews with at least two first-degree relatives and a psychological history and plan that focuses on defining both the emotional forces and the medical issues that may have impacted the patient in the past and may be impacting the patient currently. 
• 
Sadly, most inpatient hospitalizations are no more today than a rush to switch medications and get patients to "contract for safety" (to promise they won't kill themselves or others — even if they don't mean it) so they can be thrown out by insurance company reviewers and the clinicians who too often blindly do their bidding.
• 
The current knowledge base available to identify the relatively small percentage of psychiatric patients at risk to commit violence toward others is woefully inadequate.
• 
Prior to discharge of any patient who is rated as a significant risk for lethal violence toward others, a consultation by a forensic psychiatrist or psychologist should be obtained.
• 
Because many psychiatric patients who have been violent in the past (or who are clearly at risk for violence) refuse treatment as outpatients, states should be encouraged to rapidly pass legislation that allows for "outpatient commitment" of such individuals when stringent standards for dangerousness are met.
• 
This would allow clinicians (or concerned family members working with a clinician) to rapidly petition courts to enforce psychotherapy and medication treatment in the community and immediately hospitalize those individuals who discontinue such treatment.
• 
We have allowed the disassembling of the mental health care in America, giving into the lowest common denominator of treatments and handing control of our gutted system to insurance companies and drug manufacturers.
• 
... such a shoddy system of care would never be allowed to exist in the world of cardiology or endocrinology or oncology.
• 
Four days ago ten people were killed by yet another man whom I believe we will learn was mentally ill and inadequately treated.
• 
Enough is enough.  Calls for gun control miss the mark, entirely.  Mental illness is rampant in our society, and we have no real system with which to fight it.
      Why Hillary Clinton's gun control proposal is all wrong  (Fox 10/05/2015)
• 
Hillary Clinton took a page from President Obama's playbook Monday, vowing that as president she will bypass Congress and use executive action to change how guns can be purchased.
• 
She is angry that Republicans "refuse to do anything" about mass shootings.
• 
But that isn't accurate.  Clinton isn't the only one to speak out boldly on this topic.
• 
On Saturday, Donald Trump said: "And by the way, it was a gun-free zone.  ... I'll tell you, if you had a couple of the teachers or someone with guns in that room, you would have been a hell of a lot better off."
• 
The Republican push has at least the virtue of potentially stopping these crimes. 
• 
With these killers explicitly picking places where victims are defenseless, at some point it should be impossible to ignore.
• 
Clinton's proposals wouldn't have stopped these attacks.  The "universal" background checks on private transfers may raise the cost of law-abiding citizens getting guns.
• 
Clinton is proposing three other measures:
• 
1.  Prohibiting domestic abusers and stalkers from buying and possessing guns.  This sounds reasonable, but the change from existing law would allow people to have their guns taken from them without a court hearing.
• 
2.  Closing the "Charleston Loophole," where the federal background check worker didn't contact the right law enforcement agencies. 
• 
Roof allegedly planned his attack for at least six months, so it's hard to believe he couldn't have figured out some way to obtain a gun.  Indeed, he stole the gun he used in this attack.
• 
3.  Repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prevents the manufacturers and dealers of firearms from being held liable for crimes committed with their weapons.  ... Among the offending characteristics listed are low price, easy concealability, corrosion resistance and high firepower.  Suing an industry for making affordable products shows how far the liability-litigation madness has gone.
• 
The lawsuits were simply an attempt to raise the costs of doing business and to bankrupt the companies.  Hillary may claim she cares about the poor, but poor people in the highest-crime areas benefit the most from gun ownership, and they are the people who would be priced out of owning guns for protection.
• 
Vowing to do something concrete about mass public shootings on the campaign trail may be popular.  But Clinton's proposed gun-control solutions refuse to address the obvious problem of gun-free zones and will make ultimately make Americans less safe.
      Military should reverse decision against Green Beret who confronted child rapist  (Fox 10/05/2015)
• 
You know something is horribly amiss when a Green Beret in the U.S.  military is forced out of service to his country because he pushed a child rapist to the ground after confronting him in Afghanistan.
• 
The men and women serving our country in the military deserve our empathy, not this sort of egregious slap in the face.
• 
The Department of Defense is increasingly rife with political correctness, causing unmanageable ambiguity.
• 
Moral absolutes are not recognized at even the highest levels — even when it comes to child rape — or they are simply ignored altogether.
• 
This is dangerous and unfair, particularly for our special operators at the tip of the spear.
• 
In 2011, Martland and his team leader confronted an Afghan local police commander accused of chaining a little boy to a bed, raping him repeatedly for days on end, and then beating his mother after she reported the abuse to authorities.
• 
When the man laughed it off, Martland and his team leader, Capt.  Dan Quinn, slammed him to the ground and then threw him out of the camp "to make sure that he fully understood that if he ever went near that boy or his mother again, there was going to be hell to pay."
• 
For that response, Martland received a markdown in his performance evaluation, which led to involuntary separation.  Quinn has already left the military.
• 
Many appropriate responses are available to the command in a situation like this, but a bad performance evaluation is not one of them.
• 
In fact, after verbal counseling, Martland should have received a handshake for confronting heinous evil and doing something about it.
• 
Yes, he is under authority and must act accordingly, but he is also a soldier with a crystal-clear sense of right and wrong who is trained to fight for the oppressed.
• 
Every culture is different and should be afforded respect, but we are in a very bad place if we can't recognize that some acts are just wrong across all cultures. 
• 
Fundamental freedoms, such as life and liberty, come not from government but from our Creator.
• 
"You cannot try to impose American values and American norms onto the Afghan culture because they're completely different... We do not have any power or the ability to use our hands to compel them to be what we see as morally better."
• 
More chilling words could hardly be spoken.  Is child rape now just something that only Americans "think" is wrong?  If acts that evil are morally up for grabs, how do we even identify who America's enemies are?
• 
It's one thing to refrain from imposing every American value on another culture; it is quite another to abdicate our responsibility to respond to clear evil.
• 
The military should right this wrong quickly, not only to exonerate Martland, but to reclaim its moral compass.
      Mythical creatures abound on gun control  (Fox 10/05/2015)
• 
One of the reasons that business is so good for false prophets in politics these days is that it works so well – at least when it comes to raising money and winning elections.
• 
To listen to the president, one would have assumed that there was a piece of legislation or a serious proposal under consideration that would have prevented the most recent campus killings.
• 
In this version, Republicans are too scared, stupid and corrupt to allow this "common sense" legislation to advance.  But that's not the case. 
• 
There were lapses in the application of existing laws and failures to report obvious mental illnesses, certainly, but not one used a private sale to circumvent the law.
• 
The president knows about these disconnections.  But, he argued Thursday, it is appropriate to politicize the moments that refocus public attention on the issue of gun laws.  Well, maybe.
• 
It's certainly fine to use a searing incident to advance legislation to prevent its recurrence.
• 
But it's neither wise nor appropriate to exploit a tragedy for achieving a substantially unrelated goal.
• 
But don't placate your political base and stoke contributors on the grounds that you have a solution.  And certainly don't do so with the deaths of citizens as props.
• 
A ban and mass confiscations might work (or it might not) but at least it is on topic.
• 
But is the president really ready to lead the fight for a constitutional amendment to allow such a thing?
• 
Or wreck the remainder of his presidency in a legal fight over the Second Amendment he would surely lose?
      Dear 'Gun Free Zone' Campus Wizards: Nine Kids Died Because Of Your Stupid Policy  (Townhall, 10/04/2015)
• 
Three things, in particular, were ticking us off regarding this senseless slaughter. 
• 
Another "Gun Free Zone" Epic Fail.
• 
Christians Were Targeted. 
• 
Apparently Only One Dude Out Of A Couple Of Dozen Fought Back.
• 
If there had been a good guy with a gun on campus, who was trained, licensed and allowed to carry, he could have sent that murderous spawn of Satan to an early hell where he could slow roast for all eternity.
• 
If I were one of the parents who had my child senselessly slaughtered on your campus, I'd sue your politically correct butt off.  I think places like yours should no longer be left off the litigious hook.  You're culpable because you could have prevented and yet ... you didn't.
• 
Oh, I'm sorry.  I forgot.  You did do all you could do.  Silly me.  You had one Barney Fife security cop with pepper spray and a plastic badge to protect 3000 students when a mass-murderer, with multiple weapons, strode onto your campus ready to kill.
• 
Speaking of your security guard, where the heck was he when the crap was hitting the fan?  Do tell. 
• 
This is simple: Gun Free Zones are target rich environments.
• 
Dear Christian: Next time a killer asks you, "Are you a Christian?", please kill that SOB for us all.
• 
Oh, and by the way, Obama didn't seem to make too big of a deal over Christians being picked out and slaughtered, did he?
• 
Can you imagine his response if it were Muslim kids that were targeted?
• 
What has happened to our culture that one, lone Army vet, namely, Chris Mitz, fought back heroically trying to save other students.  Sure he got shot, but there is no telling how many lives he saved grappling with the gun- wielding goon.
• 
Parents, pastors and mentors please ... for the love of God ... teach your charges that there is this thing called "sacrifice" and that it is a virtue, especially when utilized in the saving of another precious life.
• 
... there should be "Mass-Murder Drills" mandated in all schools too daft to allow for concealed weapons.
• 
... why not?  In my day, we had them for fire and tornadoes.  Mass-murderers are killing way more than fire and twisters are so ... why not have a plan for when a whiny dillweed disgraces your campus with ill-intent?
• 
One shooter cannot take on a classroom of thirty who won't put up with his crap.
• 
... the above is not pretty or pleasant, but when foul zombies can walk into a classroom and kill innocent college students ... the gloves have officially come off. 
• 
... until we allow credible and licensed, proven and protective profs and students to carry a weapon on campus, we will see this murderous madness occur again and again and again. 
      What Obama doesn't understand about Oregon shooter Chris Mercer  (Fox 10/02/2015)
• 
Chris Harper Mercer, the man who killed nine people in Oregon yesterday, was almost certainly profoundly mentally ill.
• 
According to neighbors, Mercer isolated himself from others, communicated largely through the Internet and lived in the basement of his mother's house...
• 
And he reportedly left a note at the scene of his rampage yesterday stating he had no girlfriend and no life and would be welcomed in Hell and embraced by the devil.
• 
... these details, if true, may point to conditions like schizoid personality disorder, Asperberger's syndrome or even schizophrenia...
• 
Violence of the kind perpetrated by Chris Mercer is always preventable through a combination of psychotherapy, proper medications and hospitalizations when needed. 
• 
Period.  There is no exception.
• 
... outreach and screening systems could be put in place that would be neither prohibitively expensive, nor an impingement on anyone's liberty.
• 
One of the hurdles in the way of building a system to prevent killings like those that occurred in Oregon is that politicians like President Obama turn such tragedies into reprehensible calls for gun control, rather than proper calls to rebuild the mental health care system.
• 
Somehow, the uncontrolled psychiatric symptoms of one man should justify, in the president's mind, curtailing the liberties of all men.
• 
If the president had a son like Chris Mercer, believe me, he would not be content to have his ill son live in a country where he could not procure firearms quite as easily.
• 
He would want his son's disorder definitively diagnosed and definitively treated.  That would be, after all, the humane thing and the right thing to do.
• 
Instead, the president, through his utterly absurd public comments after this tragedy, argues for an America where men like Chris Mercer (of which there are many, many thousands who will never hurt a soul) are free to live lives of terrible desperation and suffering in the shadowy basements of suburban homes, lost in delusions and wandering the streets.
• 
Fixing things, for real, is always harder than burying them, whether for convenience or to achieve political gain. 
• 
The president's proposed solution to the rash of mass shootings plaguing our nation, which have been due almost exclusively to mental illness, would be no solution at all.
      Stop the insanity: Suspend America's Refugee Resettlement Program  (Fox 09/29/2015)
• 
While refugees are brought into the country at American taxpayer's expense, their placement and selection – including from which country – is unduly influenced by the United Nations and contracted private organizations.
• 
Information is hard to obtain about the resettlement program as the private agencies who are awarded millions of dollars in federal contracts to facilitate refugee resettlement are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 
• 
One would assume that faith-based groups would give consideration to those persecuted for their faith.  However – according to the data I have seen – despite the many Christians who face the constant threat of beheadings, burnings, slavery and property confiscation, fewer than five percent of the refugees are Christian.
• 
Many small towns in the U.S.  have suddenly found themselves flooded with hundreds and sometimes thousands of foreign refugees who overwhelm their school districts, hospitals, health care facilities, jails and local and state welfare programs.
• 
... among Middle East refugees accepted into the U.S.  between 2008 and 2013, 91 percent received food stamps, 73 percent received Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance and 68 percent received cash welfare payments.
• 
Alarmingly, criminals and terrorists can exploit this refugee loophole by taking advantage of insufficient screening and vetting before entering the U.S.  In fact, ISIS is already doing so.
• 
We already accept 70,000 refugees each and every year.
• 
Mr.  Obama has now agreed to take in at least 10,000 Syrian refugees and is likely to take many tens of thousands more. 
• 
Over 70 percent of these Syrian refugees are males between the age of 20 and 30, the exact people who should be fighting for their own country, while only 13 percent are women and 15 percent children.
• 
The radical jihadi attacks in Garland, Texas and Chattanooga, Tenn.  demonstrate that the risk to America is real.
• 
America is a compassionate, giving nation.  We are spending billions to help displaced individuals around the world, including providing medical and nutritional aid.
• 
There is much we can do to provide safe havens for these refugees near their own homelands so that when the crisis ends they can return to their homeland.
• 
What we should not be doing is inviting the problems of the Middle East into the United States.
• 
Witnessing the prevalent radical Islamic terrorist activity in Western Europe and the growing incidence of the same in the U.S., one has to wonder about the wisdom of continuing this dangerous program and its serious security and budgetary consequences.
• 
Let's take a long hard look at this policy before we continue along a path which might prove perilous for our children and our grandchildren.
      It's time to unleash the power of American oil  (Fox 09/28/2015)
• 
Putin is a bully.  He only understands force.  That force can come just as effectively from a barrel of oil as from the barrel of a gun.  President Obama should back up his talk by unleashing the power of American oil to compel Russia's cooperation.
• 
American energy is a master resource, a powerful tool that could be used against belligerent nations like Russia and Iran.  President Obama has been far too eager to reject that tool or trade it away.
• 
Our self-imposed limit gives Russia an added advantage to use oil to fund its aggression.  Keeping American oil out of the global market helps keep international prices high, which helps to fund Putin's belligerence.
• 
Allowing U.S.  crude oil exports would concretely, and immediately, empower America's allies and undermine our adversaries.
• 
Lower oil prices over the past year have hit the Russian economy hard and caused trouble for Putin's ambitions.  More American oil could add to his troubles by increasing global supply.
• 
The Obama administration is preparing to let Iran recapture much of that lost revenue and to reassert itself on the world stage.  Some of the money will also end up in the pockets of the terrorists Iran supports.
• 
The president compounds the problem by refusing to let America's oil compete.  Iran soon will be able to export four times as much oil as America does.
• 
Energy can be deployed to restrain the ambitions of our enemies and support our allies around the world.
• 
When President Obama has dealt with Russia, he has been too hesitant to use the economic power of American oil and natural gas.
• 
When the president was negotiating with Iran, he freed Iran's oil producers at the same time he has refused to free America's.
• 
America must not concede world oil markets to belligerent nations like Russia and Iran.  We have the energy resources to stand up to these hostile countries.  Now is the time to use these resources.
      Pope Francis is neither liberal nor conservative, a Democrat or a Republican.  He is a Catholic  (Fox 09/27/2015)
• 
Adams and most of his fellow founding fathers believed that American liberty and what he called "Popery" were incompatible.  He thought that Catholicism was a tyrannical religious system that required its followers to pay ultimate homage to the Pope. 
• 
Catholicism's "religious authority in the Western world, including its incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself," Adams once said, kept "human nature chained fast for ages in cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude to him [the Pope], and his subordinate tyrants."
• 
Pundits and commentators insist on trying to comprehend Francis's message in political terms.  This is a wrongheaded approach.
• 
Our propensity for trying to place the Pope in a political box says more about our culture than it does about the social views of the Catholic Church.
• 
Marxists were criticized for thinking about the world in solely economic terms.  Americans should be criticized for thinking about the world solely in political terms.
• 
When people agree with what the Pope is saying they describe him as a "spiritual leader," but when they disagree with his views they say he is "getting too political."
• 
He said that life is complex.  He urged us to avoid demonizing those with whom we disagree.  Common ground is possible, but it will require a different way of thinking about the moral issues that often define our politics.
• 
When Francis talks about these things, he is not being "political." Catholicism is not just a religion — it is an all-encompassing way of making sense of the world that is informed by the Bible and the traditional teachings of the church over the centuries.
      Redistribution: The Unconquerable Delusion  (JWR 09/25/2015)
• 
It's fitting that Pope Francis should have invoked Dorothy Day among his pantheon of great Americans...  The left's delusions of "social justice" seem indomitable — impervious to evidence.
• 
The pope lauded Day for "her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, (which) were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints."
• 
Let's assume that Day's motives were as pure as Pope Francis described: Does having the right motives excuse everything?
• 
Day was a supporter of Fidel Castro and found very kind things to say about North Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh.  She visited Leonid Brezhnev in the Kremlin and leant her moral support to other communist regimes despite their persecution of Catholics and others.
• 
According to "The Black Book of Communism," between 1959 and the late 1990s, more than 100,000 (out of about 10 million) Cubans spent time in the island's gulag.  Between 15,000 and 19,000 were shot.
• 
In 1958, Cuba had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.
• 
Today, as the liberal New Republic describes it: "The buildings in Havana are literally crumbling, many of them held upright by two-by-fours.  Even the cleanest bathrooms are fetid, as if the country's infrastructural bowels might collectively evacuate at any minute."
• 
This left-leaning pope (who failed to stand up for the Cuban dissidents who were arrested when attempting to attend a mass he was conducting) and our left-leaning president have attributed Cuba's total failure to the U.S.
• 
It's critically important to care about the poor — but if those who claim to care for the poor and the oppressed stand with the oppressors, what are we to conclude?
• 
Much is made of Pope Francis' Argentine origins — the fact that the only kind of capitalism he's experienced is of the crony variety.
• 
Has this pope or Obama taken a moment to see what Hugo Chavez's socialist/populist Venezuela has become?  Chavez and his successor (like Castro, like Lenin, like Mao) promised huge redistribution from the rich to the poor.
• 
There have indeed been new programs for the poor, but the economy has been destroyed.  The leader of the opposition was just thrown in jail.  Meanwhile, the shops have run out of flour, oil, toilet paper and other basics.
• 
If you want moral credit for caring about the poor, when, oh when, do you ever have to take responsibility for what happens to the poor when leftists take over?
• 
We know what actually lifts people out of poverty: property rights, the rule of law, free markets.
• 
Not only do those things deliver the fundamentals that people need to keep body and soul together, but they accomplish this feat without a single arrest, persecution or show trial.
      State dinner for China's Xi Jinping is bad diplomacy and bad for America  (Fox 09/25/2015)
• 
"Xi is obsessed with strategic rivalry with the United States."
• 
"The summit won't produce progress on strategic matters."
• 
... why is President Obama even meeting with Xi on Friday?
• 
American policymakers believe that dialogue is always good and that we should continue searching for solutions with Beijing.
• 
Take China's cyberespionage, for instance.  Instead of imposing sanctions on Chinese enterprises using stolen information for competitive purposes — as sources indicated the administration was considering — the White House has decided to try once again to put in place an agreement with Beijing.
• 
Xi, on the other hand, approaches summits from a different perspective.  He expects a "profound exchange of views," his code for President Obama and him talking past each other, and it's likely he will try to stall resolution of issues high on the American agenda.
• 
Xi is making the trip to the American capital not to reach understandings with Obama or ink historic agreements.  He is coming to Washington so China Central Television, the state broadcaster, can carry images of the South Lawn welcoming ceremony, the 21-gun salute, and North Portico state dinner.
• 
Those images are intended to impress the Chinese people by showing the world's most powerful democracy respecting their leader.  In short, by according the full honors of a state visit to Xi, America is conferring legitimacy on the Communist Party of China.
• 
Democracies rarely think about legitimization because they are inherently legitimate.  One-party states, on the other hand, focus on the matter all the time, because they are not.
• 
So let's save the pomp and pageantry for some figure who deserves it.  The Communist Party is engaged in a rivalry with the U.S.-led international system and, more important, a long-term argument with the Chinese people. 
• 
So if we help any side it should not be Xi's.  Let's, for once, get on the right side of history.
      Boehner resigns: The one thing you must understand about the Speaker's decision  (Fox 09/25/2015)
• 
Conservatives knew they could not do business with Boehner, but it became increasingly obvious that no one else could do business with him either if they were not already in his club.
• 
Boehner lost the ability to bully conservatives because outside conservative groups started making those guys heroes and household names for standing up to him.
• 
And now the Speaker had closed his doors not just to social conservatives, but fiscal conservatives and war hawks.  All he had left were a small group of moderates and the assistance of the Democrats. 
• 
He could not survive a motion to vacate the chair with that.  He had to resign.
• 
John Boehner is out not because of bad deals, but because of bad manners.  He wanted to be Speaker of the House, but increasingly only acted as Speaker for those members of congress he liked.
• 
Had Boehner and his staff just treated his Republican members of congress nicely, this would not have happened.
      Ben Carson's warning  (Fox 09/24/2015)
• 
"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits." (Matthew 7:15-16)
• 
"No, I don't.  I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation."
• 
Carson critics are quick to mention Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits a "religious test" for office, but that means no one can be barred from office because of their faith; it does not and could not prevent citizens from voting for or against someone for religious reasons.
• 
Two years ago, The U.S.  Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that 10 of the 15 "worst violators of religious freedom" in the world are nations in which Islam is the dominant religion.
• 
... "that mass immigration by Muslims is altering the culture of Europe because of their reluctance to join the culture of their new homelands."
• 
... claims Muslims do not so much enhance European culture as supplant it, and are "patiently conquering Europe's cities, street by street."
• 
Is that bigotry, or reality?  Is it bigotry to quote what various Islamic leaders say are their intentions when it comes to establishing a worldwide caliphate and replacing the U.S.  Constitution with Sharia Law, or is it a warning we should take seriously and respond to as we would react to any other invasion?
• 
"The mullahs are buying time ... (to) finish their nuclear program.  Americans underestimate these people.  It will be Hezbollah, ISIS, or al-Qaida doing their dirty work.  They will give them the nuclear bomb.  They are very shrewd.  They'll sit back and watch."
• 
... the Iranian regime has been a huge supporter of President Obama, whose name in Persian, she notes, translates as "he is with us."
• 
... why Arab and Muslim countries don't take in the migrants now fleeing their native lands for Europe (and now thanks to President Obama the U.S.).
• 
It's a good question and the answer ought to be obvious to anyone not afraid of being labeled a "bigot." They support the invasion. 
• 
... "respondents overwhelmingly support the Islamic State terrorist group, with 81 percent voting 'YES' on whether they approved of ISIS's conquests in the region."
• 
We are at war with a radical ideology that wishes to destroy the West and drastically alter our way of life.
• 
That is what Ben Carson was getting at when he made his remarks about a Muslim president in the White House.
      It's the pope, Mr.  Obama, where are your manners?  (Fox 09/23/2015)
• 
President Obama threw a big shin-dig for Pope Francis and the guest list caused all sorts of controversy.
• 
A gaggle of gay activists were invited to scarf down cocktail weenies at the White House — along with an openly gay Episcopal bishop and some pro-abortion Catholics.
• 
"President Obama has stacked the deck against Pope Francis by allowing the inviting of an ‘A list' of infamous American Catholics to meet the Holy Father when he arrives in the United States."
• 
"The move, intended to make a political statement, is being perceived as rude and challenging, but there's little doubt Pope Francis will handle the moment well."
• 
"When you invite the head of the Catholic Church — the pope — you should treat him as an honored guest.  It is not a time to embarrass him by inviting people who have been very outspoken in their criticism of the Church."
• 
"It's like hosting a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and setting up an open bar or it's like inviting the prime minister of India — who is a Hindu — and serving ribeye steak.  There are some things you just don't do.  It's called manners."
• 
"Is there no end to the lengths the president will go in order to push his sinful agenda.  This is disgraceful and obviously inappropriate."
• 
Now, the way I see it, the president is free to invite whomever he wants to the White House.
• 
Just a few weeks ago they had the King of Saudi Arabia drop by for a howdy-do.
• 
I wonder how many Muslim feminists and LGBT activists were invited to that get-together?
      If Republicans really want to win in 2016, they've gotta change  (Fox 09/21/2015)
• 
Democrats have an advantage.  European-style democratic socialism offers plausible sounding, even if tragically flawed, solutions.
• 
Clinton has a fresh list of free stuff and wrong-headed mandates for private business, even though two generations of handouts and affirmative action have failed to raise the African-American living standards to anywhere near parity with other Americans.
• 
Palliatives nearly always fail — subsidized student loans, grants and government coerced minority and low-income enrollment have driven tuition costs out of sight.  Medicare prescription drug coverage for seniors has accelerated the rise in drug prices.
• 
For conservatives to win, they must offer understandable proposals that get to the root causes of job loss, student debt, unaffordable health care, and remaining discrimination — or they simply won't triumph at the box office.
• 
Globalization is victimizing many Americans by driving down wages and pushing too many workers into the contingent economy — where they work erratic hours, get poor benefits and face zero job security.
• 
Trade agreements with China and others have offered virtually unimpeded access to U.S.  markets, while foreign governments target American jobs with artificially cheap currencies, subsidies and discriminatory regulations.
• 
GOP candidates must promise to do whatever it takes to eradicate the $500 billion trade deficit and restore 4 million good paying jobs.
• 
No matter what they earn, Americans increasingly are up against monopoly abuse.  Each year computer and communications technologies become less costly but home cable bills rocket, banks pay hardly any interest for deposits but still charge double digit interest rates on credit cards, hospitals and drug manufactures enjoy government subsidies but extort prices a Pharaoh couldn't afford, and fuel prices may be down but air travel becomes more expensive and uncomfortable.
• 
Big businesses in all these sectors have merged and acquired smaller competitors, snuffed out competition and jacked up prices.  In the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, the GOP should promise to bust up monopolies and get ordinary folks a fair shake in the marketplace.
      Ann Coulter Comes out of the Closet  (INN 09/20/2015)
• 
These items happen to be books – books that were written by Ann Coulter.  I needed to find them to trash them or burn them.
• 
Too bad.  Because she happens to be a fine, witty writer, a strong Conservative – a gal after my own heart.
• 
That is why this hurt, like a kick in the gut – from a valued and trusted friend.
• 
If that is what she is thinking – what about the rest of them who are my trusted political allies?
• 
Disturbed that Israel was getting too much favorable attention at Wednesday's GOP Debate (at most, four mentions by my count) she went live on twitter to chastise the candidates: "How many f — ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?" Was she sharing a personal or a public point of view?
• 
I am stumped.  I am also worried.  I certainly feel betrayed.  What I feel mostly is this – lonely.  I know.  Sounds strange.
• 
But when someone like this, someone like Ann, turns on you – now whom do you trust?  Who's coming out next?
• 
When you lose your trust, your trust in people, that is the beginning of sadness and loneliness.
• 
It's bad enough that I am at odds with my Leftist acquaintances, but now I feel estranged from the Right.  Are we really on the same side?
• 
Or is this what they too are thinking – "f — ing Jew?"
• 
This can lead you to think that truly you are alone and that everyone around you (politically speaking at least) is false.
• 
You will always be special, and not in a good way, but in Ann Coulter's way.
• 
But would she ever say that about people who practice other faiths?  Show me that courage and that tweet.
• 
It takes no courage to be politically incorrect against the Jews.  They won't riot or chop your head off.  Worst they will do is quit buying your books.
• 
Where do we turn when we can't go Left or Right?  That, friends, is loneliness, and I say "friends" carefully.
      Martians Stone Jew to Death  (INN 09/18/2015)
• 
... according to the New York Times.  "Jewish Man Dies as Rocks Pelt His Car in West Bank," the headline announced.  Look at that language.  Notice how there are no Arabs, no Palestinians, no attackers at all; the car is "pelted" by rocks, but not by anybody in particular.
• 
... recently there have been rock-throwing incidents, "mostly by Palestinian youths."
• 
"Mostly?" So in other words, Palestinian rock-throwing attacks are only part of the problem?  Jewish rock-throwers have been attacking Palestinian cars?
• 
"Crude incendiary devices?" That's a code-word for firebombs.  ... A "crude incendiary device" was thrown by Palestinians at her car.  She suffered severe burns to more than 50 percent of her body.  Think for a moment about the pain she will endure for years, perhaps decades, to come.
• 
"Their only weapons to press for independence?" Independence from what?  It's been 20 years since Israel withdrew from the cities where 98 percent of the Palestinians live.  They are ruled by the Palestinian Authority, not Israel.  They're not fighting for "independence." They're trying to murder Jews.
• 
"Defend themselves against Israeli forces during confrontations?" But the Palestinian are the ones who initiate those confrontations.  They throw rocks and "crude incendiary devices" at the Israelis.  They are not "defending themselves"; they are the aggressors.
• 
Throwing rocks is a "rite of passage?" ... Palestinian society is so barbaric that stoning Jews to death is acceptable, praiseworthy, and almost obligatory.
• 
You wouldn't know it from reading the New York Times, but Alexander Levlovich is the 16th Israeli, some of them dual Israeli-American citizens, to be murdered by Palestinian rock-throwers since the 1980s.
• 
Who remembers their names?  Who cares about their widows and orphans?  When will American Jewish organizations step up and make this into a major issue?
      Why Have Elections?  (JWR 09/17/2015)
• 
What is even more remarkable is that, after six years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally, under a glib egomaniac in the White House, so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor.
• 
No doubt much of the stampede of Republican voters toward Mr.  Trump is based on their disgust with the Republican establishment.
• 
It is easy to understand why there would be pent-up resentments among Republican voters.  But are elections held for the purpose of venting emotions?
• 
Elections, however, have far more lasting, and far more serious — or even grim — consequences than emotional venting.
• 
The actual track record of crowd-pleasers, whether Juan Peron in Argentina, Obama in America or Hitler in Germany, is very sobering, if not painfully depressing.
• 
The media seem to think that participation in elections is a big deal.  But turnout often approaches 100 percent in countries so torn by bitter polarization that everyone is scared to death of what will happen if the other side wins.
• 
Despite many people who urge us all to vote, as a civic duty, the purpose of elections is not participation.  The purpose is to select individuals for offices, including President of the United States.
• 
Whoever has that office has our lives, the lives of our loved ones and the fate of the entire nation in his or her hands.
• 
An election is not a popularity contest, or an award for showmanship.  If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter.
• 
And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on election day is stay home.  Otherwise your vote, based on whims or emotions, is playing Russian roulette with the fate of this nation.
• 
All the hoopla over Donald Trump is distracting attention from a large field of other candidates, some of whom have outstanding track records as governors, where they demonstrated courage, character and intelligence.
• 
After the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, we are entering an era when people alive at this moment may live to see a day when American cities are left in radioactive ruins.
• 
We need all the wisdom, courage and dedication in the next president — and his or her successors — to save us and our children from such a catastrophe.
• 
The ultimate danger lies in the voting public themselves.  All too many signs point to an electorate including many people who are grossly uninformed or, worse yet, misinformed.
• 
The very fact that the voting age was lowered to 18 shows the triumph of the vision of elections as participatory rituals, rather than times for fateful choices.
• 
If anything, the age might have been raised to 30, since today millions of people in their 20s have never even had the responsibility of being self-supporting, to give them some sense of reality.
• 
We can only hope that the months still remaining before the first primary elections next year will allow voters to get over their emotional responses and concentrate on the life and death implications of choosing the next President of the United States.
      Iran: America, this is your last chance to stop a bad deal  (Fox 09/15/2015)
• 
You can tell your senator that verification of the deal will be even harder than anyone realizes — thanks in part to Edward Snowden.
• 
I say this as a former Navy intelligence officer who was on active duty during the 1979 Iranian revolution.
• 
We learned firsthand the deep hatred the revolutionary mullahs had for the US after its long support for the Shah.  That hatred has not abated in 36 years.  It's fueled Iran's military objective to get a nuclear weapon to cement its dominance in the Islamic world.
• 
So how big is the challenge of monitoring the deal and what are the potential consequences?
• 
The three primary pillars of intelligence collection are imagery, technical monitoring and human intelligence.
• 
Imagery: From space-based systems, drones, aircraft or sources on the ground, imagery collection is pretty straightforward.
• 
... countries practice well-known methods to confound, confuse or deny intelligence from imagery collection.  ... This not only makes attacking them a challenge, but expansion and configuration changes can be carried out with minimal exposure to "prying eyes." Some of Iran's key nuclear facilities are underground.
• 
Technical monitoring: This involves either electronic transmissions or information technology sources.  ... In this discipline, many analysts have failed to consider the "Snowden effect" with Iran.
• 
... Snowden's releases have given hostile countries insights into exploitable trends and systems the US uses in intelligence collection.
• 
But also consider this: Snowden is currently living in asylum in Russia, and Russia wants desperately to expand its political and economic relationship with Iran.  ... If Russia shares with Iran even its general insights on Snowden's disclosures of our intelligence targets and capabilities, Moscow could strengthen its relationship with Tehran immeasurably.
• 
Human Intelligence: Without direct access by US personnel, it will be difficult for the US to get valuable first-hand information to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions. 
• 
There's nothing like access from a source you can control, and we don't have it in this deal.
• 
And after all of this, the fundamental issue may not be these challenges in intelligence and verification.
• 
How many times in the last few years have we lost focus on a serious national security issue?
• 
Our leverage? As critics of the deal have noted repeatedly, the financial sanctions imposed on Iran are the only leverage we have with Iran short of direct military action.
• 
... the sanctions should stay in place until the deal is renegotiated to include stronger verification provisions.
• 
But it's clear these operational principles are not the primary factors driving decisions on this agreement.  It's politics and the president's legacy objectives — not the cold, hard facts.
      September 11 and anti-Americanism  (Fox 09/11/2015)
• 
"Why do they hate us?"
• 
The question is renewed with each anniversary of the fateful September morning that saw evil rock the cradle of liberty.
• 
There is widespread genuine hostility for America.  ... the underlying cause of international animosity is simpler than what you might think.
• 
It's cultural.
• 
America is a conservative idea in a world of socialism. It is the antithesis of the Leftist ideal.
• 
As if this wasn't enough to raise the ire of the chattering classes, then there's also the fact that it just happens to be the most powerful, wealthiest, innovative, and successful country the world has ever seen.
• 
Envy is corrosive, and leads to ingratitude, and a desertion of perspective.
• 
Put simply, America's cultural conservatism is profoundly at odds with liberal or progressive agendas.
• 
Consider each and every major social or economic philosophy of Western nations (even English-speaking ones) and America, and contrast.
• 
In England, Germany and elsewhere, they believe in a collectivist society; Americans in the individual.
• 
They subscribe to radical multiculturalism; the American in E Pluribus Unum and patriotism.
• 
They believe in more government and greater regulation; Americans in the least possible.  They don't like the concept of the nation-state; America is strident in its dislike of a supra-national body such as the UN.  They seek intervention in markets; Americans are the purest of capitalists.  They support Palestine; America supports Israel.  They don't like Christianity or religion; Americans are the most religious nation in the Western world.  They consider only government employees worthy of being armed; America was founded on the opposite premise.
• 
Sure, there is paradox and inconsistency.  If there wasn't, President Obama wouldn't be President.  But the exception, no matter how stark, does not disprove the rule.  Conservative values are American values.
• 
And culture is everything. It shapes attitudes, lifestyles, and actions.  America, fittingly, behaves as an individual on the world stage.  It is a red-blooded alpha male (another demographic the chattering classes despise) in a room of full international betas.
• 
Americans have uncompromising convictions that bring enormous discomfort to people of other societies.  Tradition is still honored in America.  It is why it's said that a love of America runs in the DNA of every conservative in the world.
• 
To the developed world, shaped by polls, unions, and an all-powerful, elite intelligentsia, the cultural conservatism and religiosity of America is incomprehensible and offends deeply.
• 
To them, it's oafish, backward, discriminatory, simple, and awful.  It's politically correct intolerance.
• 
Is America perfect?  Of course it isn't.  But the anti-Americans, with an inexhaustible list of ills and sins at the ready, are like spoiled children.
• 
They confuse imperfection with malice, resent what belongs to others, and condemn as abuse any refusal to indulge them while petulantly demanding avoidance of consequences and continued enjoyment of unearned benefits.
• 
This September 11th, America has got its hands pretty full.  It must never forget the events of fourteen years ago.  It should also remember that it is the human experiment of our lifetime, and God is on America's side.  Semper Fi.
      America will pay the price for Obama’s Iran deal ‘victory’  (NY Post, 09/12/2015)
• 
The word "disconnect" is the appropriate way to describe the chasm between America's government and its citizens.
• 
On the eve of the 14th anniversary of the worst attack ever against our nation, President Obama celebrated a nuclear pact with Iran, an Islamic theocracy whose leader calls the United States "Satan" and joins crowds in chanting "Death to America."
• 
His "victory" is a disconnect that will live in infamy.
• 
The deal is essentially a nonaggression pact with Iran, a form of appeasement that renders unfair any further comparisons to Neville Chamberlain.
• 
Iran's supreme leader doesn't bother to pretend he wants peace.  On the contrary, he vows that the nuclear agreement will have zero impact on the policies of the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.
• 
Ayatollah Khamenei, who repeatedly declares that Israel will be "eliminated," wrote just before the Senate vote that, "God willing, there will be no Zionist regime in 25 years."
• 
"During this period, the spirit of fighting, heroism and jihad will keep you worried every moment."
• 
... We are lifting punitive sanctions not in the aftermath of victory or as part of a comprehensive peace agreement.
• 
We, along with other so-called great powers, are unilaterally declaring peace while our adversary repeats its declaration of war against us and Israel.
• 
They say these things without fear the truth will scare off Obama or turn Democrats against him.
• 
The Iranians are honest about their plans.  Our leaders are dishonest when they insist we can safely disregard the rhetoric.
• 
... trusting that Iran will drop its conquering ambitions and moderate its martyrdom culture is a foolish roll of the dice in a life-or-death casino.
• 
Iran had no known role in 9/11, but shares with those who carried out the attack the goal of Islamic rule.
• 
Equally appalling, the deal rewards Iran for promised nuclear concessions no one expects the mullahs to keep.
• 
... the Iran deal says the world didn't change, and that America, or at least its president and his party, are holding fast to a 9/10 mindset.  They are wrong, and the country will surely pay a price for their folly.
      Wake up, America.  Our country is upside down  (Fox 09/11/2015)
• 
We are taking in thousands of refugees from Muslim countries without any idea who they are or what their motives are.
• 
A serial sniper's been shooting at vehicles in Arizona.
• 
Our border is wide open.
• 
Caitlyn Jenner is considered a hero, yet, the cops who risk their lives for us are being gunned down in the streets.
• 
But there's one issue I have to highlight here in wake up America because it threatens our very republic.
• 
It's the Iran nuclear deal..  and it's a deadly mistake we are making.
• 
This is for real folks — lives will be lost if we lift Iranian sanctions.  Period.
• 
Handing over an initial $100 billion to the regime that sponsors terror around the world is insane!
• 
Then allowing them to sell another $100 billion per year in oil is equally insane.
• 
That as they telegraph their hatred for us makes zero sense.  Zero!
• 
What genius decided giving people who despise us more money to kill us was a good idea?
• 
This is bigger than Obama's legacy.  This is bigger than Democrats circling the wagons around their ideology.
• 
America will be hit with Iranian financed terror if we don't stop this deal... now.
• 
And by the way, did we learn nothing when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and Pennsylvania — killing 3,000 innocent Americans exactly 14 years ago today?
      America's descent into lawlessness  (JWR 09/10/2015)
• 
Hundreds of liberal sanctuary cities have announced that federal immigration law does not apply to them.  That scary, neo-Confederate idea of legal nullification was sanctioned by the Obama administration — in a way it never would have been if a city had suspended the Endangered Species Act, emissions standards or gun-control legislation.
• 
As a result, once-detained and later-released immigrants with criminal records have murdered innocent American citizens.
• 
Consider the proposed nuclear deal with Iran.  By past custom and practice, the nonproliferation agreement would be treated as what it is — a treaty.
• 
But ratifying treaties constitutionally requires 67 yes votes from the Senate.  Obama could never obtain that margin.
• 
So he managed to downgrade the treaty into a mere legal agreement.  Then he claimed that the Senate required 67 no votes to override his veto.
• 
... he simply suspended by executive fiat the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act.  Had another president done that to the laws of Obamacare, the left would have demanded impeachment.
• 
In Ferguson, Missouri, law enforcement eased off and allowed a city to burn.
• 
But the cause of the rioting — the supposed improper police killing of criminal suspect Michael Brown — was based on the lie that Brown was shot in the back while fleeing.
• 
No matter.  The ensuing public outrage seemingly exempted arsonists and looters from arrest.
• 
Just as scary is the application of the law on the basis of the perceived politics of a suspect.
• 
She invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify before a congressional committee about her actions at the IRS.  Lerner has never been indicted.
• 
Almost everything former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated about her improper use of a private email account and server has been proven false.
• 
Davis was jailed for not enforcing the law.  That is a justifiable punishment — if it were applied equally to the progressive mayors of sanctuary cities and all officials who likewise ignore federal law.
• 
In the same manner, rank amateur video maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was jailed for violating his probation.  Why?
• 
The most likely culprit of the preplanned Benghazi attack was not scapegoat Nakoula, but the inconvenient pre-election truth that al-Qaida was quite alive in Libya and U.S.  security quite lax.
• 
When the law is suspended or unevenly applied for politically protected individuals and groups, then there is no law.
• 
So we are now seeing the logical descent into the abyss of chaos.
      Iran deal: Now we've reached the point of no return  (Fox 09/08/2015)
• 
That point in a flight when catastrophe strikes and the airplane, because of low fuel or mechanical impairment, cannot make it safely back to its take-off point.
• 
That's where we are with the dangerous Iran nuclear deal, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran and the 34 shameless Senate Democrats who bowed to pressure and announced their support for the flawed pact, thereby guaranteeing that the president's veto of any measure of disapproval cannot be overridden.
• 
Why would the United States, or any country, trust a theocratic regime whose extremist clerics command the elimination of Israel and America and promise zealots that, if they die while committing acts of terror, they are guaranteed a first-class ticket to Heaven?
• 
Promises of stringent inspections are meaningless, especially when Iran has already said it will never allow outside access to its military sites.
• 
"Regardless of how the P5+1 countries interpret the nuclear agreement, their entry into our military sites is absolutely forbidden.  The entry of any foreigner, including IAEA inspectors or any other inspector, to the sensitive military sites of the Islamic Republic is forbidden, no matter what."
• 
Iran has also vowed to continue to produce its own soil samples for international inspectors.  This is like an athlete scheduling his own "random" urine tests for sporting officials who suspect the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
• 
"...  the Islamic Republic of Iran, overall, has achieved what it was seeking in the negotiations, while protecting its national glory, imposing its will on the powers."
• 
Question: If Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon, why does it need long-range missiles?  Iranian military leaders have bragged that such missiles could strike the United States.  What with, if not a nuclear bomb?
• 
The Obama administration, enabled by too many spineless members of Congress who make one wonder how they can even walk upright, has cleverly and dangerously signed a deal with the Iranian devil for which it will not have to take responsibility...
• 
When the missiles with their nuclear warheads head for Israel, and Tehran threatens to strike American cities if we rush to defend the Jewish state, as Richard Nixon did during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, what will the next administration, or the one after that, do?
• 
The administration suggests that this bogus deal avoids war with Iran.  History teaches that buying time with an evil regime not only delays the inevitable conflict, but makes that conflict more costly when it occurs.
• 
We may not be in "hell" yet, but with this deal we can feel the heat and it isn't caused by "climate change."
      Judge Bunning must release Kim Davis.  Her right to religious liberty has been grossly violated  (Fox 09/08/2015)
• 
When I warned that the Supreme Court's decision on marriage would lead to the criminalization of Christianity in America I was dismissed by many as an alarmist and my comments were mocked by the chattering class.
• 
Now, just two months after the court's lawless ruling, an elected county clerk has been put in jail by an unelected judge for refusing to issue a "marriage" license to a same-sex couple, removing all doubts about criminalization of Christianity in this country.
• 
When the people of Kentucky elected Democrat Kim Davis as county clerk, the state's constitution affirmed that marriage is between one man and one woman.  The amendment passed with 75 percent of the people's vote.
• 
Today, I ask on behalf of Kim: "Under what law is she authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?" Can you site the specific right in the Constitution?  Is there a statute, passed by Congress that actually says that the five unelected lawyers in the majority of the court's opinion were right to throw out the very definition of marriage and make up one on their own?
• 
In the Obergefell decision, the Supreme Court ruled same-sex couples have the right to get married.  Whether you personally agree with that or not doesn't matter in Kim's case.  What does matter, is that the Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law.  It only made a ruling on a law.
• 
Will we continue to pretend as though the Supreme Court is the "Supreme Branch" with the authority and ability to make laws?  It most certainly is not.
• 
The Supreme Court is one of three co-equal branches of government under our Constitution.  It is no more the "Supreme Branch" than it is the "Supreme Being" with the authority to redefine the laws of nature or of nature's God!
• 
What we know for sure is that The Judicial Branch is constitutionally prohibited from writing laws, there are religious liberty protections in the Kentucky constitution and Kentucky statute and the plaintiffs in the case did not seek Kim's incarceration.
• 
Despite these facts, Kim Davis was thrown in jail for contempt, which means she was given no possibility of bail.
• 
That seems even more ludicrous when you consider many of the America's most evil and notorious serial killers, murderers, rapists, mafia bosses and presidential assassins were actually let out on bail...
• 
No one went to jail when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered city clerks to issue same-sex marriage licenses in direct disobedience to California law.
• 
No one went to jail when San Francisco was set up as a sanctuary city – sheltering dangerous illegal immigrant felons in defiance of federal law.  Not only did Newsom NOT go to jail, he's now the lieutenant governor of the state!
• 
When I traveled to Guantanamo Bay, I was amazed by how well we treated foreign Muslim terrorist detainees.
• 
The U.S.  government provides prayer mats and special meals that conform to Islamic restrictions, but we can't accommodate the religious beliefs of a popularly elected Christian county clerk in Kentucky?
• 
We have lost our moral compass as a country when our government accommodates militant Muslims but not conservative Christians.
• 
... the reason why our laws are respected by the American people is because our Constitution guarantees reasonable safeguards to protect the rights of dissenters.
• 
We did not fight a revolution against the tyranny of one unelected monarch so we could surrender our freedoms and abandon our Constitution to the tyranny of five unaccountable, unelected lawyers.
• 
This will go down as a seminal moment in American history if we do not free Kim Davis now and make sure this never happens again.
      Why Trump is triumphant with Evangelicals...  for now  (Fox 09/08/2015)
• 
How does one explain that a candidate like The Donald who has been married three times, runs casinos, discounts the need for asking God's forgiveness, and has difficulty citing one verse of the Bible is trouncing card-carrying evangelical candidates like Huckabee, Cruz, and others too far down the list to warrant mention?
• 
Evangelical Christians are either too ignorant to know who Trump really is or too hypocritical to care.  However, rather than "ignorant" and "hypocritical," I believe there are two other words that explain why so many evangelicals are registering their support for Trump: Barack Obama.
• 
There is a palpable feeling among many Christians (as well as non-Christians) that our nation has been in a downward death spiral during the last seven years of President Obama's administration.
• 
Some feel that the 2016 election may be the last opportunity to reverse that trend.  Rightly or wrongly there is a perception that other candidates are incapable of changing the status quo — which Ronald Reagan famously said is Latin for "the mess we're in."
• 
No Christians I know who are supporting Trump are under the illusion that The Donald is a seasoned student of Scripture.  In fact, they chuckled several weeks ago when Trump refused to cite a single verse from the Book he had spent the week saying he "loved." They get the joke ... and they don't care.
• 
As Evangelicals see America careening downward toward a devastating crash, they are willing to bifurcate leadership responsibilities for the well-being of our country.
• 
... a growing number are searching for a president who has both the leadership skills and tenacity to solve our country's practical problems such as the immigration dilemma and our economic stagnation.
• 
... even years of Barack Obama have drastically lowered the threshold of spiritual expectations Evangelicals have of their president.
• 
No longer do they require their president to be one of them.  Evangelicals will settle for someone who doesn't HATE them like the current occupant of the Oval Office appears to.
• 
Will their supporters coalesce around another traditional Evangelical candidate, or will they throw up their hands in frustration and run to Trump?
• 
I say this as reverently as possible: only God knows what will happen.  But in the meantime, it certainly will be fascinating and fun to watch.
      Huckabee: No One Should be Jailed for their Beliefs  (INN 09/07/2015)
• 
"This is the first time that I can recall that a person has been jailed, and jailed without bail, for practicing her faith, and an unelected judge has put in jail an elected official because she would not violate her conscience on something that she believes very strongly in, and that she should be protected by result of the First Amendment."
• 
"I think the definition of marriage has historically, as well as Biblically, always been one man and one woman, and that's how society has treated marriage from the beginning and throughout recorded history."
• 
"For the Supreme Court to say that there's a constitutional right to have a same-sex marriage when the word ‘marriage' doesn't even appear in the Constitution makes it an incredibly bold action on their part."
• 
"Even if a person believes that there should be same-sex marriage, and I recognize that some people think there should, the process by which that should be accomplished is that the people's elected representatives in Congress should pass such a bill, codified into law, it would be signed by the President and then it would be enforced by the Department of Justice."
• 
"My contention has been, when they say ‘she violated the law', [is] what law is that?  Can you name the statute?  Can you name a specific article in the Constitution that she's violated?  And the answer is ‘no', because there isn't one."
• 
"This defies the constitutional language itself, it defies the long practice of history up until the last 70 years or so when we began to capitulate to this notion of judicial supremacy and, quite frankly, it defies common sense."
• 
Belief in same-sex marriage, ... "is not the fundamental issue.  The issue is do we surrender to the notion that the courts can make law and that it's enforceable from the moment in which they render a ruling."
      Judicial tyranny: Kentucky judge does with a gavel what Bull Connor did with dogs and fire hoses  (Fox 09/04/2015)
• 
... the fight for religious liberty would become the civil rights issue of our generation.
• 
... attorneys asked the court to accommodate her beliefs by simply removing her name from the licenses.
• 
But Judge Bunning refused to do so.  He refused to accommodate her religious beliefs — and ordered U.S.  Marshals to take her into custody.
• 
I truly believe Judge Bunning wanted to intimidate Christians and send a very clear message – that resistance to same-sex marriage will not be tolerated...
• 
"Religious liberty in America is in grave danger.  This will, in effect, establish a reverse religious test barring those who hold biblical views of marriage from positions of public service.  Such a religious test by proclamation or practice is wrong."
• 
"The Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law.  They only made a ruling on a law.  Congress makes the laws.  ... Congress has made no law allowing for same-sex marriage..."
• 
However, there used to be a federal law on the books called the Defense of Marriage Act.  And President Obama directed his administration to ignore the law.  I don't seem to recall a federal judge throwing the president in the slammer.
• 
The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.  Not to speak is to speak.  Not to act is to act."
      The real truth about Obama and the Iran deal  (Fox 09/02/2015)
• 
The president now has enough votes from Senate Democrats to make his accord bulletproof in Congress.
• 
... Obama — barring some last minute shocker — is going to get what he has been seeking.
• 
But it is not necessarily what he (and his party's supporters) have bargained for.
• 
Netanyahu is truly and deeply convinced that this deal endangers Israeli national security.  His concern doesn't end with the signing of a bill in Washington.
• 
The Israeli PM has expressed his concerns ad nauseam (as far as Obama is concerned).  He points out that the Iranian regime is explicitly pledged to destroy Israel.  It supports Shi'ite Muslim terrorism around the world, including against Jewish civilian targets.  The ayatollahs have their armed a proxy army, Hezbollah, with tens of thousands of missiles aimed at Israeli cities.
• 
Obama himself doesn't deny any of this.  He just doesn't want it to spoil his diplomatic coup.  What the hell, he'll be gone in two years.
• 
In announcing his decision, Senator Casey underscored his "deep reservations" about Iran honoring the agreement.  Almost all the Democratic ‘yes' voters voice similar misgivings.
• 
Perhaps they regard these caveats as an insurance policy for the day when Middle East realities overtake the fantasy of Obama's diplomacy and all hell breaks loose.
• 
If that happens, the excuse, "Hey, I said at the time that this was a bad idea" isn't going to work.
• 
The Democratic Party's public standing on foreign policy now rests in the hands of the Ayatollahs of Iran.
• 
Obama doesn't have to worry about reelection, but he has his historical reputation (not to mention his future opportunities) to consider. 
• 
... Obama is trying to repair the breach with American Jews who, despite the administration's spin, are not happy with the president.
• 
"It's not that I've received votes from the Jewish community.  It's that I have received ideas, values and support that helped shape me into the person I am."
• 
The president said that he is hurt by some Jews (those with the wrong ideas and values, presumably) who are now calling him an anti-Semite.
• 
"There's not a smidgen of evidence for it other than the fact that there have been times when I have disagreed with a particular Israeli government's position on a particular issue."
• 
Personally, I don't think Barack Obama hates Jews.  I think he admires the wrong ones (and is admired by them in return, especially those who work for him).
• 
But his Iran policy not a mere difference of opinion with a certain Israeli government. 
• 
It upends American policy in the region by ushering a genocidal, anti-Jewish regime into the family of respectable nations.
• 
... he is the first American president in history whose behavior in office has obliged him to declare publicly: "I am not an anti-Semite."
• 
It is an accord Israel will not accept, Iran will not honor and the United States — at least under this administration — will not enforce.
• 
Signing it is not the end of anything.  It is the first day of what comes next.
      'Who needs this?' Police recruits abandon dream amid anti-cop climate  (Fox 09/02/2015)
• 
Police departments face a recruiting shortage amid a growing anti-cop mood that some fear has taken the pride out of peacekeeping and put targets on the backs of the men and women in blue.
• 
Open calls for the killing of police have been followed by assassinations...
• 
Instead of dialing back the incendiary rhetoric, groups including "Black Lives Matter" have instead doubled down at demonstrations with chants of "Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon."
• 
Even though a grand jury and a federal Justice Department inquiry did not fault Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, debunked claims that the cop killed Brown as he held his hands up and begged for his life have animated the Black Lives Matter movement as it spread around the nation.
• 
"You no longer just have to worry about your life while in uniform.  Now you have to be worried about the well-being of your family."
• 
While blatant calls for killing cops are unusual, the job has always been dangerous.
• 
"No warning, no provocation.  They were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform."
• 
"I'm putting wings on pigs today.  They take 1 of ours, let's take 2 of theirs."
• 
"President Obama has breathed life into this ugly movement.  And it is time now for good, law-abiding Americans to rise up.  We now have to counter this slime, this filth coming out of these cop haters."
• 
"We're sitting ducks.  We're in these uniforms, brightly colored cars and there's nothing we can do.  And the vast majority supports this loud vocal minority."
      Good vs.  evil: Why it's time to rethink your definition of 'good'  (Fox 08/31/2015)
• 
Good and evil.  We all know the difference, don't we?  Aren't we born with an inherent knowledge of what is right and wrong?
• 
We believe what's generally accepted as good must be in line with God's will.  Generosity, humility, justice — good.  Selfishness, arrogance, cruelty — bad.
• 
The book of Hebrews ... speaks of those who "have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil" (Hebrews 5:14 NKJV).
• 
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death" (Proverbs 14:12 NKJV).
• 
"All Scripture is ... useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.  It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right [good]" (2 Timothy 3:16 NLT).
      How Illegal Immigration Finally Turned Off the Public  (08/30/2015)
• 
What is it about illegal immigration that has finally turned off so many Americans?
• 
Over the years immigration activists successfully deconstructed the complex issue of illegal immigration into a race and class morality tale of privileged whites picking on poor brown people.
• 
It was rarely the host, but more often the activists on behalf of the guests, who framed illegal immigration in racial terms.
• 
... two obvious truths: one, thirty percent of Americans are not so-called white; and, two, most people resent ethnic chauvinism.
• 
Sometime in the last five years, the public woke up and grasped that Latino elite activists were not so much interested in illegal immigration per se, but only to the degree that the issue affected other Latinos.
• 
It is difficult for the National Council of La Raza to attempt to airbrush away vocabulary like "anchor baby" and "illegal immigration," while insisting that its own nomenclature "La Raza" has nothing to do with race.  The public knows that La Raza means "The Race," and that those who founded that organization chose that racially charged noun for the precise purpose of ethnic triumphalism...
• 
In the public mind illegal immigration has gone from the old narrative that racists were enforcing the law to keep out mostly brown people to a new generation of racists who are trying to subvert the law to bring in mostly brown people.
• 
The old canard that without law there is nothing did not resonate with voters in connection with illegal immigration until the 21st century.
• 
Extremists took legal noncompliance to an entirely new level of Orwellian arrogance.  Suddenly, as if by fiat, the illegal-immigration lobby banned the term "illegal alien"...
• 
They lied by insisting that entering the United States illegally was simply a minor misdemeanor, when most Americans knew such unlawful entry was the beginning, not the end, of negating the law — inaugurating years of fake IDs, false Social Security numbers, second and third identities, and deliberate filing of untruthful federal and state documents.
• 
Completely lost in the back and forth was the old notion that an immigrant, legal or illegal, was supposed to be a guest, whose behavior should be the model, rather than defended as no worse than those whom he joined.
• 
The public tired of the unfairness in the applicability of the law.  How had it come to pass that illegal aliens were not subject to enforcement of federal laws in the manner that all citizens most surely were?
• 
All Americans file through passport control when flying home; they are met by stern uniformed bureaucrats who are not an especially forgiving bunch for missing or lost documents.
• 
How could it be that millions by virtue of their ethnic fides were not subject to the same scrutiny?  And if one law were to be waived, why, the public wonders, not others equally inconvenient?
• 
People finally tired of the postmodern notion that to stop endemic illegality we were supposed to change the language rather than the reality.  Americans are not quite yet ready to be Soviet subjects who are to embrace Newspeak, and apparently resented the assumption that they were.
• 
Mexico itself has become quite unpopular.  ... It is not just the daily news of cartels, beheadings, and corruption that made Mexico unattractive, but the cynicism of the Mexican government itself.
• 
Mexico and Central American nations receive $50 billion a year in remittances from their expatriate citizens in the United States.  But if illegal aliens were impoverished and exploited as their home countries alleged, how could they transfer such monumental sums back home — and why would not their mother countries worry about the ensuing burdens placed upon their low-wage-earning citizens abroad
• 
Hypocrisy became synonymous with the idea of Mexico.  Its constitution defines illegal immigration in racialist and chauvinist terms — barring those it finds unhealthy or an economic burden or even prone to upset "the equilibrium of the national demographics."
• 
If American emulated Mexican law, almost all illegal aliens would face immediate deportation if not prison sentences.  When Mexico deliberately has exported ten percent of its population and lectures the U.S.  on their ensuing welfare, then the vocabulary of hypocrisy fails.
• 
... Mexico has been ethnically cleansing its own country and then seeking moral cover for its human rights violations by slurring as racist the only refuge for its own unwanted who often were fleeing endemic racist attitudes.
• 
The Obama-age progressive political narrative was that an old, too-white America was changing largely due to immigration and that this was a much-needed antidote to oppressive white privilege.  ... what was surreal about the charge ... the shameless acknowledgment by Democrats that they were not only using illegal immigration as a political tool, but should be praised for doing so.
• 
... illegal aliens are not all dreamers any more than they are all criminals.  They are what they are — good, bad, and neither: poor oppressed people who flee racist Third World governments in hopes of jobs and/or U.S.  government support, with the further assumption that their illegality, lack of English, absence of education, and dearth of skills and capital will not only not matter, but earn them coveted victim status in the U.S.  So far they have been proven prescient.
• 
The message is incoherent: "I will salute the country that drove me out but less so the one that welcomed me in." In fact, the entire narrative of illegal immigration has become unhinged.  The vocabulary of protest is never aimed against the nation that forced them out, only against the one that most generously welcomed them in.
• 
Even as the various Chicano and Ethnic Studies departments indoctrinate students with the supposedly sinister history of the United States, they simultaneously champion the rights of the illegal aliens to enter, reside, and stay in the odious country they have just damned.
• 
Millions of Americans have finally caught on to the incoherence, and feel that ingratitude is among the worst of all sins. 
• 
It is alleged that Donald Trump is a demagogue who whips the ignorant up.  Perhaps.
• 
The truth is that the illegal-immigration lobby was its own worst enemy, its message couched in racism, illegality, untruth — and finally incoherence.
• 
People are tired of being called racists by racial chauvinists, of being dubbed insensitive by unfeeling opportunists, and of being called politically naive by political manipulators.
• 
If there were not a Donald Trump, he would likely have had to have been invented.
• 
See related Demand Work (Paul Nowak, 04/04/2006) cartoon from USA picture album
      Huckabee: The staggering stupidity of Iranian self-inspections  (Fox 08/28/2015)
• 
Even now, after learning that the deal includes trusting Iran to self-inspect, the president calls opponents "crazies." What's crazy, is putting trust in the hands of Iranian leaders.
• 
... when America abdicates its leadership role in the world, the rats run riot.  President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is a rat ship.
• 
Letting the Iranians "self inspect" their nuclear energy facilities is like letting mass murderers run a gun shop, hoping they'll behave.
• 
Never in the history of international arms control agreements have American diplomats agreed to something so recklessly ridiculous as "self-inspections".
• 
This is absolute insanity.  It makes more sense to make a convicted embezzler your financial planner than to allow the Iranians to "self-inspect" their nuclear sites.
• 
Iran launches rockets on Israeli children every day.  This murderous regime has killed hundreds of American soldiers and has the blood of thousands of Christians, Jews, and Muslims on its hands.  It shouldn't take a mushroom cloud for the American people to wake-up!
• 
Iranian negotiators have squeezed every last concession from this Administration, and the Free World has absolutely nothing to show for it.  American hostages are still rotting in Iranians prisons.  John Kerry meets with Iranian "diplomats" in the morning and the mullahs still chant "death to America" in the afternoon.  Sanctions relief injects $150 billion into Iran's economy and military, which continues to bankroll terrorism across the globe.
• 
... the mullahs believe they aren't just dealing with a paper tiger, they are dealing with an inflatable pussycat, full of hot air but ready to deflate at the slightest jab.
• 
Reagan said, "Trust but verify".  Obama's approach is "trust but vilify" – he trusts our enemies and vilifies those who disagree with him.
• 
This deal is dangerous, but the "self-inspection" provision makes it a rat-infested absurdity.
• 
See related I've Got Your Back (Glenn McCoy, 08/06/2015) cartoon from World picture album
      National Emergency for America  (INN 08/28/2015)
• 
"The Constitution is the guideline I will never abandon." - George Washington
• 
The United states of America was born out of a resolve to protect the freedoms of the individual from the tyranny of the state.
• 
There are no parties here, no sides, and no disparities to discuss.If you are an American, as I am, the Constitution is the law of your land and it is the premier reference guide that protects Americans from those who seek to tamper with our freedoms.
• 
Either we stand with the Constitution's sacred covenant of freedom, the basis upon which this republic rests, or our very foundation faces collapse.
• 
Stopping the Iranian Nuclear Threat and removing the ultimate mass destructive weapon known to man from getting into the hands of a heinous, tyrannical nation, that openly threatens to destroy America, is then neither a Democratic nor a Republican issue; rather it's a Constitutional mandate.
• 
Congress must commit to stopping President Obama, who is acting as if he is Iran's nuclear terrorist-enabling acolyte.
• 
Let's face it; the Republican debate was a side-show extravaganza.  ... Not one candidate made stopping President Obama's veto a top priority.
• 
With less that 20 days left to defeat Obama's veto, it is obvious these candidates have already abandoned their pledge (if elected) to uphold the Constitution's stance against tyranny.
• 
No one is breaking from the pack as the conscientious leader and saying, "Let's put our collective heads together and get this business done first for the good of the country and the world." The first candidate to do that has my vote.
• 
Mr.  Trump, as the front runner who is proposing to make America great again, you must realize that honoring a deal that cedes victory to Iran and Islamic fascism over our Constitution means we have relinquished what makes us great and exceptional among nations.
• 
If this deal goes forward, America relinquishes her crown as the leader of the free world.  Can she ever be trusted again to keep the flame of liberty lit from those who are bent on extinguishing it?
• 
"It's Iran, you blind imbeciles!" It's not Obamacare!  It's not Isis!  It's not the Muslim Brotherhood,Russia, or China!  It's not the ceiling debt or Hillary.  Even the illegal immigration issue must take a back seat to the Iranian threat.
• 
There will be time later to build Trump's wall and seal the border, but if we don't eliminate Iran's ability to obtain nuclear weapons, we won't have to worry about a wall, or immigrants, or anchor babies.
• 
Overlooked is the fact that there is no repeal process unlike Obamacare, once Iran holds nuclear weapons.
• 
So, as all the other self-satisfying nations are bartering their economic and political securities with tyrannical madmen, America must remain the only sensible "voice of reason" as the leader of the free world; the court of last resort.
• 
Overriding Obama's veto, however, is only half the story.  Without coupling the veto with the destruction of Iran's nuclear capabilities, it is only a piece of paper.  Additionally crippling sanctions at that point would be useless.
• 
What other assurance is there that the world is not threatened by an indiscriminate nuclear attack?  If Iran crosses the nuclear threshold there will be no safe haven left in the free world.
• 
For the sake of our Union, all Republican Party candidates must temporarily put their differences aside and unite to stop Obama's veto, then call for the destruction of Iran's nuclear capacity.
      What if Hillary Clinton has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years?  (Fox 08/27/2015)
• 
What if, while she was secretary of state, she ran two secret wars, one in Libya and one in Syria?  What if there already were wars in each of those countries, so she used those wars as covers for her own?
• 
What if President Obama gave permission for her to do this?  What if the president lacks the legal authority to authorize anyone to fight secret wars?
• 
What if her goal was to overthrow two dictators, one friendly to the U.S.  and one not?  What if the instruments of her war did not consist of American military troops, but rather State Department intelligence assets and American-made military-grade heavy weapons?
• 
What if Clinton secretly authorized the sale of American-made military-grade weapons to the government of Qatar?  What if Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country, the government of which is beholden to and largely controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood?
• 
What if the Muslim Brotherhood is a recognized terrorist organization?  What if the U.S.  has no lawful or military purpose for putting military hardware into the hands of a government that supports or is controlled by a terrorist organization?
• 
What if among those assaulted was the U.S.  ambassador to Libya?  What if Ambassador Christopher Stevens was assassinated in Benghazi, Libya, by Al Qaeda operatives who were using American-made military-grade hardware that Clinton knowingly sent to them?
• 
What if the U.S.  had no strategic interest in deposing the government of Libya?  What if Congress never declared war on Libya?  What if Col.  Qaddafi, the then-dictator of Libya who was reprehensible, was nevertheless an American ally whose fights against known terrorist organizations had garnered him praise from President George W.  Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair?
• 
What if the U.S.  had no strategic interest in deposing the dictator of Syria, President Assad?  What if Congress never declared war on Syria?  What if the government of Syria, though reprehensible, has been fighting a war against groups and militias, some of whom have been designated as terrorist organizations by the secretary of state?
• 
What if Clinton had a political interest in deposing the governments of Libya and Syria?  What if her goal in fighting these secret wars was to claim triumph for herself over Middle Eastern despots?
• 
What if the outcome of Clinton's war in Libya has been the destruction of the Gadhafi government and ensuing chaos?  What if that chaos has brought terror and death to many thousands of innocents in Libya?  What if Clinton has failed to achieve any noticeable result with her secret war in Syria?
• 
What if Clinton just doesn't care whether she has broken any federal laws, illegally caused the deaths of thousands of innocents, and profoundly jeopardized and misled the American people?
• 
What if the American people do care about all this?  What will they do about it?
      Why Do Too Many Jews Support the Iran Deal?  (JWR 08/24/2015)
• 
The more one knows about the Iran deal, the more obvious it becomes that it is not a deal so much as it is a fraud.
• 
There are no "anytime, anywhere" inspections, as Americans were promised during the negotiations.
• 
The agreement obligates all the parties, including the United States, to help Iran protect its nuclear facilities against an attack, whether physical or cyber.
• 
Any area of Iran that the Iranian regime designates "military" cannot be inspected.Read more at http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0815/prager082515.php3#QDk38DrVmr0s4lAM.99
• 
Iran can object to any inspection and delay it at least 24 days and, according to the Wall Street Journal, up to three months.
• 
The deal will free a hundred billion dollars and eventually much more for the Iranian regime to use to bolster Iran's economy and to supply terror groups around the world.
• 
And it gets worse: There are two secret side deals to the agreement made between Iran and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  They are not just kept secret from you and me.  They are kept secret from the president, the secretary of state (who admitted to Congress that he has not seen them) and the Congress of the United States.
• 
How then could any member of Congress vote to affirm an agreement with Iran, crucial parts of which they cannot even know about?  Why do those secrets between Iran and the United Nations simply not invalidate this agreement?
• 
So why do so many American Jews support the deal?  Because they 1) are loyal to President Obama, 2) have an intense dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and 3) have an intense dislike of Republicans.
• 
For the same reason the minority of American non-Jews who support the deal do: Their outlook on life has been shaped by the Left.
      Obama Defends Iran Deal by Attacking Opponents  (INN 08/24/2015)
• 
By making his pitch in a speech instead of a press conference, he avoided having to answer questions, clarify past inconsistent statements, and discuss the distortions that have been used to justify the deal.  Rather than allay concerns that are causing worry even among Congressional Democrats, he instead heaped scorn on Republicans, attacked his critics, derided Binyamin Netanyahu, and minimized the threat to Israel.
• 
His speech was as self-congratulatory as it was detached from geopolitical reality.
• 
By abandoning the earlier negotiating posture of dismantling sanctions in exchange for Iranian dismantlement of its nuclear infrastructure, and instead replacing it with what is essentially a temporary freeze on its program, the P5+1 has indeed validated Iran's future status as a nuclear threshold state, a point that President Obama himself acknowledged in a media interview.
• 
Given the nature of the Iranian regime and its defining ideology, AJC cannot accept this prospect.  It is too ominous, too precedent-setting, and too likely to trigger a response from Iran's understandably anxious neighbors who may seek nuclear-weapons capacity themselves, as well as, more immediately and still more certainly, advanced conventional arms, adding an entirely new level of menace to the most volatile and arms-laden region in the world.  Surely, this cannot be in America's long-term security interests.
• 
Based on its history, Iran is unlikely to comply in the absence of effective monitoring procedures; and without truly verifiable compliance, it will likely continue enriching uranium clandestinely and may well have enough reserves to produce weapons before the deal expires.
• 
The President's allies are responding to criticism by attacking those who oppose the deal, casting aspersions on their motivations, invoking classical anti-Semitic canards of undue Jewish influence and dual loyalty, characterizing Jewish dissent as unpatriotic, and accusing Israel of orchestrating the opposition.
• 
Still, it cannot be disputed that many liberals now recognize that Obama's stated goal of preventing Iran from going nuclear is inconsistent with the final agreement, which legitimizes and enables its nuclear program.  Irrespective of his past assurances that no deal would be preferable to a bad deal, he is attempting to force a very bad deal on the US and its allies.
• 
Rather than assuage any of these concerns, Obama used his speech to belittle and disparage all who question the deal and to compare his Republican critics in Congress to Iranian hardliners.
• 
He will continue to attack those who disagree with him, malign Netanyahu for speaking truth to power, and bully Israel by threatening her with isolation.  He will not be moved even if most liberal Jews end up opposing the deal.
• 
... if, as many believe, his real intent is to reduce American global influence, legitimize Islamist regimes, and treat Iran as the dominant power in the Mideast, he may be following a knowing strategy that accepts, and perhaps welcomes, the regional and global risks.
• 
Mr.  Obama's agreement with Iran has been compared to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Nazi Germany.
• 
Whereas Hitler lied in Munich about the prospect of peace in exchange for land, Iran has affirmatively promised terrorism, war and genocide when it gets what it wants. 
• 
Though Congress may not be able to trust the President's hollow assurances, history suggests that it can certainly take the Iranians at their word. 
      Ignore the Warnings of Alberto Nisman at Your Peril  (INN 08/20/2015)
• 
It has become clear that many Jews who live in the US do not understand the nature of the threat posed by Iran.
• 
1.  Jewish Americans must understand: The Iranian deal is not only about Israel.
• 
2.  Jewish Americans must understand: The Iranian deal is not only about nukes.
• 
3.  Jewish Americans must understand: If Iran gets the $50 billion in its coffers; an Iranian killing machine will be launched around the world. 
• 
4.  Jewish Americans must understand: That Iranian killing machine will pose an undisguised threat to every Jew in the world, beginning in the US. 
• 
5.  Jewish Americans must understand: The American Jewish Committee commissioned a study of the Iranian curriculum and found that Iranian schools prepare their students for war against the "Great Satan", the US.
• 
6.  Jewish Americans must understand: Tehran sponsored and carried out a mass murder attack at the hub of Jewish life in Argentina - a sign of things to come.
• 
7.  Jewish Americans must understand: Two years ago, The Argentinean prosecutor Alberto Nisman issued a massive 500 page report which documented the plans of an Iranian killer network in more than a dozen nations.
• 
8.  Jewish Americans must understand: Alberto Nisman was assassinated this year, and the case has been closed.  There will not be an investigation into his murder.
• 
9.  Jewish Americans must understand: Massive cash in the hands of Tehran would allow a free hand for killer squads to pursue Jews.  Everywhere.
• 
10.  Jewish Americans must understand: The Nazis obfuscated their plans to murder Jews.  Tehran is proud to proclaim its lethal intentions. 
• 
The time has come for Jewish Americans to examine the documents that Nisman left for posterity: Nisman investigation filess. Here is a summary of Nisman's thoroughly detailed 500 page report.
• 
So there you have it.  A Jewish prosecutor in the employ of a western government warns his nation and warns the Jews of the world of the systematic impending threat posed by Iran.  The prosecutor is then murdered.
• 
Will Jewish Americans bury the Nisman report and ignore the warnings of Alberto Nisman?
      The Dreyfus Affair 2015  (INN 08/20/2015)
• 
A prominent Jew living in, and employed by, a secular, democratic country is charged with dual loyalty.  Word of his alleged misconduct captivates an entire nation, with sentiment split for and against the accused.
• 
As the news travel, the issue is no longer the guilt or innocence of an individual, but rather whether Jews can properly observe their obligations of citizenship within the host nation.
• 
Ultimately, the Jew is convicted and sentenced in a show trial, although subsequent evidence emerges which results is his complete exoneration and pardon.
• 
... it sure sounds like Chuck Schumer in 2015.  Senator Schumer, for entirely legitimate and compelling reasons, announced his decision to vote against the Iran deal.  He published a lengthy explanation of his reasons, and, to the disappointment of many (including the author), professed that the issue was a close call, a matter of conscience, and not appropriate for agitation or arm-twisting among his colleagues.
• 
First, Obama completely defrauded him by accepting Schumer's courtesy call in confidence and then leaking it to the press before Schumer could make his announcement.
• 
Then, as Obama blew his "dog whistle" (as one columnist called it), out came the dogs...
• 
Threats of Jewish isolation were offered by John Kerry, while others, including the President, erroneously pointed to the unprecedented nature of Israel "meddling" in U.S.  affairs.
• 
Finally, Obama wrapped it all up ... accusing those who disagree with him as being influenced by wealthy donors who do not have America's best interests at heart, and who make "common cause" with the right wing Mullahs in Iran.
• 
The accusation that any Jewish American who opposes this ridiculous deal is elevating the interests of Israel above the United States is complete hogwash maliciously conceived and advanced by Democratic operatives (including Obama himself, who ironically and sadly campaigned on a pledge to unite all Americans) to divide, isolate and victimize their political enemies.
• 
Jews and non-Jews alike oppose the Iran deal because it is bad for the United States, Israel and the entire world.
• 
The Iran deal is opposed by many more Gentiles than Jews.  Jews comprise less than 5% of the American population but more than 60% of Americans, including almost all of the U.S.  military, oppose the deal.
• 
So how has our great uniting President responded?  In the same manner as his spiritual leader, Jeremiah Wright — by appealing to the vilest anti-Semitic biases of the population.
• 
This is the worst type of Chicago-style politics and no other president in my lifetime has descended to such despicable behavior.
      Britain's job-training regimen provides a remedy for welfare addiction  (Fox 08/20/2015)
• 
... Prime Minister David Cameron is moving quickly to fulfill his campaign promise to ensure welfare benefits are no longer a way of life for many of his fellow citizens.
• 
... will require young people between 18 and 21 who don't have jobs but are collecting welfare, to attend three-week "boot camps" to prepare them for work in a rapidly improving economy.  If they refuse, they will be denied benefits if they are unemployed for six months.
• 
"Six million Britons are living in homes where no one has a job and benefits are a way of life."
• 
In 2008 the newspaper reported on families where no one has worked for three generations.
• 
Some are offended at the suggestion they should work.
• 
The entitlement attitude is also deeply rooted in the United States.
• 
When welfare reform was debated in the United States in the mid-'90s, opponents argued people would starve in the streets if their benefits were cut off.
• 
... people found jobs when they realized the gravy train would no longer stop at their door.  The threat of an empty stomach does wonders for motivation.
• 
Of course, jobs have to be available and those will materialize only after burdensome taxes are cut (bringing jobs back from overseas and encouraging job creation at home), unnecessary regulations are repealed and the consequences of ObamaCare, which have likely led to layoffs and people forced to take part-time jobs, are mitigated.
      The deceptions of Hillary Clinton  (Fox 08/20/2015)
• 
This past weekend she told an audience of Iowa Democrats that she loves her Snapchat account because the messages automatically disappear.  Not everyone is laughing.
• 
Clinton admits deleting 30,000 government emails from her time in office.  She claims they were personal, and that because they were also on a personal server, she was free to destroy them.  Yet, federal law defines emails used during the course of one's work for the federal government as the property of the federal government.
• 
She decided which of her emails were governmental and sent them on to the State Department.  Under federal law, that is not a determination she may lawfully make.
• 
... the 55,000 emails she sent to the feds were printed emails.  By doing so, she stole from the government the metadata it owns, which accompanies all digital emails but is missing on the paper copies, and she denied the government the opportunity to trace those emails.
• 
Then, the inspector general of the State Department and the inspector general of the intelligence community, each independent of the other, found four classified emails from among a random sample of 40.
• 
Then the State Department inspector general concluded that one of the four was in fact top secret.
• 
Not only is she continually changing her story, but she is being deceptive again.  Emails are not "marked classified." They are marked "top secret" or "secret" or "confidential."
• 
Not only would such an argument be incredible coming from a person of her intellect and government experience, but it begs the question.  That's because by using only her own server, she knowingly diverted all classified emails sent to her away from the government's secure venue.  That's the crime.
• 
Will she be indicted?
• 
Consider this.  In the past month, the Department of Justice indicted a young sailor who took a selfie in front of a sonar screen on a nuclear submarine and emailed the selfie to his girlfriend.
• 
It also indicted a Marine who sent an urgent warning to his superiors on his Gmail account about a dangerous Afghani spy who eventually killed three fellow Marines inside an American encampment.  The emailing Marine was indicted for failure to secure classified materials.
• 
Gen.  David Petraeus stored top-secret materials in an unlocked desk drawer in the study of his secured and guarded Virginia home and was indicted for the same crimes.
• 
And a former CIA agent was just sentenced to three years in prison for destroying one top-secret email.
• 
Will Clinton get a pass?  Will the public accept that?
      Academic Fascism II  (JWR 08/19/2015)
• 
Deceitful college officials, who visit high schools to recruit students and talk to parents, conceal the worst of their campus practices.  Let's expose some of it.
• 
Christina Hoff Sommers is an avowed feminist and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.  ... upon her arrival at Oberlin College, Georgetown University and other campuses, trigger warnings were issued asserting, in her words, that her "very presence on campus" was "a form of violence" and that she was threatening students' mental health.  At Oberlin, 30 students and the campus therapy dog retired to a "safe room" with soft music, crayons and coloring books to escape any uncomfortable facts raised by Sommers.
• 
The problem for students and some professors is that Sommers challenges the narrative, with credible statistical facts, that women are living in a violent, paternalistic rape culture.
• 
As a result, she has been "excommunicated from the church of campus feminism" in order to protect women from her uncomfortable facts.
• 
"There's a move to get young women in combat, and yet on our campuses, they are so fragile they can't handle a speaker with dissenting views."
• 
I wonder whether there will be demands for the military to have therapy dogs and safe rooms in combat situations.
• 
The University of New Hampshire published a "Bias-Free Language Guide," which "is meant to invite inclusive excellence in (the) campus community."
• 
If the political correctness police were permitted to get away with it, later they would bring disciplinary action against a student or faculty member who used the terms.  The offender would be required to attend diversity training, the leftist equivalent of communist re-education camps.
• 
Florida State University has an "Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Statement," which says, "Behavior that may be considered offensive, demeaning, or degrading to persons or groups will not be tolerated."
• 
... the University of Connecticut prohibits "actions that intimidate, humiliate, or demean persons or groups, or that undermine their security or self-esteem."
• 
You might ask: What's Walter Williams' solution to these problems?  For starters, benefactors should stop giving money to universities that endorse anti-free speech and racist diversity policy.  Simply go to a university's website.  If you find an office of diversity, close your pocketbook.
• 
There's nothing like the sound of pocketbooks snapping shut to open the closed minds of administrators.
      Guaranteeing Planned Parenthood's demise  (JWR 08/18/2015)
• 
"They covered child sacrifices with loud noises of flutes and drums so the cries of the wailing would not reach the ears of the people," wrote the Greek historian Plutarch of religious practices in ancient Carthage
• 
For most Democrats and "mainstream" journalists, not much has changed.
• 
Dr.  Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood, admitting she uses partial birth abortions to supply intact body parts.  (Partial birth abortions are illegal.)
• 
Dr.  Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood's Medical Director's Council, offering to use a "less crunchy technique" to get more intact body parts, haggling over payments.  (She wants a Lamborghini, she said.)
• 
Dr.  Savita Ginde, medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, describing how it can make the most money from fetal organs.  (The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.)
• 
"We don't want to get called on selling fetal parts across states," Dr.  Ginde admitted.
• 
Melissa Farrell, research director for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, saying she can deliver fully intact fetuses.  (If babies were killed after being born alive, that would be murder.  Texas has opened a criminal investigation.)
• 
Planned Parenthood and its apologists responded with misdirection, deception and outright lies.
• 
If you can watch without gagging what USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers, a Democrat, described as "the strategic crushing of the unborn to better harvest their hearts, lungs and livers," odds are you're a sociopath.
• 
Most Americans aren't, which is why Planned Parenthood apologists try so hard to block release of more videos.
• 
Two-thirds of Americans oppose second-trimester abortions.  I doubt Democrats could subsidize Planned Parenthood for performing them if we hadn't been kept in the dark about what goes on in their clinics.
• 
Britain abolished the slave trade because William Wilberforce so graphically and persistently described its horrors.  "You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know," he told Parliament.
• 
Most Democrats avert their gaze, try to divert ours.  But they can never again say they did not know.
• 
See related On Second Thought... (Glenn McCoy, 07/29/2015) cartoon from General picture album
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 08/18/2015)
• 
The endlessly repeated argument that most Americans are the descendants of immigrants ignores the fact that most Americans are NOT the descendants of ILLEGAL immigrants.  Millions of immigrants from Europe had to stop at Ellis Island, and had to meet medical and other criteria before being allowed to go any further.
• 
Despite an old saying that taxes are the price we pay for civilization, an absolute majority of the record-breaking tax money collected by the federal government today is simply transferred by politicians from people who are not likely to vote for them to people who are more likely to vote for them.
• 
Do the people who are always demanding that there be more "training" for police ever say that the hoodlums that the police have to deal with should have had more training by their parents, instead of being allowed to grow wild, like weeds?
• 
Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.
• 
Barack Obama wrote a book titled "The Audacity of Hope." His own career, however, might more accurately be titled "The Mendacity of Hype."
• 
With all its staggering horrors and insanities, World War II may yet turn out to have been just a dress rehearsal for the ultimate catastrophe of a nuclear-armed terrorist nation like Iran.  We seem oblivious to the possibility that we may be leaving our children and grandchildren at the mercy of people who have demonstrated repeatedly that they have no mercy.
      How Do You Know What's Right and Wrong?  Left-Right Differences, Part VII  (JWR 08/18/2015)
• 
How can we determine what is morally right?  The answer to this question — the most important question human beings need to answer — is a major difference between Left and Right.
• 
For conservatives, the answer is, and has always been, that there are moral truths — objective moral standards — to which every person is accountable.  In America, this has meant accountability to the Creator, the G0D of the Bible, and to Judeo-Christian values.
• 
For the Left, the answer has always been — meaning since Karl Marx, the father of Leftism — that there is no transcendent source of morality.  On the contrary, as Marx wrote, "Man is G0D," and therefore each human being is the author of his or her own moral standards.
• 
As a rule, leftists fear and have contempt for people who base their values on a transcendent source such as religion and the Bible.  Such people, in the Left's view, "can't think for themselves — they need a G0D and a religion to tell them what's right and wrong."
• 
This ideal of thinking everything through for oneself sounds admirable.  And to a certain extent it is.
• 
But if there is no G0D and religion, there are no moral truths, only moral opinions.  Without G0D and religion, good and evil, right and wrong, don't objectively exist.  They are subjective terms that just mean "I like" or "I don't like."
• 
Without G0D and religion, morally speaking, there is no fixed North or fixed South.  The needle points wherever the owner of the compass thinks it ought to point.
• 
"What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it's wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests?"
• 
So, then, if there is no moral truth, how do most secular people arrive at moral decisions?
• 
According to how they feel.  On the Left, personal feelings usually supplant objective standards.
• 
As much as one may — and should — feel about historic injustices committed against black Americans, the conservative will not eliminate standards.
• 
Conservatives' commitment to a standard of true and false means identifying terrorists as Islamic; liberals feel for the many good Muslims in the world and therefore often refuse to identify Islamic terror by name.
• 
In his Farewell Address, President George Washington's most famous speech, the first president perfectly expressed the conservative view on the need for G0D and religion for moral standards and for societal standards generally:
• 
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports ... these firmest props of the duties of Man and citizens."
      A would-be father's perspective on Planned Parenthood and loss  (Fox 08/13/2015)
• 
All I could think about was how this child was going to ruin my future, how it was going to rob me of some future success that I couldn't attain with a child in tow.
• 
Yet deep in my heart I knew, like so many of you quietly know, those of you who have made the same choice, that abortion cuts to the very soul of you.
• 
No amount of success can bring back a life lost.  No amount of success can bring back a part of you that will forever be missing.
• 
How much pain and sorrow exists in the world because of our silent conscience?
• 
Flash forward twenty years.  I have that future that I always wanted.  I'm a person of success, of influence.  I do great work, I have great opportunities, freedom — and I have great regret.
• 
Instead our child met that gruesome fate that so many other precious human beings have faced, a disgarded pile of flesh on the cutting room floor of a Planned Parenthood office.
• 
If you're thinking about having an abortion or if you're the man in a situation that I was once in, believe that God has a purpose for each of us — and parenthood is among the best things we are capable of achieving.
• 
If you're someone who has had an abortion before, realize that God forgives all those that bend the knee and confess from the heart that we were wrong.
• 
Love triumphs over the darkest of deeds — even things done on our darkest days.
      Hillary Clinton, what are you thinking?  We don't need another education subsidy  (Fox 08/13/2015)
• 
If elected president, Hillary Clinton has promised to spend $350 billion to make college "more affordable." The U.S.  already has an $18 trillion debt (and growing by the day), but Clinton wants to add to it.  That's not affordable.
• 
Too many young people are graduating from universities unable to find jobs, or are underemployed.
• 
The problem isn't just at the university level; it's at the jobs level where Obamacare, higher taxes and overregulation have reduced incentives to hire people, or forced many to accept part-time work.
• 
When I entered American University as a freshman in 1960, tuition was $450 a semester.  Today you probably can't get out of the bookstore for that amount.  I received no federal subsidies.  My father paid for the first year and I paid for the rest by working and getting a small student loan from the bank, which I quickly repaid.
• 
While federal help for education has been around since the mid-19th century, most notably with the GI Bill after World War II, direct grants and other federal help to universities began to increase in the late '60s, leading to a rise in the cost of tuition.
• 
"...  over the past 35 years, college tuition at public universities has nearly quadrupled..."
• 
If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000."
• 
U.S.  education in the 21st century is based on a 20th-century model.  No one ought to be "entitled" to tax money to go to expensive schools like Harvard or Yale, or even public universities.  Community colleges and the online universities that offer students flexibility to work and study cost less and provide necessary knowledge, or trade skills for the job market.
• 
Athletics and the rest of the university culture may be fine for those who can afford it, but for students and parents who can't there are many more options than when I attended college.
• 
Hillary Clinton's proposal is a vote-buying effort that will add one more entitlement to an economy that can't afford it.
• 
If American politicians can't be an example of what living within one's means looks like, how can we expect younger people to embrace a Puritan ethic that served us well before envy, greed and entitlement took over?
      Academic Fascism  (JWR 08/12/2015)
• 
George Orwell said, "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." If one wants to discover the truth of Orwell's statement, he need only step upon most college campuses.
• 
This micro-aggression nonsense, called micro-totalitarianism by my colleague Dr.  Thomas Sowell, is nothing less than an attack on free speech.
• 
From the Nazis to the Stalinists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, and why is easy to understand.  Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation.  Free speech is a basic tool for indoctrination, propagandizing, proselytization.
• 
Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed.  This is increasingly the case on university campuses.
• 
"Let's give up on academic freedom in favor of justice.  When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue."
• 
The presumption that students must be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.
• 
Western values of liberty are under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America.  These people want to replace personal liberty with government control; they want to replace equality before the law with entitlement.
• 
As such, they pose a far greater threat to our way of life than any terrorist organization or rogue nation.  Leftist ideas are a cancer on our society.  Ironically, we not only are timid in response, but also nourish those ideas with our tax dollars and charitable donations.
      Back to reality — as the illusions keep fading  (JWR 08/12/2015)
• 
According to Iran's smooth president, Hassan Rouhani, the nuclear pact this administration has just negotiated with Tehran is "a great achievement." He's right.
• 
It's a great achievement for the fanatical mullahs who call the shots in his country.  For the way is now open for them to get their own Bomb, and dominate the Mideast — not to mention influence conflicts elsewhere with the help of their Russian and Chinese enablers.
• 
It's a great achievement for the international network of terrorists Iran has long sponsored — Hezbollah in Syria and Hamas in Gaza and far and wide.
• 
Now the sponsor of this whole infrastructure of terror may be able to claim the friendship, support and cooperation of the United States, thanks to Barack Obama, John Kerry and misguided company.
• 
It's a great achievement, all right, but not for the forces of freedom and stability in the world.
• 
The late Arab Spring, which by now has sprung, set off a wave of delusions about how the Arab world was suddenly going to turn into a garden of democracies — instead of the rough neighborhood it long has been, and is likely to remain.  Especially if the West persists in mistaking dreams for reality, and hope for a strategy.
• 
If you want evidence of how low this president has fallen in public esteem, you needn't consult the polls.  Just look around.  The very mention of his name is enough to inspire cynical sighs.  The dissatisfaction with his policies foreign and domestic has become palpable.
• 
If you want evidence of how low this president has fallen in public esteem, you needn't consult the polls.  Just look around.  The very mention of his name is enough to inspire cynical sighs.  The dissatisfaction with his policies foreign and domestic has become palpable.
• 
All he had to do was make a grand apology tour of the Arab world, reset relations with Russia, extend the hand of friendship to tyrannical regimes like Iran's, and the dangerous wilderness that is the world would be transformed into a peaceful, welcoming garden.
• 
Instead of being "red in tooth and claw," Nature itself would bow to our president's utopian dream.  But after the dream comes the awakening.
• 
There is no end of reasons to be vigilant in that part of the world.  And to stick with old friends, like the Kurds and Israelis, instead of betraying them once again.  But this president seems able to recognize reality only when he absolutely has to.
      Barack Obama's inability to grasp reality  (JWR 08/11/2015)
• 
Many bad things happen when a leader is weak, confused and forever searching for a reason to do nothing. 
• 
For all his softness on Islam, he has little insight into the men who send out mobs to cry "death to America."
• 
The international order so carefully put together, and guarded so faithfully, by American presidents after the Cold War was won, has begun to unravel under this president to the consternation of America's most faithful allies and to the unexpected delight of the nation's enemies.
• 
The anarchy that follows this unraveling is the legacy that he will leave behind him when he takes that long, lingering helicopter ride out of town on inauguration day 2017.
• 
"When [Mr.] Obama came to office in 2009 it would have been unimaginable that a caliphate could be allowed to thrive in the midst of the Middle East, or that a U.S.  president would be foolish enough to exploit ancient Persian and Arab enmity for the purposes of American retrenchment.  [Mr.] Obama's now familiar refrain is to counsel "strategic patience" while suggesting that America cannot solve every world problem.  He remains oblivious to the fact that his worldview is the problem.  ISIS has created a version of the future which Obama appears unable to grasp.  Its caliphate is being sustained through the mass murder and repression of those who do not belong."
• 
"Unable to grasp." That will be the epitaph and the legacy of Mr.  Obama's presidency.  When an American president says he wants to "lead from behind," the enemies in the Middle East, and there are many, naturally assume that he means he wants to fool about on the margins, make speeches, play a little golf (or a lot), insult those who disagree with him.
• 
He can't talk about a strategy in the Middle East because he doesn't have one.  He thinks he doesn't need one because ISIS will implode.  He cannot even bring himself to say the words "Islamic violence," and thus cannot deal with the nature of radical Islam.  He insists that ISIS is just another manifestation of terrorism, not a caliphate that demands to be recognized as a state.
• 
Blinded by what he wants to see, he would be a bowl of mush in the hands of the mullahs if push comes to shove with the United States.  Barack Obama, paralyzed by the ideology he learned on the left, could never pull the trigger in a confrontation with Iran, and the mullahs — and the world — know it.
• 
The summer soldiers in the U.S.  Senate need not fear war if they take the highway rather than the Obama way.  They should fear the Islamic bomb if they don't.
      Ferguson one year later: It is now fashionable to vilify police regardless of the facts  (Fox 08/07/2015)
• 
... we can expect activists and opportunists to return to the small town and take to their soapboxes to stage protests, disparage law officers, and call for additional limits on the police.
• 
Fueled by negative media reports and an Administration-led political agenda, it is now fashionable to vilify your local police, loudly and often, regardless of the facts.
• 
As the trend expands, we will inherit the obvious result - good men and women already doing difficult, often thankless, work opting out of the profession; young prospects taking other paths for their careers; rising crime rates as beleaguered cops retreat from proactive policing.
• 
From Washington, D.C.  to Washington State it's already happening.  In the nation's capital, the Metropolitan Police Department struggles to hire new officers while facing record attrition.  They do so while murder and violent crime have jumped after recent record lows.
• 
... many potential candidates mention the lack of public support as a main factor for reconsidering police work.
• 
Despite a Department of Justice investigation demonstrating that the Ferguson "Hands up, don't shoot" theme was apocryphal, major news outlets trumpeted the phrase as fact.
• 
Ongoing media hype around, "Hands up, don't shoot" enabled the lie to become a rallying cry, a hollow mantra for anyone wishing to protest the police.
• 
... ignores the realities of crowd dynamics and the challenge of law enforcers to apply just the right force to just the right person while ensuring no one nearby is offended.
• 
The White House sent representatives to the funerals of Michael Brown, a man who robbed a convenience store and then attacked a police officer, and Freddie Gray, a lifelong criminal.
• 
... the main points were made - police are over-militarized, too quick to resort to force, deficient in building trust through community engagement.
• 
Are citizens safer, are they feeling empowered to challenge every police direction and resist any police action...
• 
We've had a year of the police as political punching bags.  While some of the criticisms and occasional prosecutions have certainly been warranted, troubling new trends have also emerged.
• 
One thing that can be counted on is that, regardless of the facts, the police will be blamed for them too.
      The Iran deal is the new Obamacare  (JWR 08/07/2015)
• 
Like Obamacare, the Iran deal represents an ideological fixation of the president's; it is unpopular; and it will get through Congress — or to be more exact, avoid disapproval by Congress — by sheer partisan force.
• 
For years, we've heard Obama say that all options are on the table in forcing the Iranians to "end their nuclear program." But he believed in having all options on the table about as much as he opposed gay marriage.  Saying that he didn't rule out military options was all about buying time until he could turn around and say, in effect, that a bad deal is better than all military options.
• 
Not that anyone, especially the Iranians, ever took him very seriously.  This deal is the result of coercive diplomacy absent coercion.  In essence, it allows Iran to become a threshold nuclear power (preserving much of its nuclear infrastructure and continuing to enrich) in exchange for us not having to do anything to try to stop Iran from becoming a threshold nuclear power.
• 
"This access can be with as little as 24 hours' notice." Underline the word "can" in that sentence.  As the president later acknowledged, if Iran wants to block inspectors from a suspicious site, the question goes to a dispute-resolution process that takes up to 24 days.
• 
"It is true that some of the limitations regarding Iran's peaceful program last only 15 years." This is truly insipid.  The whole point of the deal is to limit Iran's "peaceful program" because no one believes that it is peaceful.
• 
"An argument against sanctions relief is effectively an argument against any diplomatic resolution of this issue." No.  It's an argument against sanctions relief that provides a huge windfall to the regime in exchange for an inadequate deal.
• 
... perhaps some of the tens of billions of dollars will go to military activities, but says Iran has "engaged in these activities for decades" — which isn't much of a case for giving it the resources to fund them more lavishly.
• 
The crux of the president's case is that there is no alternative to his path except war.  But the sanctions regime was biting.  It could have been preserved and even tightened, and coupled with a credible threat of force, could have produced a much better agreement.
• 
This means that like Obamacare, the Iran deal, too, will carry a taint of illegitimacy.  It, too, will become something that Republicans pledge to reverse.  It, too, will have its ultimate standing decided by the 2016 election.
• 
It, too, in sum, is supposed to be a great credit to the president's legacy, when it is really a disgrace.
      Just who is helping Iran's hard-liners?  (JWR 08/07/2015)
• 
Inspections?  Everyone now knows that "anytime, anywhere" — indispensable for a clandestine program in a country twice the size of Texas with a long history of hiding and cheating — has been changed to "You've got 24 days and then we're coming in for a surprise visit." New York restaurants ... get more intrusive inspections than the Iranian nuclear program.
• 
Snapback sanctions?  Everyone knows that once the international sanctions are lifted, they are never coming back.
• 
And then came news of the secret side agreements between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.  These concern past nuclear activity and inspections of the Parchin military facility where Iran is suspected of having tested nuclear detonation devices.
• 
Well, this treaty is not standard practice.  It's the most important treaty of our time.  Yet, Congress is asked to ratify this "historic diplomatic breakthrough" (Obama) while being denied access to the heart of the inspection regime.
• 
Congress doesn't know what's in these side agreements, but Iran does.  And just this past Monday ... a top adviser to the supreme leader, declared that "entry into our military sites is absolutely forbidden."
• 
One secret side deal could even allow Iran to provide its own soil samples (!) from Parchin.  And now satellite imagery shows Iran bulldozing and sanitizing Parchin as we speak.  The verification regime has turned comic.
• 
This tragicomedy is now in the hands of Congress or, more accurately, of congressional Democrats.
• 
And why he tried so mightily to turn the argument into a partisan issue — those warmongering Republicans attacking a president offering peace in our time.  Obama stooped low, accusing the Republican caucus of making "common cause" with the Iranian "hard-liners" who shout "Death to America."
• 
They are the government, for G0D's sake — the entire state apparatus of the Islamic Republic from the Revolutionary Guards to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei who for decades have p
• 
Common cause with the Iranian hard-liners?  Who more than Obama?
• 
For years, they conduct a rogue nuclear weapons program in defiance of multiple Security Council declarations of its illegality backed by sanctions and embargoes.
• 
Obama rewards them with a treaty that legitimates their entire nuclear program, lifts the embargo on conventional weapons and ballistic missiles and revives an economy — described by Iran's president as headed back to "the Stone Age" under sanctions — with an injection of up to $150 billion in unfrozen assets, permission for the unlimited selling of oil and full access to the international financial system.
• 
With this agreement, this repressive, intolerant, aggressive, supremely anti-American regime — the chief exporter of terror in the world — is stronger and more entrenched than it has ever been.
      Media gorge on Cecil, pass up red meat on Hillary  (JWR 08/07/2015)
• 
Adam Smith observed of human nature that most of us would lose more sleep over the loss of our own little finger than we would the loss of millions of lives in distant China.  It's society, he said, that corrects this self-centeredness and redirects it to better ends.
• 
But what would Smith make of a society outraged by the loss of an animal in Africa, and numb to the killing of millions of our own babies, themselves not much bigger than a little finger?
• 
Our unserious press investigates Marco Rubio's four speeding tickets in 20 years and forces Scott Walker to say whether he thinks President Obama is a Christian — but never demands that Hillary Clinton say if she thinks it's OK to harvest baby parts and sell them.
• 
There's more interest in the gender assertions of B-list celebrities than in the very real possibility that the Democratic frontrunner for president could be charged with stealing hundreds of classified documents.
• 
And there's more interest in the hacked photos of a few movie stars than in the government losing tens of millions of federal background checks and security clearance records to the Chinese.
• 
When was the last time a reporter asked President Obama if he still thinks it would have been wise to go to war in Syria (as Obama himself attempted two years ago), knowing what he knows now?  Or if the president still thinks he was right to withdraw U.S.  forces from Iraq, knowing what he knows now?
• 
A lane closure on the George Washington Bridge is said to disqualify a candidate for the presidency more than accepting millions of dollars from brutal dictatorships.
      The Obama Way Has Failed  (INN 08/07/2015)
• 
Do not threaten what you cannot do; do not act unless you must; if you act, see it through.
• 
After World War II, a post-war sovereign state system, bolstered by alliances, was constructed upon such principles.  It worked.  It ended the Cold War.
• 
Barack Obama sought to dismantle this system.  Instead of working out America's interests in a broad sense and maintaining alliances accordingly, he constructed a foreign policy designed to show the world that he is a better person than his predecessors.
• 
Under the agreement signed by his administration, Iran will develop nuclear weapons and the ayatollahs will get $150 billion.
• 
Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism.  The advantage when playing terrorist odds was stated best by the IRA: "We only have to be lucky once.  You will have to be lucky always."
• 
There is nothing in Hillary's history that would qualify her for the presidency, and much that should disqualify her.
• 
U.S.  intervention in Libya and Egypt, undermining governments that were no threat to American interests, led to terrorist chaos in Libya, where the American ambassador was killed, along with three other Americans, and led to Islamic extremists taking over in Egypt.
• 
Fortunately, contrary to American foreign policy, the Egyptian military got rid of the extremist government that persecuted Christians, threatened Israel, and aligned itself with America's enemies.
• 
Libya, as a failed policy, belonged to Hillary as much as to Obama.  Libya was supposed to be Hillary's pet project; she would knock off Qaddafi and get a big foreign policy triumph, her great accomplishment as Secretary of State.  Instead, because she gave it no further thought, except in terms of political benefit to her, she left a failed state in Libya.
• 
In Europe, as in the Middle East, America's foreign policy during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state was to undermine America's friends and cater to its enemies.
• 
Barack Obama, like other presidents, made his own foreign policy; he chose to transform America's foreign policy fundamentally.
• 
The truly historic catastrophe, and radical transformation, of American foreign policy — permitting Iranians to develop nuclear weapons, and making it difficult for Israel to stop them — was also something that happened on Hillary's watch as secretary of state.
• 
It is a wonder that many people are still prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States, in times made incredibly dangerous by the foreign-policy disasters on her watch as Secretary of State.
• 
It would have been preferable if Obama and Hillary referred to him as "Ambassador Stevens": He was the representative of the United States, and that was why he died.  The Chris-this-Chris-that stuff was designed, like everything else, to deflect from the reality of what had happened - a successful military assault on the anniversary of 9/11 - and to turn it into merely a personal tragedy for poor "Chris", but not for the administration.
• 
As Hillary Clinton would say, what difference at this point does it make?  Both the awful hollow moral void and the accompanying ruthless unyielding discipline were present after Benghazi.  She concocted her fiction and then made everyone else live with it.
• 
It worked for Obama.  If Hillary succeeds, it will be her modus operandi throughout her term in office as president.
• 
Even in its own terms, the Obama way failed.  Hillary is more of the same.
      Planned Parenthood videos and the killing of innocents  (Fox 08/06/2015)
• 
The tapes are difficult to watch, just as any discussion of human slaughter is difficult to watch.  If you have seen these tapes, you witnessed physicians and others talking about the profits Planned Parenthood is making in the sale of baby body parts, even though such sales are criminal under federal law.
• 
The cavalier demeanor of those who profit from this slaughter is chilling, and the moral punch in the nose to the Democratic Party is excruciating.  That's because Planned Parenthood is virtually a branch of the Democratic Party.
• 
It has a lock on the federal treasury to the tune of $500 million per year.  It pays for or performs more than 325,000 abortions a year, which is about one-third of all abortions in America.  It contributes heavily to the campaigns of Democratic office seekers.  You can see the cycle.
• 
The Planned Parenthood folks may be baby killers, but they are not dumb.  They know how to dedicate federal funds for maternal health and free up maternal health funds for the slaughter of babies — and make it all look legal.
• 
Is the fetus in the womb a person?  Before answering this, consider the depravity to which we have sunk due to its legal non-personhood.  The slaughter of babies, some where it is legal in their ninth month of gestation, the sale of their body parts, and the taxpayer financing of this have become so morose that even their staunchest supporters cannot confront these realities publicly for fear of losing political support.
• 
Is the fetus in the womb a person?  Before answering this, consider the danger of a Supreme Court possessing the power to declare any human offspring to be a non-person.
• 
Is the fetus in the womb a person?  Of course it is.  It has two fully human parents and the fully actualizable human genome to achieve post-natal existence.
• 
If the reason for government in the first place is to protect rights, the government's prime obligation is to protect the rights of persons to live.
• 
But seeing is believing.  The tapes are the abortionists' nightmare, because in their wanton slaughter they have let slip the utter humanity of their victims.
• 
And the souls of the Holy Innocents who have been slaughtered before drawing their first breaths are no doubt praying for the conversion of the hearts and the salvation of the souls of those who killed them.
      America and guns: Why do so many stoke paranoia about firearms?  (Fox 08/05/2015)
• 
"Every place in the world that's tried to ban guns ... has seen big increases in murder rates.  You'd think at least one time, some place, when they banned guns, murder rates would go down.  But that hasn't been the case."
• 
... accidental shooting deaths are relatively rare: "about 500 a year." That sounds bad, but about 400 Americans are killed by overdosing on acetaminophen each year (most of them suicides), and almost as many Americans drown in swimming pools.
• 
"It would be nice if it was zero (but) consider that 120 million Americans own guns."
• 
Often those guns are used to prevent crime.  The homeowner pulls out the gun and the attacker flees.  No one knows how often this happens because these prevented crimes don't become news and don't get reported to the government.
• 
Add politics to the mix and the anti-gun statistics get even more misleading.  Gang members in their late teens or early adulthood killing each other get called "children." Fights between gangs near schools get called school "mass shootings."
• 
The number of mass shootings in America has been roughly level over the past 40 years.
• 
It all helps stoke paranoia about guns.  Some people respond by calling for more controls.  Others, fearing the government may ban gun sales, respond by buying more weapons.
• 
"Violent crime across the board has plummeted.  In 1991, the murder rate was about 9.8 (people) per 100,000.  (Now) it's down to about 4.2."
      More Upset About The Death of Cecil Than PP  (JWR 08/03/2015)
• 
Why is there more outrage over Cecil's death than the Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted fetal organs?
• 
The answer is that only the dentist is guilty of Cecil's death.  PP, however, exists because we turn a blind eye to what abortion really is and that collective guilt is why this scandal must be muted.
• 
The mainstream media is comprised primarily of liberal Democrats who are tools of the abortion industry's propaganda mill which argues that abortion is not the death of a baby but merely the termination of cells or medical waste.
• 
Many of the women who've been fighting the good fight against the death of human babies have themselves seen the horrors up close and personal.
• 
The fact that Planned Parenthood sells off the parts of babies to the highest bidder is not something those denying the facts want to admit because it will prove they've sold their souls as well.
• 
America was a country founded and preserved by people of very strong character with moral principles that guided their lives.  Most understood the concept of self sacrifice and were not corrupted by avarice or craven ambition.
• 
That all changed in the latter part of the past century when liberalism reared its ugly head and removed G0D from the equation of our lives.
• 
Not surprising therefore that when G0D was removed from schools, demons like those at Columbine would move in.
• 
... Nietzsche's quote: G0D is dead.  G0D remains dead.  And we have killed him.  How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?  What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?  What water is there for us to clean ourselves?*
• 
Nietzsche believed that by abandoning G0D we no longer had a compass to live our lives with a moral code.  The death of G0D is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe or recognize any morality
• 
The death of G0D will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of a core moral code but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in a universal moral law, that binds all humans.
• 
Doesn't that perfectly describe what is wrong with our nation now?  No wonder so many youths commit suicide and homicide.  The idea that nothing matters is terrifying to the young.
• 
Unplanned pregnancies are an inconvenience and euphemistically calling abortions terminations instead of killing babies works when you've silenced that niggling conscience forever.
• 
We now live in an age of depravity and moral bankruptcy where the word G0D was booed at the 2012 Democrat convention and judges and legislatures continue their battle to undo the Ten Commandments from government buildings and laws.
• 
There is only one obstacle to nihilism and that is to welcome a higher power back into our lives.
• 
Perhaps when we start to fill the churches and synagogues as we did in the past, our hearts will bleed for the dead babies even more than we did for a dead lion.
      The folly of Obama's Clean Power Plan  (Fox 08/03/2015)
• 
The president stated Sunday that his plan is "protecting the world we leave to our children." To be generous to the president, that is a gross exaggeration.
• 
Based on the calculations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that will make less than one-tenth of a degree of difference in global temperatures.
• 
Contrary to the president's claims about saving lives and reducing energy costs, his own EPA has found that the drastic cuts they are ordering will increase electricity costs, while doing next to nothing to slow the pace of climate change.
• 
What the president will not admit about his ambitious plans is that they will not matter unless the countries actually responsible for future greenhouse gas emissions do far more than they now show any intention of doing.
• 
The world's future major emitters will be China, India, Brazil — and of course Russia — and other rapidly growing economies whose use of fossil fuels is part and parcel of their growth plans.
• 
... the president is claiming that the U.S.  must provide a leading example at a time when the most important carbon emitters have already declared they will not follow it.
• 
At the pace those countries are moving, the problem of climate change will be just as great for our children as it is today, no matter what costly regulations the president imposes on the U.S.  economy.
      Huckabee compared Obama to Adolf Hitler?  (JWR 07/31/2015)
• 
"This president's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history.  It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians.  By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.  This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal.  It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people.  I read the whole deal.  We gave away the whole store.  It's got to be stopped."
• 
... a remotely fair reading of the statement strongly suggests that Huckabee was comparing Obama to Neville Chamberlain or some other member of the "Hitler is a man we can do business with" school.
• 
We can parse more deeply if we must.  Hitler didn't march Jews to the doors of the ovens, but into them.  The Iranians are the ones with sinister intentions in Huckabee's description, not Obama, who, again, is described as naive and feckless, not sinister and evil.
• 
Huckabee isn't saying anything that lots of serious people haven't said, albeit more eloquently.  In countless speeches, Bibi Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have stressed that the legacy of the Holocaust is such that Israel cannot take a chance on Iran having a nuclear weapon.
• 
Iranian civil, military and religious leaders have for years vowed to "wipe Israel off the map," deliver a new Holocaust (while denying the first one happened).
• 
"If all the Jews gathered in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.  ... It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."
      America needs a sensible approach to illegal immigration  (JWR 07/30/2015)
• 
American employers and ethnic activists have long colluded to weaken border enforcement and render immigration law meaningless.  The former wanted greater profits from cheaper labor, the latter wished more political clout for themselves.
• 
Mexico conspired, too.  It received billions of easy dollars in remittances from its expatriates in America.
• 
Mexico had few qualms about letting millions of its own citizens illegally cross its northern border into the United States — even though the Mexican government would never tolerate millions of Central Americans illegally crossing the border to become permanent residents of Mexico.
• 
Millions, we sometimes forget, are fleeing from the authoritarianism, racism, corruption and class oppression of Mexico.  They have voted with their feet to reject that model and to choose a completely different — and often antithetical — economic, social, cultural and political paradigm in the United States.
• 
Then there is the matter of law.  America went to war over the Confederate states' nullification of federal laws.  A century and a half later, do we really want hundreds of sanctuary cities, each declaring irrelevant certain federal laws that they find bothersome?
• 
Controversy has arisen over the number of undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies or serious misdemeanors.
• 
Either the number of undocumented immigrants who commit crimes is so vast that no one knows the extent of the problem, or there are political hurdles in determining that number — or drawing politically incorrect conclusions from it.
• 
Numbers also count.  When millions come to a country illegally, integration breaks down and tribalism takes over.
• 
Reform should first include strict enforcement of the border.  A new, ethnically blind immigration system would select from among applicants based on skill sets and education, and consider candidates from all over the world — not on the basis of ethnic identity or proximity to the border.
• 
Immediate and lasting deportation would ensue for those who committed crimes or cynically chose to receive public assistance rather than work while here illegally.
      Hillary Clinton lies again  (Fox 07/30/2015)
• 
... in 2011 and 2012 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waged a secret war on the governments of Libya and Syria, with the approval of President Obama and the consent of congressional leadership from both parties and in both houses of Congress.
• 
Qatar is in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood and is one of the biggest supporters of global jihad in the world — and Clinton, who approved the sales of arms to Qatar expecting them to make their way to Syrian and Libyan rebels, as they did, knew that.
• 
She and her State Department caused American arms to come into the possession of known Al Qaeda operatives, a few of whom assassinated U.S.  Ambassador Chris Stevens.
• 
She either has a memory so faulty that she should not be entrusted with any governmental powers, or she knowingly lied.
• 
The inspector general of the intelligence community and the inspector general of the State Department each have reviewed a limited sampling of her emails that were sent or received via the Clinton Foundation server, and both have concluded that materials contained in some of them were of such gravity that they were obliged under federal law to refer their findings to the FBI for further investigation.
• 
The FBI does not investigate for civil wrongdoing or ethical lapses.  It investigates behavior that may be criminal or that may expose the nation's security to jeopardy.
• 
These emails address the location of French jets approaching Libya, the location of no-fly zones over Libya and the location of Stevens in Libya.  It is inconceivable that an American secretary of state failed to protect and secure this information.
• 
She is no doubt lying again, just as she did to the Senate Armed Services Committee.  Yet the question remains: Why did she use her husband's foundation's computer server instead of a government server, as the law requires?
• 
She did that so she could obscure what the server recorded and thus be made to appear different according to history from how she was in reality.  Why did she lie about all this?  Because she thinks she can get away with it.
• 
Will American voters let her?
      It is time to restore dignity to children in the womb  (Fox 07/29/2015)
• 
... doctors speaking about, and examining, the body parts of these babies, with no apparent emotion or trouble of soul.
• 
Are they crazy, or are they just being logical?
• 
... a certain climate, and a certain set of presumptions, has been created by our current public policy on abortion, and the arguments made to justify it, and that if we are horrified by what Planned Parenthood does to these babies, we have to examine what that connection might be.
• 
He told me, "I don't know when the child receives a soul."
• 
"After 20 weeks where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over it.  ... On the other hand, I have another position, which I think is superior in the hierarchy of questions, and that is: 'Who owns the child?' It's got to be the mother."
• 
Notice that we are not hearing an argument here that denies these children to be living human babies, but rather that there is such a thing as a baby who does not deserve protection of the law.
• 
... on the one hand, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins" ... yet on the other, "the word 'person,' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn".
• 
So some humans don't have to be considered persons.  The difficulty, of course, is drawing a clear line and having a clear rationale for that line.  And we have all kinds of evidence of how dangerously flexible that line can be.
• 
"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician."
• 
"The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual."
• 
... to be consistent, there are "only two possibilities," namely,"oppose abortion, or allow infanticide".
• 
But does drawing a legal limit do enough to resolve the underlying dangerous tension created by allowing children to be killed at certain stages for rationales that no longer apply to the same children at later stages?
• 
Are they just crazy, or are they simply following the logic of an industry based on the assertion that the mother's choice overrides any consideration for the dignity of that child, and her body?
      The Left's Contempt for America: Left-Right Differences, Part VI  (JWR 07/28/2015)
• 
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the document that articulated the principle of human rights endowed by the Creator (thereby ultimately ensuring the end of slavery) and led to the establishment of the country that has served as the beacon of hope for people of every race and ethnicity — more black Africans have voluntarily emigrated to the United States to seek liberty and opportunity than came to America as slaves.
• 
Conservatives view America as President Abraham Lincoln viewed it — as the "Last Best Hope of Earth."
• 
That all civilizations — including African societies — practiced slavery means that, at worst, those parts of America that practiced slavery were no better in that regard than other societies.
• 
The important moral and historical question, therefore, is not, "Did society x practice slavery?" They all did.  The important question is, "Which societies abolished slavery?"
• 
The first ones to do so were all rooted in the Jewish and Christian Bibles.  Among them was the United States of America, which fought a horrific civil war that ended slavery.
• 
America gradually became the least xenophobic, least racist nation in the world.  In no country do people become accepted as full members of the society as do immigrants to America.
• 
Without America, the world would suffer from far more evils — such as genocide and totalitarian enslavement — than it does now.
• 
The countries where American troops have remained long after combat ceased — Germany, Japan and South Korea — have prospered economically and morally.
• 
Countries that America abandoned — Vietnam and Iraq, for example — experienced mass murder and genocide.
• 
If one knew nothing about the Left and the Right other than their moral assessments of America, that is all one would need to know in choosing which ideology to adopt.
      “Kenyan American” Obama Has News For Zionist Americans  (INN 07/28/2015)
• 
This is what he said: "I'm the first Kenyan American to be President of the United States."
• 
A comment like that packs a punch, especially as it comes from a man dogged by accusations that he wasn't born in the United States.
• 
So taking the cue from the President himself, let's hear no more about divided loyalties.
• 
What's good for Kenyan Americans ought to be just as good for Zionist Americans.
      Is the West Threatened More by Islamist Fact or by Right-Wing Fiction?  (INN 07/27/2015)
• 
Why are progressives so quick to disparage traditional Jews or conservative Christians who question the liberal agenda, yet so reluctant to criticize Islamists who oppress minorities and women, persecute those of other faiths, stifle free speech, and promote religious supremacism through jihad and genocide?
• 
Not only do they downplay the terrorist threat at home and abroad, but they deflect attention away from Islamic radicalism by focusing on a supposed right-wing terror menace that has been defined into existence more by questionable statistics than objective analysis.
• 
The New York Times recently reported that fewer people have been killed in the US by jihadists than by right-wing extremists since 9/11...
• 
The problem with this narrative is that it fails to factor in the growing number of homegrown jihadist plots that have been foiled by law enforcement.
• 
Moreover, it excludes the 9/11 terror attacks themselves, which although perpetrated by foreign nationals, nonetheless killed three-thousand people on US soil.
• 
The left has a penchant for characterizing non-liberals as extremists whether they are truly right-wingers or are instead centrist conservatives, libertarians, independents, people of faith, or simply neutral critics of liberal social policy.
• 
Neither have they exposed reactionary ideologies comparable to jihad that sanction the killing of innocents for doctrinal gratification, or rightist organizations analogous to ISIS, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, which aim to conquer and subjugate.
• 
But as horrific as those murders were, they were not part of an international terror campaign to eradicate western culture and impose religious totalitarianism.  Those murders were the acts of a depraved individual who was motivated by despicable racial hatred, not an extremist doctrine that preaches the destruction of liberal democratic society.
• 
In contrast, jihadist supremacism holds itself above the law of the land and contravenes the freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution. 
• 
An objective discussion of the theological basis of militant Islam cannot be omitted from the debate no matter how hard the Obama administration attempts to restrict the dialogue.
• 
The reality is that radical Islamists are not a harmless minority, but a volatile element dedicated to perpetuating a state of holy war.
• 
Islamists will win if we restrict speech to avoid insulting them, give more credence to their cultural sensitivities than to our own beliefs and ideals, validate their revisionist grievances against the West, and behave with the meek resignation of the subjugated.
• 
Islamists can only prevail in this clash of civilizations if we modify our conduct to accommodate them.
• 
Unfortunately, that's exactly what the Obama administration has done – by refusing to acknowledge religious beliefs that sanctify terrorism, by minimizing the threat of ISIS, by ignoring strategic realities in Syria and Iraq, and by guaranteeing the nuclearization of Iran with a very bad deal after years of negotiating from an embarrassing position of moral weakness.
• 
The dangers of Islamist extremism are real and will only be exacerbated by the failure to respond effectively.  It will not disappear by ignoring it or referring to it generically as "violent extremism.
• 
The most clear and present danger to world order today does not come from some shadow right-wing conspiracy concocted by the administration and mindlessly parroted as immutable fact by its acolytes in the press.
• 
It comes from the purveyors of Islamist extremism.  This is the reality, and it's one that cannot be changed by wishful thinking, semantic disingenuity, political misdirection, or left-wing dissimulation.
      Obama’s Iran Deal: Who’s Buying This Wreck?  (INN 07/26/2015)
• 
Credit King Solomon once again for his wisdom: "A twisted thing cannot be made straight."
• 
This takes us directly to John Kerry and his pitch before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he tried to explain away his perfectly awful Iran Deal.
• 
As Kerry shared his dreams with the Committee, we thought back to another dreamer, Shimon Peres.
• 
he gladly and enthusiastically signed the Oslo Accords, of which he was partly its architect.  The Left had its Big Win.
• 
Never mind that Israel had fully legitimized a terror group, the PLO, as its equal.  Equal footing for a gang of misfits.
• 
Overnight, through a handshake, Rabin to Arafat, a new government was created, a government of scoundrels that now has a seat at the UN.
• 
Promises were made.  Israel agrees to numerous concessions, principally a judenrein Gaza and partly the 'West Bank'.  Plus, more concessions to come.
• 
But, people said – if the PLO misbehaves, all bets are off.  We're taking it all back, in a snap.
• 
Two intifadas later and Hamas terrorists ensconced in Gaza, nothing's been taken back – a twisted thing cannot be made straight.
• 
So yes is the answer for Obama's "New Middle East," just as Peres dreamed of a "New Middle East," which is "new" all right, but in all the wrong places.
• 
Practically every country that surrounds Israel is in hellish, murderous turmoil.  Not quite the sweet dreams that Peres had in mind.  Or Obama.  Or Kerry.
• 
But in the end, they will do nothing, which is what they usually do – nothing.  Lois Lerner is still on the loose.
• 
Hillary is still not in jail for Benghazi and her email scandal.  Our borders are still wide open.
• 
Much huffing and puffing from the Congress, but nothing much happens.
• 
That is why Trump is still up in the polls.  We the People, the little people, we agree with him that our politicians are 90-pound weaklings.
      The battle goes beyond Planned Parenthood.  We must end abortion in America  (Fox 07/23/2015)
• 
How can we claim to be superior to nations who commit genocide when we commit infanticide?  Destroying innocent life and harvesting human organs is beyond barbaric — it is unimaginably immoral, grotesque, and evil. 
• 
Only evil could treat the organs of innocent babies as if they were fan belts, fenders, or fuel lines for a Ford — to be swapped, sold, discarded and disposed at the whims of a mechanic.
• 
Planned Parenthood isn't a healthcare provider any more than Benghazi was a 'spontaneous protest'.
• 
It should enrage every American that our government confiscates money from our paychecks only to bankroll these barbaric butchers with $500 million each year.  This isn't about women's health, this is about making money off babies body parts.
• 
In the face of human harvesting, it's unacceptably unAmerican and immoral to bury our heads and hope this evil will disappear.
• 
People can pretend that infants in the womb are blobs of animated protoplasm, but Truth is Truth.  And science is making it much harder for Americans to ignore what their conscience already tells them.
• 
As we digest the disgusting footage of these cavalier conversations about harvesting human organs, we must remember that this battle is about more than just defunding Planned Parenthood.  We must end the scourge, sin, and slaughter of abortion.  And then we should ask God's forgiveness for not doing it sooner.
      Congress must defund Planned Parenthood’s killing fields  (Fox 07/22/2015)
• 
They were haggling over body parts — harvested from Planned Parenthood's killing fields.
• 
The doctor went on to explain how they perform less crunchy abortions so that profitable organs aren't damaged.
• 
Planned Parenthood's only defense was to say the videos were heavily edited.  They also expressed remorse for the tone of the secretly recorded conversations
• 
Proper tone?  So what exactly is the proper tone when negotiating a price for discarded body parts?  What exactly is the proper tone when you're running a chop shop for unborn children?
• 
Planned Parenthood received nearly $500,000,000 (that's half a billion dollars) in tax money last year — more than $60,000 an hour.
• 
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said — Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.
• 
Planned Parenthood must be defunded immediately.
• 
Until that happens, the blood of the unborn is not just on the hands of Planned Parenthood.  It's on the hands of every American taxpayer.
      A Historic Catastrophe  (JWR 07/21/2015)
• 
The United States seems at this moment about to break the record for the worst political blunder of all time, with its Obama administration deal that will make a nuclear Iran virtually inevitable.
• 
Already the years-long negotiations, with their numerous "deadlines" that have been extended again and again, have reduced the chances that Israel can destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, which have been multiplied and placed in scattered underground sites during the years when all this was going on.
• 
Israel is the only country even likely to try to destroy those facilities, since Iran has explicitly and repeatedly declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
• 
How did we get to this point — and what, if anything, can we do now?  Tragically, these are questions that few Americans seem to be asking.  We are too preoccupied with our electronic devices, the antics of celebrities and politics as usual.
• 
Bad as life was under the communists, it can be worse under nuclear-armed fanatics, who have already demonstrated their willingness to die — and their utter barbarism toward those who fall under their power.
• 
Americans today who say that the only alternative to the Obama administration's pretense of controlling Iran's continued movement toward nuclear bombs is war ignore the fact that Israel bombed Saddam Hussein's nuclear facilities, and Iraq did not declare war.  To do so would have risked annihilation.
• 
Early on, that same situation would have faced Iran.  But Obama's years-long negotiations with Iran allowed the Iranian leaders time to multiply, disperse and fortify their nuclear facilities.
• 
The Obama administration's leaking of Israel's secret agreement with Azerbaijan to allow Israeli warplanes to refuel there, during attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities, was a painfully clear sabotage of any Israeli attempt to destroy those Iranian facilities.
• 
Some commentators have attributed Barack Obama's many foreign policy disasters to incompetence.  But he has been politically savvy enough to repeatedly outmaneuver his opponents in America.
• 
If he is that savvy at home, why is he so apparently incompetent abroad?  Answering that question may indeed require us to "think the unthinkable," that we have elected a man for whom America's best interests are not his top priority.
      It's time to defund Planned Parenthood  (Fox 07/21/2015)
• 
... seeking desperately to restore its carefully constructed and ferociously defended image as an organization primarily focused on women's health, and only secondarily involved in providing abortions.
• 
But the edifice is cracked and no amount of attacking the messenger or hair-splitting legal argument can change the fact that Planned Parenthood's own medical directors have unwittingly offered rare and much-needed clarity about the nature of the business that Planned Parenthood has chosen, and shared (if inadvertently) the truth about precisely whose lives are destroyed as a result. 
• 
Regardless of the legal technicalities involved (which should be investigated), the words of Dr.  Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's medical director, last week and Dr.  Mary Gatter, president of its Council of Medical Directors, today make it perfectly clear that Planned Parenthood's business is killing.
• 
Between bites of salad and sips of wine, Nucatola described how she kills unborn children so as to harvest their vital organs, which are then conveyed to biotech firms for a fee. 
• 
In her own words: "you try to intentionally go above and below the thorax so that, you know — we've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that — so I'm not gonna crush that part, I'm gonna basically crush below, I'm gonna crush above, and I'm gonna see if I can get it all intact."
• 
She also explained (albeit in more antiseptic and technical terms) how she can even harvest the intact portion of an unborn child's skull by first turning the body in the womb to a breach position just before evacuating the child's brains with a suction device. 
• 
Dr.  Gatter today explained how her abortionists are able to use "a less crunchy technique to get whole specimens."
• 
These grim descriptions are unambiguous about who is destroyed as Planned Parenthood goes about its business.  The being killed by Planned Parenthood's abortionists is a human being, albeit at the earliest and most vulnerable stage of her life.
• 
Crushing human bodies.  Evacuating human skulls.  Harvesting human vital organs for a fee.  This is what Planned Parenthood does.  This is its business.
• 
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the world.  ... U.S.  taxpayers provide Planned Parenthood with $540 million per year.
• 
Like any big business, Planned Parenthood protects its brand and promotes its agenda in the political and cultural spheres.
• 
In both 2012 and 2014, its political action committee spent more than $1 million to oppose all restrictions on abortion (including laws requiring informed consent, parental involvement, limiting federal funding, and banning late term abortions).
• 
The American people should be thankful for Dr.  Nucatola's and Gatter's words, and even for the coarse and graphic manner in which they were delivered.
• 
In doing so, they offered a rare glimpse of the horrible truth about the nature and human cost of Planned Parenthood's work.
• 
No minimally decent society can support an organization whose business is killing and harvesting body parts for money.
      How the far left's legal goals put everyone's freedoms at risk  (Fox 07/20/2015)
• 
...  their ultimate goal: legally coerced acceptance and celebration of same-sex marriage as a moral good, equivalent in all respects to one-man, one-woman marriage. 
• 
And for those unwilling to "get with the program," their solution is loss of livelihood and social ostracism imposed through law, as we've already seen in numerous cases across the country.  Do we live in America anymore?
• 
... if you own a business and object to same-sex marriage, you have no First Amendment rights, and therefore the government can compel you to express messages or create expression that offends your most deeply held beliefs.
• 
if you own a business and object to same-sex marriage, you have no First Amendment rights, and therefore the government can compel you to express messages or create expression that offends your most deeply held beliefs.
• 
In their dystopian world, the law can and should force anyone in communicative professions — professional marketers, publicists, lobbyists, speech writers, film makers, newspapers, singers, painters, actors, and a host of others-to communicate messages and create expression that conflict with their most deeply held beliefs.
• 
Those with "acceptable" views won't have to worry.  Involuntary servitude of the mind is reserved only for those who resist the new orthodoxy.
• 
... our country will pay a dear price.  The First Amendment will be a shadow of its former self, protecting only those with "acceptable" views and permitting the government to present dissidents with a terrible choice: coerced agreement or forced silence.
• 
So if you are inclined to celebrate the compulsion and punishment of those who disagree with same-sex marriage, understand that what you are really celebrating is the loss of your own First Amendment freedoms as well.
      ‘Excuse me, professor’ – Scholar explains how to refute common leftist narratives  (07/17/2015)
• 
1.  "Jesus Christ was a progressive because he advocated income redistribution to help the poor."
• 
"He did urge that people should be caring and thoughtful and compassionate and responsible and to take care of your family and those around you.  But that was always a personal calling.  He never said ‘You don't have to worry about that, let's just get the politicians to do it.'"
• 
2.  "The Great Depression was a calamity of unfettered capitalism."
• 
"[The unsustainable interest rates] created a bubble which was burst in 1929."
• 
"Just as the market had gone through the roof as the Fed was boosting up money supply.  When the Fed started to contract the money supply, the stock market reflected that change in policy."
• 
3.  "If FDR's New Deal didn't end the depression, then World War II did."
• 
"If businesses realize they will get to keep more of their money, don't you think this will shape their risk-taking?"
• 
4.  "The minimum wage helps the poor."
• 
"A minimum wage of $15 an hour says to workers ‘If you can't find a job that pays at least $15 an hour, you are not allowed to work.' It is a direct assault on freedom of contract and for opportunities for people with low skills and those just starting out in the job market."
• 
5.  "Upton Sinclair's The Jungle proved regulation was required."
• 
"Upton Sinclair never, even himself, contended that his book was any kind of documentary.  It is a novel.  It is a work of fiction."
• 
"Why did he write the book?  He made it quite plain.  He wanted people to get angry with capitalism and embrace socialism."
• 
6.  "Profit is evidence of suspicious behavior."
• 
"They don't supply me with cheeseburgers because they know me or they like me.  But this is how they get ahead, by serving me as a consumer."
• 
7.  "Income inequality arises from market forces and requires government intervention."
• 
Equality before the law is essential, in terms of how it is applied to people.
• 
But once we get as close to that goal as we can, people are not equal.
• 
"They are not equal in terms of the talents that they have, or the talents they are willing to deploy and use.  They are not equal in terms of willingness to work that they may have.  They are not equal in terms of their ambitions or character."
      A gentleman's guide to Donald Trump's comments about illegal immigrants and crime  (Fox 07/17/2015)
• 
The Department of Homeland Security puts the number at about 11.5 million people as of that agency's latest common-core approved arithmetic performed in 2012.  Since Donald Trump limited his criticism to Mexico, note that the same report also finds that 59% of the illegally residing immigrant population is from Mexico, totaling about 6.7 million people.
• 
If the illegally residing Mexican population were to form a state, they would be the 14th most populated state in America – the same size as Massachusetts.
• 
Thinking of the illegally residing Mexicans in terms of the size of Massachusetts adds perspective to the huge numbers.  For instance, imagine the problems it would cause were Massachusetts to announce tomorrow it is no longer a state. 
• 
Imagine if they insisted that the other 49 states will now have to use their resources and tax revenue to build and maintain Massachusetts' roads, bridges, schools, parks, hospitals, libraries, fire departments, police departments and yes, even their courts and jails.
• 
The rest of us would have to pay for all that because the structure of that state which heretofore supported it would no longer exist.
• 
Would we want to do that even for our fellow Americans in Boston?  No, we would say they ask too much of us.
• 
Yet that is precisely what the illegally residing Mexican population is forcing us to do.
• 
If we would refuse Massachusetts this freebie if they asked, why do we say yes to Mexico who takes without asking?
• 
When it comes to crime, are the illegally residing Mexican immigrants lesser moral beings than the blue-blooded Brahmins of Massachusetts, better moral beings, or about the same?
• 
One could make the argument that having a couple of centuries of American exceptionalism in their collective experience, Massachusetts can claim morally superior and more cultured people, ... But alas, they can not make such a claim to superiority; not in today's politically correct America.
• 
We seem thusly compelled to accept, particularly with our current configuration of Supreme Court, that there is no such thing as unequal people and that the illegally residing Mexicans are every bit the moral equivalent of the people of Massachusetts.  Who on the left will dare to argue?
• 
Now let's get to the issue of crime and the co-equal moral bodies of the people of Massachusetts and the illegally residing Mexican population.  If we assume the same moral fiber, we must assume the same amount of crime.
• 
So accepting the equality of people from Massachusetts and illegally residing Mexicans, the latter group is likely each year to assault 18,424 people, rob 6,669 people, rape 1,603 women and kill 123 people.  In addition, they will steal from 101,609 people, invade 33,756 homes and steal over 9,000 cars.
• 
It is unfortunate enough that any society has to spend resources on the criminal mayhem of its own people.  We have no choice but to resign ourselves to that draw on capital. 
• 
Yet when we have to pay for the same from people who are not supposed to be here in the first place, who snuck in to drain other resources from us, there is a "double whammy" feel about it.  It's worse. 
• 
It has nothing to do with race or nationality. 
• 
The preventability of it is the added kick to the stomach, along with paying for crime that the country of Mexico ought to be paying for itself.
• 
Normally a politician seeking to do away with 1,603 rapes of women each year would be heralded as a hero.  But the political season is not normal. 
• 
Instead, adding insult to horrible injury of 1,603 raped women per year, the left prioritized hurt feelings over rape and called Trump a racist because the men who did it were Mexican.  Good grief.  Anything to win an election.
• 
If we can stop 12 people a day from getting sexually assaulted by closing the border, why is that not something all on the left, particularly the National Organization for Women, should rally for?
• 
... over a 7-year period illegal immigrants were arrested nearly 70,000 times for sexual assault, and 68% of those people were of Mexican origin, averaging 6,800 arrests per year for sexual offenses.
• 
By ascribing the Massachusetts sexual assault numbers to illegally residing Mexicans, I appear to be giving them a break by half.  Perhaps they aren't equal to the Brahmins after all.
• 
To conclude, were we true gentleman of the press, we would support and lionize Donald Trump for casting light on the need to stop 1,603 rapes of women per year, instead of calling him a racist to score points for the Democratic Party.
      Chattanooga shooting proves it's time to arm our Armed Forces  (Fox 07/16/2015)
• 
It turns out that at least one of the two military facilities attacked in Chattanooga, Tennessee — was a gun-free zone.
• 
If you looked closely crime scene photographs - you can see the sign — plastered on the front of a bullet- riddled window.
• 
Four Marines were slaughtered — a fifth wounded — along with a Chattanooga police officer.
• 
Authorities say the gunman, identified as 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, was killed in a shoot-out.
• 
The FBI says it's too soon to speculate on the suspect's motive – but I think we've all got a pretty clear understanding of what went down.
• 
As many as 50 shots were fired — and all the survivors could do was barricade themselves inside.
• 
The brave men and women who staff these military recruiting stations are sitting ducks.  Soft targets - is the terminology they use.
• 
The same thing happened at the Fort Hood massacre
• 
It makes absolutely no sense that Marines and Airmen and Sailors and Soldiers who defend our nation are unable to defend themselves – on American soil.
      Kate Steinle May Not Look Like One of the President's Children, But Doesn't Her Life Matter, Too?  (Fox /20)
• 
Why hasn't President Obama reached out to the family of Kate Steinle — the American gunned down in San Francisco by an illegal alien?
• 
Her name has not been uttered from the Rose Garden or the East Room.
• 
But the President did find time to write personal letters to 46 felons — set free after he commuted their sentences.
• 
In the past he found time to make public comments about Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Freddie Gray and Trayvon Martin — but not Kate Steinle.
• 
I know Ms.  Steinle may not look like one of President Obama's daughters — but doesn't her life matter, too?  Don't all American lives matter?
      It's time for a new Contract with America  (Fox 07/13/2015)
• 
... millions of Americans are dangerously fed up with our elected leaders and the way they're running our country.  They are tired of seeing the U.S.  battered by rivals like China and Russia, and tired of being lied to.  Some 60% of the country thinks we're headed down the wrong track; they are right.
• 
Many of us worry that the exuberant individualism and creativity that made this country the envy of the world is being crushed under a lava flow of regulation and stupidity.
• 
Our politicians engage in government Mandarinism, legislating more and more about less and less, trying to guarantee equal outcomes instead of protecting equal opportunity.
• 
1.  Our public education system is not working.  We spend more than $13,500 per pupil in K-12 schools today, but only 36% of 12th graders in public schools scored "proficient or better" in reading, and only 25% scored at that level in math.
• 
2.  Our infrastructure is collapsing.  ... We used to lead the world in infrastructure; now we rank sixteenth. 
• 
3.  More than 11 million Americans receive disability payments – more than the population of Portugal.  There are 46 million receiving food stamps.  Overall, we have nearly 110 million Americans receiving some type of means-tested assistance, or welfare.  That compares with about 106 million full-time workers.
• 
4.  We have far too many overlapping, useless programs being funded by taxpayers.
• 
5.  Costly and complicated regulations are stifling this country's creativity and entrepreneurship.
• 
6.  Our 75,000 page tax system is ludicrous – overly complicated and riddled with loopholes.  Rather than engage in a monster brawl setting up new winners and losers, it may be time for a flat tax.  Open, transparent, easy to manage.
• 
7.  ObamaCare continues unpopular.  Its absurd mandates, narrower doctor choices, rising costs and disincentives to work — all the inevitable outcome of a one-size-fits-all top-down health system.
• 
8.  Government lapses in cybersecurity are frightening; it is only a matter of time before hackers wreak havoc on one of our airports or nuclear power plants.
• 
9.  Our military is being weakened at a time of rising threats from terrorist groups and adversaries like Russia and China.  President Obama has damaged our standing in the world.  We need a leader who will stand by our allies and stand down our enemies.  And, who is willing to identify the difference between the two.
• 
10.  We must solve our immigration problem.  Ignoring the 11 million people in the country illegally, while inviting still more to cross our borders daily, and granting automatic citizenship to those born to non-citizens will only compound our problems.
• 
Voters must demand real solutions from the president we elect in 2016 – not just empty promises and sound bites.
      Can we Stay Honest in a Dishonest World?  (JWR 07/13/2015)
• 
The biggest tragedy of the Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and gay marriage was not the decisions themselves.  It was the perception, by both winners and losers, that these decisions were not reached based on legal principle but upon political ideology and personal bias.
• 
Which means that, regardless of which side won, the country as a whole lost.
• 
And with the presidential primary campaign shifting into gear, the public will inevitably become more entrenched in its conviction that politicians and their appointees routinely trade integrity for ideology.
• 
When that happens, the very ideal of integrity becomes threatened by extinction both inside and outside the political arena.
• 
Once integrity disappears, the only motive not to lie is fear of not getting away with it — and get away with they have, in a society that has grown indifferent to lying.
• 
We may not be able to stop the lying in politics.  But here are ten ways we can prevent the erosion of our own integrity.
• 
Don't exaggerate. ... every exaggeration subtly impresses upon us a disregard for accuracy and authenticity.  Disciplining ourselves to speak accurately reinforces respect for the truth, both in ourselves and in those who hear us.
• 
Don't embellish. ... If the main point of the story is worth telling, then that should be enough.  If not, don't bother telling it at all.  Presenting uncertainty as fact only adds fuel to the spreading wildfire of moral confusion.
• 
Don't look for loopholes. ... When the truth is employed as a means of deception, it becomes an even more perverse form of falsehood.  ... The letter of the law becomes irrelevant when the spirit of the law is no longer valued.
• 
Be a skeptic. ... Most outlets have some bias or agenda.  And some are outright fraudulent.  Before repeating a story, do some research.  ... And remember that there are two sides to almost every story.
• 
Admit ignorance. It's okay not to know something.  But to claim knowledge when you know you don't know is irresponsible — and usually comes back to bite you.  ... Remember what Aristophanes said: The ignorant can be educated, but stupid is forever.
• 
Admit guilt. ... We all make mistakes.  Acknowledging error promptly and attempting to correct damage swiftly is one of the surest signs of integrity.
• 
Avoid Liars. Behavior is contagious.  The more we associate with people who don't care about the truth, the more likely we are to stop caring about it ourselves.
• 
Avoid Political Correctness. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be civil.  Good manners are always in order, and most people find profanity offensive.  But resorting to ludicrous euphemisms because someone somewhere might take offense is just another way of obfuscating truth.
• 
Avoid Self-Deception. We all recognize that it's wrong to lie to other people.  But it can be even more dangerous to lie to ourselves.  Once we start deceiving ourselves through selective memory and rationalization, there's no end to how far we can stray from the truth.
• 
Look for the good. ... A bit more caution with our own words might leave us less suspicious about those stories of little miracles and inspirational irony that make our eyes sparkle and our hearts swell.  And if a more profound commitment to honesty helps us become less cynical and more easily inspired, then what do we really have to lose?
      Former Navy SEAL: Why I am no longer a Democrat  (Fox 07/13/2015)
• 
I was taught to stand up for the little guy, and that bigger government was the best way to do that.
• 
As I got older, I no longer believed in their ideas.  Even worse, I had concluded that liberals aren't just wrong.  All too often they are world-class hypocrites.
• 
They talk a great game about helping the most vulnerable, with ideas that feel good and fashionable.  The problem is their ideas don't work, and often hurt the exact people they claim to help.
• 
But good intentions are easy.  Even easier when you're spending other people's money.
• 
It's easy to give people food stamps; harder to get people into good-paying jobs.  It's easy to encourage dependency; harder to help people into a life of purpose and dignity.  The worst are politicians who smugly talk about caring for the little guy, and then abandon the poorest, most vulnerable of our children to schools that give them little chance to succeed.  That's not just hypocrisy.  It's a tragedy.
• 
I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results.  It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.
• 
I believe in limited but effective government.  I believe in replacing ObamaCare with something that actually works.  I believe in putting working families and job creation ahead of special interests.  I believe that in a free society we have to defend religious liberties and the 2nd Amendment, and protect innocent life, so everyone has the freedom to pursue happiness.  I believe in reforming welfare, so every person can have a chance at a life of dignity, purpose, and meaning.  And I believe America's public schools should be the best in the world.
• 
As Americans, we deserve much better than what we're getting from our government.  We don't need more rhetoric.  We want results.  And that means changing politics as usual, which won't be easy.
      Joint Chiefs nominee appears to side with Romney on Russian threat  (Fox 07/10/2015)
• 
"My assessment today, ... is that Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security."
• 
"In Russia we have a nuclear power.  We have one that not only has the capability to violate the sovereignty of our allies and to do things that are inconsistent with our national interests, but they're in the process of doing so."
• 
"So if you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I'd have to point to Russia.  And if you look at their behavior, it's nothing short of alarming."
• 
"Russia certainly represents significant security challenges to not just U.S.  national interests but to the national interests of our allies and partners in Europe."
• 
"We are mindful of the security challenges that Russia continues to pose on the European continent.  Nobody is turning a blind eye to that."
      SF Murder: Remind Me Why Illegal Immigrants Should Not Be Deported  (INN 07/09/2015)
• 
On July 7, 2005 Islamic terrorists targeted London's underground train system.  Fifty-two civilians were killed, 700 injured.  That's when Martin Amis spoke up.  He spoke up again in 2006 when British police foiled another Muslim terrorist attempt at mass murder, this time against a trans-Atlantic airliner.
• 
"What can we do to raise the price of them doing this?" Amis rhetorically asked The Times of London.
• 
He continued: "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order."
• 
So he recommended "not letting them travel...strip searching...deportation."
• 
Until, he said, "They get tough with their children."
• 
Martin Amis paid the price for speaking his mind.  His later published books were panned from London to New York regardless of their literary merits.
• 
A friend who supports unsecured borders loudly proclaimed that our borders ought to be completely open to anyone from anywhere, no background checks required, but turned silent when I asked her if she'd be okay with it if they, these people from anywhere, moved into her pretty tree-lined neighborhood.
• 
Trump was onto something all right.  He's got the nation talking.
• 
He simply did not know when to shut up.  For in fact (legal) Mexican-Americans have been triumphant for America.
• 
Beyond their ratio, they serve honorably as soldiers, Marines and law enforcement officers.  They are good citizens.  Or as good and bad as all the rest.
• 
So Trump is wrong.
• 
But he is absolutely correct about the thousands, even the millions who arrive here undocumented, unannounced and uninvited.  We do not know what crimes they bring with them, nor do we know what diseases they carry.
• 
They should not be here, if the word illegal means anything, but they keep on coming.
• 
Right now that's the hot topic throughout the nation because through misguided compassion an illegally arrived felon from Mexico, five times deported but released from an American prison, got his hands on a gun and murdered Kate Steinle in San Francisco, a city that gladly invites all comers.
• 
A Jewish adage appropriately states: "He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate."
• 
We don't need the FBI to tell us that coast-to-coast entire communities have been turned into Muslim-only no-go zones.
• 
Monitoring them seems to be the solution of the moment.  Stopping them from coming in – how about giving that a try?
• 
Democrats and Republican leaders all agree that we have a problem.  They also agree that even those who overstay their visas must NOT be deported.
• 
Why not?  If they pose a threat to our safety and security, who comes first, them or us?
• 
The Tsarnaev brothers overstayed their welcome and we know what they did in Boston.
• 
But for those who don't belong here, I recommend instead that they be granted first-class one-way airline tickets back home.
• 
Sounds harsh?  Many of those who survived the London blasts are without arms.
• 
A number of those who survived the Boston Marathon bombings are without legs.
• 
That's harsh.
      The Ten Commandments should remain etched in the American experience  (Fox 07/08/2015)
• 
When the Oklahoma Supreme Court demanded the removal of a ten foot monument to the Ten Commandments from the grounds of the State Capitol, it not only marginalized America's Judeo-Christian legacy, it trivialized the meaning of history itself.
• 
The Decalogue is certainly sourced in biblical texts.  But the effect that they – and religious life in general – had on the development of this country can and must be appreciated in terms that have nothing to do with religious practice.
• 
"It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency 'In God We Trust' has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion.  Its use is of patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise."
• 
Those who founded Plymouth Rock and other colonies in search of religious freedom also planted ideas that were bound up with their religious outlook, but live on in a completely secular context.  Those included rugged individualism, industry, charity, justice, loyalty, the appreciation of Man as created in G-d's image, and the centrality of family.
• 
These ideas, not all of them available in other parts of the globe, helped paved the way for America's unique development and success.
• 
The Ten Commandments undeniably gave future generations a legacy that changed the course of human civilization, with its greatest impact on a young country founded for the very purpose of granting individual liberties within a context of tolerance.
      Nobel Prize-winning scientist says Obama is ‘dead wrong’ on global warming  (Fox 07/08/2015)
• 
"I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem."
• 
Giaever ridiculed Obama for stating that "no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." The physicist called it a "ridiculous statement" and that Obama "gets bad advice" when it comes to global warming.
• 
"I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr.  President, but you're wrong.  Dead wrong."
• 
Giaever was a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's School of Engineering and School of Science and received the Nobel Prize for physics for his work on quantum tunneling.
• 
Giaever said he was "horrified" about the science surrounding global warming when he conducted research on the subject in 2012.
• 
"Global warming really has become a new religion.  Because you cannot discuss it.  It's not proper.  It is like the Catholic Church."
• 
"When you have a theory and the theory does not agree with the experiment then you have to cut out the theory.  You were wrong with the theory."
      Illegal immigrant accused of burning three-year-old alive, killing child's mom  (Fox 07/08/2015)
• 
Two more Americans have been slaughtered by an illegal alien who had previously been deported.
• 
Prudencio Ramirez stands accused of killing his 18 year old girlfriend and her three year old son in Washington State.
• 
Prosecutors say the victims were shot and then stuffed inside a burning car.
• 
The coroner says it is likely the little boy was burned alive.
• 
How many more Americans must die at the hands of illegal aliens before our borders are secured?
• 
How many American children are going to be burned alive before our elected leaders decide to take action?
• 
The Republicans don't care.  They don't want to stand up to the donor class.  The Democrats sure don't care.  They want new voters.  Big Business?  They want the cheap labor.
• 
President Obama promised to fundamentally transform America — and this is how he's doing it — by opening up our borders and flooding the nation with millions of illegals.
• 
Law enforcement has essentially been ordered to stand down as our nation has been invaded.
• 
To the nations of the world I say give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free — not your drunks or your murderers or scheming deadbeats yearning to live off the American taxpayer.
      Fooling ourselves: Everything is going as  (they) planned (JWR 07/07/2015)
• 
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.  It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president."
• 
When the fashionistas sold the gullibles the idea that torn jeans with gaping holes were de rigueur and worth $300 bucks, I knew the dumbing-down of America was in full force.
• 
The most outrageous piece of legislature that was passed this century is the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare and it could only be passed because of a lazy and spoiled electorate and an impotent GOP. 
• 
... "if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in - you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed... Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.  And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass..."
• 
Neither one of these Democrat candidates has demonstrated an iota of positive achievement while serving in office other than being the right gender or being a socialist promising the moon to millennials.
• 
Have we hit bottom yet because that is what it will take for America to wake up and smell the burning carcass of the American Dream?  Do we still have a depraved electorate willing to accept another totally unacceptable individual as president merely because that person is a Democrat?
• 
Once you run out of people who'll pay for people who don't want to work, the house of cards collapses.
      It's All About Big Government Left-Right Differences: Part V  (JWR 07/07/2015)
• 
Without the belief in an ever-expanding state, there is no Left.  Without a belief in limited government, there is no conservatism.
• 
The Left believes the state should be the most powerful force in society.  It should be in control of educating all of its children; it should provide all the health care for all of its citizens; and it should supervise just about all other areas of society.  There should be no competing power.
• 
Conservatives believe the individual is the essential component of a good society, not government.  The government's role in society should be limited to absolute necessities such as national defense and to serving as the resource of last resort for citizens who cannot be helped by other citizens, private organizations or charities that donate money and time.
• 
Conservatives understand that as governments grow in size and power, the following will inevitably — yes, inevitably — happen:
• 
1.  There will be ever-increasing amounts of corruption.  Power and money breed corruption.  People in government will sell government influence for personal gain. 
• 
2.  Individual liberty (outside of sexual behavior and abortion) will decline.  Liberty is less important to the Left than to the Right.  This is neither an opinion nor a criticism.  It is simple logic.  The more control the government has over people's lives the less liberty people have.  The bigger the government the smaller the citizen.
• 
3.  Countries will either shrink the size of their government, or they will eventually collapse economically.  Every welfare state is a Ponzi scheme, relying on new payers to pay previous payers.  Like the Ponzi scheme, when it runs out of new payers, the scheme collapses.
• 
4.  Taxes are constantly increased in order to pay for ever-expanding government.  But at a given level of taxation, the society's wealth producers will stop working, work less, hire fewer people or move their businesses out of the state or out of the country.
• 
5.  The big state inevitably produces large deficits and ever-increasing — and ultimately unsustainable — debt (national, state and city). 
• 
6.  The 20th century was the most murderous century in recorded history.  About 200 million people, the great majority of them noncombatants, were killed, and more than a billion people were enslaved by totalitarian regimes.  And who did all this killing and enslaving?  In every case, it was a big government.  The bigger the government the greater the opportunities for doing great evil.  Evil individuals without power can do only so much harm.  But when evil individuals have control of a big government, the amount of bad they can do is unlimited.
• 
7.  Finally, the moral impact of big government on its citizens is awful.  Not only do people stop taking care of others — after all, they know the government will do that — but they stop taking care of themselves, as well.  And the more people come to rely on government the more they develop a sense of entitlement, which then leads to a nation of ingrates.
      San Francisco 'sanctuary' killing: Why is our political class letting illegals harm Americans?  (Fox 07/06/2015)
• 
Last week, Sanchez shot 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle for no apparent reason and she walked with her father at a popular tourist site in San Francisco.  Steinle cried "help me dad," as she collapsed.  She died on the way to the hospital.
• 
Sanchez is in the United States illegally, has a whopping seven felony convictions, and has been deported back to Mexico five prior times.
• 
The Obama administration is trying to blame San Francisco for not returning Sanchez to the feds for deportation when his last stint in jail was complete.
• 
Certainly there is plenty of blame to go around, but how it is possible that someone with multiple felonies and illegal entries to the USA could ever be free to prey on law-abiding citizens?
• 
In 2013, the Obama administration released 2,200 illegals from detention that it said "did not pose a violent threat to public safety." An investigation by DHS's own Inspector General found that about 600 of those released had criminal convictions.  Later reporting revealed many of the convictions were seriously and included homicide.
• 
In May, Hillary Clinton goaded her Republican opponents saying that not one "is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship" — a euphemism for amnesty for illegal aliens.  She claimed that comprehensive immigration reform will "will strengthen families, strengthen our economy, and strengthen our country."
• 
Speaking in January in the same city where Kathryn Steinle was later murdered, Jeb Bush said "We need to find a way, a path to legalized status for those that have come here and have languished in the shadows." Later he observed of illegals that "they broke the law, but it's not a felony.  It's an act of love."
• 
He called again for a guest-worker program, a favorite rope-a-dope suggestion of the political class, conveniently ignoring that we have had a guest-worker visa program since the 1940s.
• 
In other words, both sides of our political establishment persist with the same false assumptions, insincere promises, and faulty prescriptions.
• 
"If the United States was being attacked in one of our water ports on the East or West Coast, we'd be sending in our military forces, and yet we're facing some of the same challenges with international criminal organizations, the cartels that are trafficking not only drugs but weapons and humans, and we need to step up and be aggressive."
• 
Walker also went a step farther, saying that we need "a legal immigration system that's based on, first and foremost, protecting American workers and American wages."
• 
Crime previously focused in border areas is spreading.  Total employment — especially workforce participation — is still lousy and there is a legitimate question of whether it makes sense to enable companies to hire foreigners when qualified Americans can fill jobs.
• 
Nothing can bring back Kathryn Steinle, but she need not have died in vain if we can avoid others having to meet her tragic fate.
      Christian bakers fined $135,000 for refusing to make wedding cake for lesbians  (Fox 07/02/2015)
• 
The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI) awarded $60,000 to Laurel Bowman-Cryer and $75,000 in damages to Rachel Bowman-Cryer for "emotional suffering."
• 
According to the BOLI, the lesbian couple suffered great angst.  One of the women "felt depressed and questioned whether there was something inherently wrong with the sexual orientation she was born with." They said she had "difficulty controlling her emotions and cried a lot."
• 
The other woman "experienced extreme anger, outrage, embarrassment, exhaustion, frustration, intense sorrow and shame" simply because the Kleins refused to provide them with a wedding cake.
• 
Jeez.  That must have been one heck of a cake.
• 
Since the day they turned away the lesbian couple's business, the Kleins have suffered greatly.  Their business was subjected to boycotts and pickets.  LGBT activists and their supporters threatened any wedding vendor that did business with Sweet Cakes By Melissa.
• 
Mrs.  Klein told me her five children were subjected to death threats — death threats for simply refusing to participate in a same-sex wedding.  That doesn't sound very tolerant to me.
• 
Eventually, the bullying became so severe the family had to shut down their retail store and Mr.  Klein had to take a job picking up garbage.  Today, Mrs.  Klein continues to make cakes in her home.
• 
"We were just running our business the best we could – following the Lord's example," she said.  "I'm just blown away by the ruling.  They are punishing us for not participating in the wedding."
• 
Klein case has demonstrated once again that gay rights trump religious liberty.
• 
The Kleins had a choice.  They could obey the government or they could obey God.  They chose God – and now they must pay the price.
      Donald Trump: The first Hispanic president  (Fox 07/02/2015)
• 
Funny headline, huh?  Because of course Donald Trump isn't Hispanic.  More importantly, the Hispanic world seems at war with Trump over his recent comments about "Mexico and Central America sending us their worst citizens, not their best."
• 
And corporate America is running away from "The Donald" and his controversial comments, fearing an Hispanic backlash.So how can anyone even hint that Donald Trump could be a great president for Hispanics? 
• 
My father taught me, "Don't worry about what someone says, watch what they do."
• 
Donald Trump's words don't matter.  Watch what he does.  He is the only guy running for president who knows how to create millions of jobs and make billions of dollars.
• 
If Donald Trump offends Hispanics with his words... but turns around the U.S.  economy, creates millions of jobs for everyone, but especially for Hispanics... not just crappy low wage part-time jobs, but good paying full-time jobs...then isn't he a better president for Hispanics than someone who says nice things, compliments them all day long, but produces a crappy economy with no good jobs?
• 
You see what matters are deeds, not words.  What everyone should worry about is real performance, not false promises to get your vote.
• 
What exactly has Obama done for anyone, other than a world record for most government handouts ever?
• 
Because despite all the flowery talk... and flowery promises... and propaganda about creating millions of jobs — the reality is...there aren't any.  I have "boots on the ground" and I'm telling you there are no real jobs.  Just crappy low wage part-time jobs that require food stamps and free healthcare just to survive.
• 
Part time jobs were up by 161,000, while full-time jobs were down by 349,000.  More proof that all of Obama's flowery words won't get you a good job.
• 
Maybe it's time to stop worrying about what someone says, but instead watch what he does.
• 
Obama's fancy words have nothing to do with performance.  That could be why the number of Americans on food stamps hit an all-time record under Obama.
• 
That could be why the number of Americans on welfare hit an all-time record under Obama.
• 
That could be why the poverty level under Obama broke a 50 year old record.
• 
That could be why as of Thursday's job report, more people are unemployed under Obama (93,626,000) than at any time in history.
• 
Obama talks big and flowery, but his actions result in a horrible miserable life for average Americans. 
• 
Look at the polls.  Donald Trump is more popular than ever.  Why?
• 
His words that offended Hispanics have excited and inspired millions of middle class native-born Americans who are thrilled someone is finally telling the truth (although perhaps a bit too harshly and stated inartfully) and putting American citizens first over foreigners or illegal aliens.
• 
Donald Trump "the underdog" really can win the presidency.  Americans love an underdog.  NBC, Univision, Macys and the PGA Golf Tour are all turning Trump into a lovable underdog.
      You've been warned, America, gay marriage is just the beginning  (Fox 06/30/2015)
• 
"Now this is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
• 
That the majority threw a bone to religious people, their churches and institutions, saying they could continue to preach and teach that homosexual marriage is wrong, will almost certainly be challenged by gay activists and secularists whose goal is to drive religious people, and especially Christians, out of the public square.
• 
Given their political clout and antipathy to Christian doctrines, some gay activists are likely to go after the tax-exempt status of Christian colleges that prohibit cohabitation of unmarried students, or openly homosexual ones, as well as churches that refuse to marry them.  As with legal challenges to the owners of bakeries that have been in the news for refusing to bake a cake for same-sex weddings, activists who demand total conformity to their agenda will seek to put out of business and silence anyone who believes differently.
• 
This is diversity?  No, this is enforced orthodoxy of a different kind and thus in violation of the Constitution and the special protection the Founders gave to people of faith.
• 
It was Thomas Jefferson, a deist who edited his own version of the Bible, who said, "No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority."
• 
In the Supreme Court's decision reversing history, tradition and, yes, the biblical authority it tacitly acknowledges in the friezes on its wall honoring Moses and other law-givers, five unelected judges have imposed on more than 300 million Americans what many still believe to be an "abomination."
• 
In his strongly worded minority opinion on same-sex marriage, Chief Justice John Roberts said, "The court is not a legislature."
• 
If the zeitgeist and politics are more persuasive to some justices than the Constitution and the intent of the Founders, then justices should be held accountable by the political system and their terms limited.
      Supreme Court Disasters  (JWR 06/30/2015)
• 
Many people are looking at the recent Supreme Court decisions about ObamaCare and same-sex marriage in terms of whether they think these are good or bad policies.
• 
But there is a deeper and more long-lasting impact of these decisions that raise the question whether we are still living in America, where "we the people" are supposed to decide what kind of society we want, not have our betters impose their notions on us.
• 
The Constitution of the United States says that the federal government has only those powers specifically granted to it by the Constitution — and that all other powers belong either to the states or to the people themselves.
• 
That is the foundation of our freedom, and that is what is being dismantled by both this year's Obamacare decision and last year's ObamaCare decision, as well as by the Supreme Court's decision imposing a redefinition of marriage.
• 
When any branch of government can exercise powers not authorized by either statutes or the Constitution, "we the people" are no longer free citizens but subjects, and our "public servants" are really our public masters.
• 
And America is no longer America.  The freedom for which whole generations of Americans have fought and died is gradually but increasingly being taken away from us with smooth and slippery words.
• 
Democrats have consistently nominated people who shared their social vision and imposed their policy preferences, too often in disregard of the Constitution.
• 
Chief Justices appointed by Republican presidents have made landmark decisions for which there was neither Constitutional authority nor either evidence or logic.
• 
Chief Justice Warren Burger, also appointed by a Republican president, gave us the "disparate impact" notion that statistical disparities imply discrimination.  That notion has created a whole statistical shakedown racket, practiced by government itself and by private race hustlers alike.
• 
Can the Republicans — or the country — afford to put another mushy moderate in the White House, who can appoint more mushy moderates to the Supreme Court?
      America in a Funk  (INN 06/28/2015)
• 
The President had said that we have been racists since the beginning of time, and that there is no cure in sight.
• 
I might suggest that a new President would be a wonderful cure.
• 
A few days later, speaking before Muslim leaders, the President said that Americans were bigoted not only against Blacks, but Muslims as well.
• 
Maybe he is right.  But statistics say that when it comes to hate crimes, Jews top the list by far – so far as being the victims.
• 
Something like 70 percent of all hate crimes goes against Jews.  For Muslims it's barely 11 percent.  So where's the speech for our side?
• 
Jewish lives matter!  Hello?
• 
Anyway, our President wants us to feel rotten about ourselves, and here is the problem – we do.  Yes we do.  We feel terrible. 
• 
I have never seen America so down in the dumps.  Everybody's depressed, about this, that and everything.
• 
Every time Obama scores another win it feels like a loss for the rest of us.
• 
But as evidence that we're getting more and more divided against ourselves, some people are calling for the Stars and Stripes to be dumped.
• 
There must be a reason why millions keep coming over here and why nobody from here jumps the fence to get into Mexico.  We must be doing something right.
• 
We have entire cities, including New York and LA, that are unsafe because they've been deluged by millions who've infiltrated the country, mainly from Muslim hellholes.
• 
If you wonder how civilizations decay and die from within, you are watching it happen right before your very eyes.
• 
We are still a great big warm-hearted wonderful country.  Somebody ought to tell Mr.  Obama about this.
      America's post-Constitutional culture  (Fox 06/26/2015)
• 
As foreseen by Tocqueville in 1835, America has developed a post-constitutional culture in which citizens are transformed from independent citizens into weak dependents, fully reliant upon the dispensations and "protections" of government.
• 
The Supreme Court and the Congress are now largely infirm, fatally weakened by the growth of an Executive branch that provides ever-expanding dispensations and "protections." The entitlement state has killed the separation of powers.
• 
The fundamental goal of the Constitution's authors was to ensure liberty; by separating the different powers of government they barred one branch of government from having all the tools to dominate the body politic.
• 
As James Madison wrote in Federalist #47: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands...may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
• 
For the Court's majority, it appears, protecting the flow of premium subsidies is what really matters, not the law.  Roberts' opinion claimed fidelity to the congressional statute when, in fact, he was simply protecting the political reputation of the Court by avoiding an assault on the entitlement culture.
• 
The Roberts' opinion is Tocqueville's nightmare: the citizens of democracy will voluntarily give up their liberty, even to the point of ignoring constitutional prerogatives, in return for care from an all-powerful government.
• 
And, there is now no area of American life in which the federal government does not claim the role of caretaker.  It exists to make college education "affordable to all", to dispense subsidized healthcare, to provide housing and mortgages, to furnish food and, yes, even cell phones.  It secures access to "free" birth control for young women, and "protects" children against obesity by dictating the menu for school lunches.
• 
This beneficence is not limited to the welfare state or the protection of lower-income people.  Corporate lobbyists swarm Washington to access government largesse.  Huge industry sectors – insurance, pharmaceuticals, transportation, construction, defense – are government dependents.
• 
Eerily prescient, Tocqueville characterized the future of American government: "Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.  That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild."
• 
Because the Executive has emerged as the "immense and tutelary power", the era of constitutional government has largely ended.  The immensity of the Executive has transformed the Congress and the Judiciary into political irrelevancies who, despite their rhetoric, act primarily to grease the skids of the Executive's so-called beneficent dispensations, protections and regulations.
• 
To the authors of the Constitution, the Legislative branch was potentially the most powerful and the most dangerous branch because of its close proximity to the populace.  For this reason, certain precautions were taken to make the legislative branch less potent, such as creating a bi-cameral legislature, granting veto power to the president, and establishing judicial review.
• 
In the post-constitutional order, however, the Legislative branch is largely powerless in the face of an Executive that is the fountainhead of popular gratifications.
• 
They know the post-constitutional culture will not tolerate turning off the spigot of governmental largesse; they have surrendered their most powerful tool because they fear the new entitlement culture.  Members of Congress want, above all, to win their next election.
• 
Congress is now the weakest branch.  More importantly, Congress has intentionally enfeebled itself to get in on the game of spreading government largesse and protection.
• 
This is a now a cultural challenge, no longer one that our political or constitutional systems can address.  The political unpopularity of government shutdowns should indicate to conservatives that our national culture is now firmly post-constitutional.
• 
Conservatives have "won" the Congress and lost the culture.
• 
The latest ObamaCare decision cements the role of the Supreme Court as the Executive's lap dog in the protection of government power, the plain text of the law notwithstanding.
• 
Under our original constitutional system, the Judiciary would have seen its role as checking the excesses of an imperialist Congress or Executive.
• 
Yet, the first time Chief Justice John Roberts faced the possibility that the Supreme Court would block the dispensation of healthcare benefits under the Affordable Care Act, he knew the culture would not tolerate a Court that placed constitutional principle in the way of government beneficence.
• 
Truly returning to the principles of the Founding would require the dismantling of the entitlement state.  The idea that the American "people" would support this dismantlement, in all its particularities, is a political fantasy.
• 
The entire superstructure of the American political order is now built upon the benefit-dispensing and regulatory power of the federal government and no successful politician has seriously challenged this fact since the New Deal.
• 
President Obama, on the other hand, knows quite well that we live in a post-constitutional culture.  His entire political program is agnostic about what he would view as constitutional niceties.  The Congress may huff and puff, make threats and bluster, but they are powerless in the face of the mega-state that is now the Executive branch.
• 
Without fear, the president can ignore congressional laws, laugh at their investigations, and launch political attacks on the Supreme Court as they deliberate.
• 
Tocqueville warned that American liberty would be threatened not by swashbuckling dictators and coup d'etats, but through the "soft" tyranny of a government that takes upon the role of national nanny, protecting the child-citizens from every potential adversity.
      Supreme Court disavows truth about marriage, pits faith against law  (Fox 06/26/2015)
• 
Friday, the U.S.  Supreme Court disavowed the truth about marriage that diverse cultures and faiths around the globe have embraced for millennia: that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.
• 
Why has this fact been recognized so universally and for so long?  The answer is simple: the truth about marriage appears unmistakably in the complementary design of man and woman.
• 
Unique among all others, only the intimate relationship of man and woman can create a new life.
• 
And a new life born of a committed man-woman couple finds its natural home in the embrace of its natural parents, giving rise to the family — the fundamental building-block of society.
• 
Friday, the Supreme Court averted its eyes from what is self-evident.  It overlooked the abiding connection between marriage and the creation of new life, and ignored marriage's unique role in connecting children to both their mother and their father.
• 
It also cast aside the will of Americans in 31 states who, recognizing the singular importance of man-woman marriage, voted to affirm it in their state constitutions.
• 
Disregarding both the truth about marriage and the people's freedom to affirm that truth in law, the Supreme Court held that states may no longer lift up one-man, one-woman marital unions for special protection.
• 
The court's decision is built on the premise that, as a matter of constitutional law, the dignity of human relationships derives largely from government recognition and approval.
• 
That premise promotes a dark and dangerous principle.  It is the flawed notion that the state does not recognize and protect — but rather creates — our fundamental institutions, rights, and relationships.
• 
And it is the false idea that no institution — not marriage, not the family, and not individual rights to life, liberty, property, or the exercise of religion — has any significance or meaning independent from that which the state imparts.
• 
But, as the Declaration of Independence makes clear, all people are "endowed by their Creator" — not by their government — "with certain unalienable rights." Rejecting this principle carries a sinister implication: if the state bestows our rights, the state can take them away at its whim.
• 
That should concern anyone who cares about our first freedom: religious liberty.  ... The ruling pits faith against law, forcing Americans to choose between their God and their government.
• 
It is not a stretch to say that we can therefore expect increasing hostility against anyone who expresses or attempts to live out their faith in public.
• 
The Supreme Court cannot, of course, alter the true nature of marriage.  Marriage is and always will be the union of one man and one woman for life, regardless whether the government incorrectly applies the label of marriage to other kinds of relationships.
• 
But Friday's ruling inscribes in our Constitution an entirely new and incorrect definition of marriage that contravenes the self-evident purposes of the institution and contradicts the core convictions of countless people of faith.
• 
The Supreme Court's grave error compels Americans to take sides in an unprecedented conflict between faith and government coercion.
• 
The People's collective response will determine the future of religious liberty in our Nation.
      The Confederate flag and cultural fascism  (Fox 06/26/2015)
• 
You cultural fascists have struck again.
• 
You have shown you will say most anything, and do most anything to advance your radical agenda.  But that's not enough, is it?  Your intent is to ban any opposition.  Your goal is to ban even the expression of dissension.
• 
You're doing it everywhere.  You are insisting scientists skeptical of global warming be banned from symposia discussing the subject.  You shout down, even physically attack conservatives who dare express opinions on college campuses – that is, if you don't succeed in banning them altogether.  You demand TV networks fire Christians who dare to quote Scripture publicly.  You pressure advertisers to stop their sponsorship of conservative talk shows, inventing scandals to justify your campaigns.  You pressure businesses to fire employee for supporting traditional marriage.  You call on government to imprison Christians who will not abide by the gay agenda.
• 
I don't know what's more offensive, your disgusting character assassination or the outright embarrassment of politicians and businesses quaking in their shoes at the thought they might be next on your hit list.
• 
You demand it be banned from society because you insist society accept your definition of what it represents.  As usual, you are using a horrific event, and the victims of that horror, as your excuse, just as you used a pro-life extremist detonating a bomb to smear the entire pro-life movement, just as you used a crazed gunman opening fire in a movie theater to advance your radical agenda to ban all guns.
• 
He commits an unspeakable act of racist violence.  What does the Confederate flag have to do with it?  It is the symbol you're using to suggest America is, and always has been racist.
• 
So many are so intimidated and run away like an Iraqi army.
• 
What frauds.  Up until last week none had a problem in the world with that flag.  The racially-sensitive folks at Amazon still sell Nazi and apartheid memorabilia.  Sen.  Lindsey Graham cynically whines, "God help South Carolina" if it continues flying the flag he has repeatedly defended.
• 
Cowards all.
• 
You are besmirching the memory of the thousands of Confederates who fought for their right to secede – and openly opposed slavery.  Start with Robert E.  Lee.
• 
You will use this – you know you will – to tar any conservative you can tie to the evil you've invented.  You'll declare that person a racist if he doesn't publicly agree with you, won't you?
• 
What's next?  How long will it take for you to demand that the American flag be removed?
• 
Tear down your own damn flags.
• 
The "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski was a terrorist, and a murderer, and a supporter of Greenpeace.  Tear down your environmentalist flags.
• 
There are black racists waving black power flags.  Tear them all down.
• 
A gay fanatic shot and grievously wounded a security guard at the Family Research Council.  His intent was to murder as many employees as possible.  Tear down all LGBT flags.
• 
But you won't, of course.  You cultural fascists are also raving hypocrites.
      ‘Court is not a legislature’: Roberts rips gay marriage ruling, day after he backed ObamaCare  (Fox 06/26/2015)
• 
"This court is not a legislature.  Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us.  Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be."
• 
"The Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage.  Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration."
• 
"...  But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority's approach is deeply disheartening."
• 
"Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law."
• 
"The decision will also have other important consequences.  It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy."
• 
"Today's decision shows that decades of attempts to restrain this Court's abuse of its authority have failed."
      Confederate flag debate: Protecting hatred preserves freedom  (Fox 06/25/2015)
• 
The State has no business expressing opinions on anything, and it is required to protect hate.  Here is the law.
• 
Let's start with the proposition that hatred of persons is a profound disorder, and it is no doubt motivated by far deeper errors of thought and judgment than admiration for a flag.
• 
... to some in our society, the Confederate flag represents resistance to federal authority enforced by military aggression; while to others, it represents racial oppression under color of law bringing about the worst violations of the natural rights of born persons in American history — namely slavery.
• 
... the Supreme Court in dismissing the suit ruled just two weeks ago that the government enjoys the same freedom of speech as do persons.
• 
This is a novel and dangerous idea.  It places government — an artificial creature based on temporary consensus and a monopoly of force — on the same plane as human beings, who are natural creatures with immortal souls endowed by our Creator with natural rights.
• 
Natural rights, foremost among which after life itself is freedom of expression, are gifts from God.  They are not manmade and hence cannot be transferred to a manmade entity.
• 
In the case of speech, it is especially dangerous to accord the natural rights of persons to the government because the state can use its monopoly of force to silence, drown out or intimidate the speech of any persons it hates and fears.
• 
The First Amendment to the Constitution also protects the rights of every person to embrace hatred.  It guarantees all persons the freedom of thought, expression and association.  Thought and association are guaranteed unconditionally.  Imagine the dangers of the government telling us how to think.
• 
... the First Amendment absolutely bars the government from interference with a person's thoughts or associations, and permits interference with a person's expressions only if necessary to prevent immediate lawless violence ...
• 
But the government may never, consistent with the First Amendment, interfere with expression because it despises or fears the views animating the expressions.  This temptation is another danger of according the government the freedom of speech.
• 
Hatred, though invariably destructive to those it animates, is a protected mode of thought and expression and may form the basis for association.  Groups may be formed based on hate, and the government may not interfere with them because it hates and fears their hatred.
• 
... it is the manifestation of hatred as lawless violence that may be prosecuted, but the manifestation of hatred as a unifying idea is protected and may not be prosecuted.
• 
The remedy for hatred is reason.  Hatred of persons is always unreasonable.  It takes a characteristic of birth — color, ethnicity, religion, for example — and unreasonably ascribes mythological and unitary traits to it.
• 
Those ascribed traits usually appeal to the base fears and biases of the hater, feed his weaknesses, and provide him with a mental haven for his failings.
• 
Hatred sometimes provides a dark place of comfort for the weak, and it can be addictive.  We must guard against its allurements.
      Charleston to Jerusalem: Touched by Evil  (INN 06/23/2015)
• 
No root cause.  That was pure evil that walked into Charleston South Carolina's Emanuel A.M.E.  Church last Thursday and murdered nine African-American congregants at prayer.  The search for the killer ended quickly – he is young, white and a racist of the worst kind.
• 
But for some people (namely Liberals) that wasn't enough.  They need something or somebody to blame other than the assassin.
• 
Immediately after the massacre, they blamed guns.  They blamed the Confederate Flag.  They blamed Republicans and to make sure that nobody gets a pass they eyed all "white people" as the usual suspects.
• 
They blamed everything except what it was, the fact that some individuals are just plain rotten.  Evil exists, period.
• 
Rather than offer words of comfort, last week he chose to scold us once again, saying: "Let's be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.  It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency."
• 
Clear enough?  We are all at fault.  We all pulled the trigger.  We all have blood on our hands, according to our Scolder in Chief.
• 
We the People are simply not good enough for this President.  He prefers other people in other lands.
• 
"Racism is still part of our DNA," says our twice-elected African-American President with no hint of irony.
• 
"More alarming for me still," writes Oren about Obama's first book, "were Obama's attitudes towards America.
• 
"Vainly, I scoured ‘Dreams from My Father' for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead.  Instead, the book criticizes Americans for their capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and maintaining antiquated power structures."
• 
If America "can't get no satisfaction" from this President, Israel has no chance.
• 
In Israel such attacks are never from a "lone gunman." They learn to hate and kill from mother's milk.
• 
We find nothing like this in Charleston.  The killer acted alone.  It was personal.  He was attached to no larger movement.
• 
Most often the search for conspiracies and larger motives come up empty.
• 
Some people are just that, wicked, and no other excuse or explanation will do.  The "problem of evil" has been with us since the beginning.
• 
Still, there is no solution.  But we could use a leader gifted with an understanding heart to guide us through our most trying times.
• 
Instead, we've got what we've got.  We are on our own against the random brutes who stalk our world. 
      Hillary and History  (JWR 06/23/2015)
• 
There is nothing in her history that would qualify her for the presidency, and much that should disqualify her.
• 
Many people simply want "a woman" to be president, and Hillary is the best-known woman in politics, though by no means the best qualified.
• 
What is Hillary's history?  In the most important job she has ever held — Secretary of State — American foreign policy has had one setback after another, punctuated by disasters.
• 
In Europe, as in the Middle East, our foreign policy during Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State was to undermine our friends and cater to our enemies.
• 
The truly historic catastrophe of American foreign policy — not only failing to stop Iran from going nuclear, but making it more difficult for Israel to stop them — was also something that happened on Hillary Clinton's watch as Secretary of State.
• 
What the administration's protracted and repeatedly extended negotiations with Iran accomplished was to allow Iran time to multiply, bury and reinforce its nuclear facilities, to the point where it was uncertain whether Israel still had the military capacity to destroy those facilities.
• 
The fact that many people are still prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States, in times made incredibly dangerous by the foreign policy disasters on her watch as Secretary of State, raises painful questions about this country.
• 
A President of the United States — any president — has the lives of more than 300 million Americans in his or her hands, and the future of Western civilization.
• 
If the debacles and disasters of the Obama administration have still not demonstrated the irresponsibility of choosing a president on the basis of demographic characteristics, it is hard to imagine what could.
• 
With our enemies around the world arming while we are disarming, such self-indulgent choices for president can leave our children and grandchildren a future that will be grim, if not catastrophic.
      Charleston: Why didn't anyone help Dylann Roof?  (Fox 06/22/2015)
• 
Dylann Roof, who allegedly shot and killed nine people at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., last week, showed all the signs of severe and worsening mental illness.
• 
We know, of course, that Roof expressed hateful white supremacist opinion.  But we also know that psychiatrically ill people can channel their paranoia or depression or extreme self-loathing into bizarre beliefs that sometimes lead to the destruction of others.  Those beliefs can look just like intense hatred — of a particular person or a whole race of people.
• 
When an isolated 21-year-old has a history of dropping out of high school ... using drugs ... withdrawing from friends, starting to sleep in his car and beginning to tell people that he intends to start a race war and then kill himself, one can reasonably conclude that he may not be well.
• 
One reason is that people wish to believe they are safer than they are.  They exercise denial.  No one wants to believe he might be living in a real-life psychological thriller.
• 
And the reason for that may be connected to other unspeakable, unthinkable fears we harbor: Any of us could die today, this very hour.  Any of us could be shot tomorrow.  Any of us could get a headache, then an MRI, then learn he has a brain tumor.
• 
To admit that someone close to us could be descending into the abyss is, in some measure, to admit that we, too, stand close to the edge of one (albeit a very different one).
• 
Another reason is that we, as a society, are profoundly ignorant about the real signs of mental illness.  It is as if many of us think that mentally ill people froth at the mouth or run around screaming.
• 
The truth is that some severely mentally ill people can, come to brood on perceived injustices, see the world as harboring great evils they must oppose and speak openly and dramatically about such matters.
• 
After all, Roof wasn't shy about sharing his bizarre opinions.  That could have led to him being admitted to a locked psychiatric unit, being detoxed from street drugs and being treated with the right psychiatric medicine.
• 
And, then, all this might not have happened.
      The Confederate battle flag, South Carolina's past and its future  (Fox 06/22/2015)
• 
I think if a Christian is to love his neighbor, he cannot fly a flag that so many of his neighbors associate with the defense of slavery.
• 
I think it is appropriate at Confederate soldiers' cemeteries.  I think it is appropriate at Confederate memorials and museums.
• 
Outside of those locations, I don't think it is appropriate.  You, like many of my friends and family, may think the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of heritage, not hate.  But for millions of black Americans, it is a very real symbol of oppression.
• 
I'm afraid, though, that we are about to see a run on Confederate battle flags.
• 
And now, because a bunch of mostly white yankees are again yelling about the battle flag, we're not going to see a flag and tradition die out.  Instead, we're going to see a bunch of twenty and thirty-something Southerners go out and buy fresh flags as a middle finger to the Northern white liberals who did not like them without the flag.
• 
I think the people of South Carolina can decide for themselves whether or not to take down the battle flag.
• 
I think compromising with the left on this issue is not worth it because the left is only politicizing this issue to advance their agenda.
• 
Once the flag is gone, the left will advance to the next issue then the next issue, etc.  They won't compromise.  There is no compromise.  There is only conversion or censorship with the left.
      Father's Day: A dad wonders, does anyone ever get this job right?  (Fox 06/19/2015)
• 
My most important job is also the one that I'm least confident I'm doing correctly.
• 
It demands everything, guarantees nothing, frustrates completely, and challenges endlessly.  The hours are around the clock, the stress is unbelievable, and the pay is lousy.  It's heavy on responsibility, light on training, fraught with worry, and overwhelming in its scope.  There is no making friends, generating excuses, passing the buck or sitting on the sidelines.  The praise is spotty, the criticism unavoidable, and the consequences of failing everlasting.
• 
Although, owing to their chronic bouts with spotty hearing and selective memory, don't be surprised if they fail to mention their own misbehavior.
• 
A generation ago, before the "wimpification" of so many of America's parents, kids were told to be "a good boy" or "a good girl" and informed that there would be consequences if those expectations were not met.
• 
Today, we're far too enlightened for that brand of barbarism, and so we find it easier to excuse the mistakes and misdeeds of anyone under five feet tall by chalking it up to free expression and early leadership skills.  Kids will be kids.
• 
In those bygone days, a department store Santa Claus would still ask a child: "Have you been good this year?" Now a less judgmental Santa, who is after all on the payroll of the department stores, cuts to the chase and asks: "What do you want for Christmas?" No need to earn it.  No strings attached.
• 
... my major shortcoming seems to be my inability to achieve the Goldilocks formula for parenting — not too much of this or that but just right.
• 
I'm afraid that I'm not doing enough to provide my kids with a good living, but I'm also afraid of working so hard that I'm not spending enough time with them.
• 
How does someone know when he has succeeded at fatherhood?  The answers ran the gamut. 
• 
One father told me that it's when your kids become adults and thank you for being there.  Another said it comes at that comment when you look at your offspring and recognize that they turned out to be good people.  Another said one measure of success is that your kids want to spend time with you.
• 
For me, I'll know I've been successful at this gig if my kids turn out to be grateful, thoughtful and helpful.
• 
Whether my children grow up to be prosperous, healthy, or happy will have a lot to do with the decisions they make on their own.  I can impact some of those decisions, but most of them will be out of my hands.  There is only so much a parent can do, once free will comes into play.
• 
Lately, I can't shake the feeling that what my kids most need to hear is not what I'll do for them but what I won't do for them.  ... We're here to raise these little people into not just bigger people but also better people, not to cover up their mistakes and smooth over their flaws.
• 
Nor should we cater to their every whim.  The more we do for our children, the less we teach them to do for themselves.
• 
Now and then, my kids will complain that they're bored.  So what?  A little boredom is good since it fosters imagination and creativity.
• 
... given that this is one job that, if done correctly, requires plenty of time, patience, and effort and seems to take a lifetime to perfect — that should be more than enough. 
      Proving Nietzsche correct  (JWR 06/19/2015)
• 
"G0D," Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared, "is dead."
• 
G0D, it has been noted, made a similar yet more lasting pronouncement about Nietzsche.
• 
But before the German philosopher departed this mortal coil, he had some interesting things to say.
• 
Nietzsche argued that one of the most powerful forces in society was "ressentiment." Similar to the everyday word "resentment," ressentiment lay at the heart of new kinds of morality.
• 
The masses of have-nots, to use a more modern language, resented their plight for understandable reasons.  But they were too weak to launch a real, armed revolution.  Instead, the powerless resorted to a moral revolution, assaulting the concepts of nobility, goodness and morality and rendering them evil in the popular imagination.
• 
... one needn't agree with all he said, never mind take it as authoritative, to see that he was on to something about the cycles of civilizations.  One can reject his writings completely while still acknowledging his impact on our society.
• 
Today it is a great sin on college campuses — and elsewhere!  — to make anyone other than the "privileged" feel uncomfortable, challenged or otherwise psychologically threatened by the use of the wrong words or concepts.
• 
One must no longer say that America is a "melting pot," for to do so is to suggest that minorities should "assimilate to the dominant culture."
• 
Saying "America is the land of opportunity" or "everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough" is now a form of bigotry.
• 
Of course, the surest way to guarantee that America is not a meritocracy is to teach young people not only that it isn't one, but that it's evil to say it is, or should be, one.
• 
Ressentiment is first and foremost the psychology of blame.  It surveys the social landscape and blames the failures and hardships of the alleged have-nots on the successes of the haves.
• 
It is more than envy, which is a timeless human emotion — and one of the seven deadly sins.  It is a theory of morality that says the success of the successful is proof of their wickedness.
• 
When Nietzsche said "G0D is dead," he meant that there was no longer an ideal outside of ourselves to which we're all answerable.  Everything was a contest of power and will.
• 
America isn't there yet, thank G0D.  But it surely seems like that is where we are heading.
      Huckabee: Gay Marriage Could Criminalize Christianity  (Fox 06/19/2015)
• 
"I refuse to sit silently as politically driven interest groups threaten the foundation of religious liberty, criminalize Christianity, and demand that Americans abandon Biblical principles of natural marriage."
• 
"If you lack the backbone to reject judicial tyranny and fight for religious liberty, you have no business serving our nation as President of the United States."
• 
"This is not just about marriage.  This is about whether or not a government can begin to put limitations on the conscious and convictions of people who have faith."
• 
"When an individual is faced with a decision of bowing to Caesar or bowing his knee to God – he has to take his stand and get on his knees to God instead of Caesar.  This is where we are rapidly heading."
• 
"That does mean civil disobedience.  It means we are obedient to a power that is not only higher than the current government, but a power that was the basis of our government."
      Gun-free zones an easy target for killers  (Fox 06/18/2015)
• 
Like so many other attacks, the massacre took place in a gun-free zone, a place where the general public was banned from having guns.  The gun-free zone obviously didn't stop the killer from bringing a gun into the church.
• 
For some reason, people who would never put up a "gun-free zone" sign in front of their own homes, put up such signs for other sensitive areas that we would like to protect.
• 
Time after time, we see that these killers tell us they pick soft targets.  With just two exceptions, from at least 1950, all the mass public shootings have occurred in these gun-free zones.
• 
Case after case occurs where concealed handgun permit holders stop what would have been mass shootings.  While many don't get news coverage because the permit holder prevents people from being killed, some, such as the recent Georgia case, still don't get coverage even when there are dead bodies.
• 
While the news will go into details about how the killer got his guns or the types of weapons used (and often the initial news reports are wrong), the simplest fact would be whether the attack occurred in a gun-free zone.
• 
The gun control debate would probably be dramatically different if even some of the news stories would occasionally mention that another attack has occurred in a gun-free zone. 
      America, we pay way too much for the United Nations  (Fox 06/16/2015)
• 
Each year the United States gives approximately $8 billion in mandatory payments and voluntary contributions to the United Nations and its affiliated organizations.  The biggest portion of this money – about $3 billion this year – goes to the U.N.'s regular and peacekeeping budgets.
• 
If that seems like a lot, it is — far more than anyone else pays.  And it's also, in some cases, bad value for money.
• 
The U.N.  system for calculating member nations' "fair share" payment toward its regular and peacekeeping budgets has increasingly shifted the burden away from the vast majority of the 193 members and onto a relative handful of high-income nations, especially the U.S.  Indeed some nations pay next to nothing.
• 
Put another way, the U.S.  will be assessed more than 176 other member states combined for the regular budget and more than 185 countries combined for the peacekeeping budget.  Who says America isn't exceptional!
• 
To change the institution, the first thing that needs to change is the thumb-on-the-scales system that makes the U.S.  the biggest bill-payer, but just one of 193 voting members when it comes to demanding honesty, efficiency and effectiveness in return for its over-generous payments.
• 
... major donors must have a greater say in budgetary decisions, and smaller donors must assume financial responsibilities that lead them to undertake budgetary decisions and conduct serious oversight.
      Why Rachel Dolezal's assertion that she is black could pave way for folks choosing a 'racial identity'  (Fox 06/15/2015)
• 
"That question is not as easy as it seems.  There's a lot of complexities ... and I don't know that everyone would understand that."
• 
If a man with male anatomy and a "Y" chromosome can assert he is female and be put on the covers of celebrity magazines and given awards for bravery, why can't a white woman assert that her internal identity is that of a black woman?
• 
Why does factual history have to dictate current reality if a human being feels very deeply that that factual history is not in tune with his or her inner sense of self?
• 
I mean the question sincerely, because we are rushing into this philosophical and psychological landscape with almost no consideration of its implications.
• 
If our measure of what a person is must be no more and no less than what she feels she is, then Rachel Dolezal can be black, if she wants to be, and if she can show evidence that she has sincerely adopted that vision of herself. 
• 
Here's one to ponder: If a man feels, to the core of his being, that he is 65 when he is chronologically 35, and if he can show evidence that he has voiced this self-concept, repeatedly, and has objected vigorously to being treated as though he is 35, who are we to lace him to his actual date of birth?  Why not let him choose another that feels "right"?  And if he applies for Medicare, why should he be denied?  Isn't that discriminating against him based on his age identity?
• 
I have warned and warned and warned that breaking free of certain apparent realities that define us as human beings – genetically and historically – can have profound implications for how closely people remain tied to reality, in general.
• 
Let us see how far down this path of "self"-assertion we travel, and with what results.
      You can't say that  (JWR 06/16/2015)
• 
"When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl.  Now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl.' "
• 
That way, the accused remains subject to the Authorities' always changing verbal whims.
• 
As in the old Soviet Union, where dissenters, composers and other politically unreliable types could never be sure they were following the party line.  Since no one knew just what it was at any given time.  So a Shostakovich or Babel could be hauled before a people's court on any grounds or none at all.
• 
The object of the game was not to enforce any clear rule but to make all suspect.  And fearful.
• 
Dare stand up against the Language Police and you're subject to being labeled a racist or sexist — and being bullied into submission.
• 
But there are always those stubborn types who refuse to be intimidated.  Count me among them.  Because here's one old newspaperman who's going to go on using plain English as best he can.  The poor old language needs all the help it can get.
• 
There was a different and better time when writers like E.M.  Forster wrote of "the aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky."
• 
A president like Franklin Roosevelt might be celebrated or detested because of his politics, but not because he was paralyzed.
• 
But now identity politics has made disability almost all that counts in our politics.  Or a history of being discriminated against.  Or any other grievance.  No wonder it can sometimes seem as if we have become a nation of grievance collectors.  Why not?  It pays off — in political power.
• 
"Owing to the spread of victimhood, we have today a large aristocracy of the suffering, the put-upon and the unlucky.  Blacks, gays, women, American Indians, Hispanics, the obese, Vietnam veterans, illegal immigrants, the handicapped, single parents, fast-food workers, the homeless, poets and anyone else able to establish underdog bona fides can now claim to be victims."
• 
Victimhood is no longer something to be overcome but celebrated.  And the can-do American spirit has become the can't-do, which is not a good sign for any country.
      Defaulting on Personal Responsibility  (JWR 06/16/2015)
• 
"I could give up what had become my vocation (in my case, being a writer) and take a job that I didn't want in order to repay the huge debt I had accumulated in college and graduate school.  Or I could take what I had been led to believe was both the morally and legally reprehensible step of defaulting on my student loans, which was the only way I could survive without wasting my life in a job that had nothing to do with my particular usefulness to society."
• 
... after reading your tripe - that it is not your responsibility to pay back the loans you agreed to pay back, but the responsibility of the taxpayers you are fleecing - you'd be far more useful to society if you were a garbage collector.
• 
First off, your premise is dead wrong.  Great writers have almost always worked jobs they didn't want, to pay the bills.
• 
William Faulkner worked for the post office.  Kurt Vonnegut managed a car dealership.  Stephen King worked as a janitor and dry cleaner.  Harper Lee took reservations for an airline.  John Steinbeck was a painter and handyman.
• 
One of my favorite authors, O.  Henry (William Sydney Porter), was a ranch hand, pharmacist, draftsman and bank clerk - he met many colorful characters in these various jobs, who influenced some of his greatest stories.
• 
Lucky for me, my parents taught me well: Nobody owes you anything, but when you owe somebody, pay him or her back.
      The Left Rejects Painful Truths  (JWR 06/16/2015)
• 
At the core of left-wing thought is a rejection of painful realities, the rejection of what the French call les faits de la vie: the facts of life.
• 
Conservatives, on the other hand, are all too aware of these painful realities of life and base many of their positions on them.
• 
Liberals find it too painful to look reality in the eye and acknowledge that human nature is deeply flawed.  This is especially so because left-wing thought is rooted in secularism, and if you don't believe in God, you had better believe in humanity — or you will despair.
• 
Another fact of life that the Left finds too painful to acknowledge is the existence of profound differences between men and women.
• 
That the great majority of women yearn to bond with a man — more than they yearn for professional success — is another fact of life that the Left wishes not to acknowledge.
• 
The entire concept of "political correctness" emanates from the Left's incapacity to acknowledge painful truths.  The very definition of "politically incorrect" is an idea or truth that people on the Left find too painful to acknowledge and therefore do not want expressed.
• 
Why are so many young black males in prison?  The reason is politically incorrect, meaning too painful for the Left to acknowledge: Black males commit a highly disproportionate amount of violent crime.
• 
Why are there speech codes on virtually all college campuses?  Because Leftists — who control most campuses — do not wish to hear discomforting facts or opinions with which they differ.  That causes them pain.
• 
That is the Left's own language.  Leftists constantly speak about people being made "uncomfortable" and about feeling "offended" (conservatives almost never react to an idea with which they differ by saying, "I'm offended").
• 
Avoiding pain at almost all costs is at the heart of left-wing ideas and policies. 
• 
Or take the left-wing bumper sticker idea: "War Is Not the Answer." Of course, war is often the answer to great evil.  Nazi death camps were liberated by soldiers fighting a war, not peace activists.  But having to acknowledge the moral necessity of war is too painful a truth for many on the Left.
• 
One might say Leftism appeals to those who wish to remain innocent children.  Growing up and facing the fact that life is messy, difficult and painful is increasingly a conservative point of view.
      Obama, Cuomo and de Blasio: The 3 stooges of the apocalypse  (NY Post, 06/14/2015)
• 
The biggest change is that America, the modern world's anchor of stability and security, is being roiled by a never-ending loop of turmoil and division.  Mankind's last resort feels unsettled and unreliable, adding to the sense of impending danger.
• 
The lion's share of the blame belongs to our awful governments, from New York City to ­Albany to Washington.
• 
I can think of no other period when we simultaneously had such terrible leaders and ineffective lawmakers at all three levels.  They seem to feed on each other's worst instincts, competing to lay claim to the most sweeping changes, no matter the method or impact.
• 
And so we are engulfed in waves of corruption, incompetence and arrogance, trickling up and trickling down, as government smothers society with agenda-driven policies.  Just as modern culture often works against parents and families, modern government ­often works against social harmony and individual liberty.
• 
Barack Obama leads the pack, and he will make history in two ways: as the first black president, and as the president who weakened America at home and abroad.  Even race relations are on fire.
• 
New Yorkers, meanwhile, are governed by Frick & Frack, or, in Andrew Cuomo's case, NoFrack.
• 
In his fifth year, Albany remains the most corrupt state capital in America, and Cuomo himself is now regarded by a majority of New Yorkers as being part of the problem instead of the solution.
• 
Last and least in the rogues' gallery is Mayor Bill de Blasio, but only because he's still wet behind the ears.  Just 18 months into his tenure, he is proving to be spectacularly clueless about how to govern responsibly.
• 
He has no vision, just an ideological fetish for redistribution and self-promotion.  He hates other people's wealth, except when it feathers his family's nest.
• 
The perfect summation of his hypocrisy is that Mr.  Income Inequality lives in Gracie Mansion on the public dime, while leasing out his two homes in tony Brooklyn for about $5,000 a month — each!  Affordable housing for me, but not for thee.
• 
Meanwhile, the city shudders as the guns come out of hiding and the police retreat.  Public disorder erodes the quality of life, and rising murder and shootings signal that de?Blasio's "progressive values" are taking the city backward.
• 
A crash, or many crashes spread out over years, now seem inevitable.  It would count as extremely good news indeed if we could pull out of our decline before it is too late. 
      Existential Threats to America  (JWR 06/12/2015)
• 
Obama's ideas, policies and actions in office are often so outrageous that when you describe them or the threat they represent, people discount your comments as extreme on their face.  The trouble is it's hard not to sound extreme when what he's doing is extreme.
• 
As bad as I believed Obama would be in 2008, I never thought those in the political establishment (sympathetic Democratic politicians in Washington and too many ineffective or gun-shy Republican ones) would either join him or abdicate their responsibility and let him accelerate the demise of the nation as rapidly as he has.  It would be impossible for one man to do this much damage alone.
• 
He is bitter about our founding and bitter about our current state — even though he's been radically changing it for six years.  There's no satisfying a revenge appetite.
• 
Obama has been in such denial about radical Islam that he refuses to recognize even undeniable acts of terrorism for what they are — here and around the world.  He holds to the painfully warped idea that Islamist terrorism and the violence that intrinsically springs from it are rooted in poverty, empirical evidence to the contrary be damned.  If you don't recognize and identify your enemy or if you unilaterally declare a truce, you can't effectively fight it.  But declaring a war over when your sworn enemies have told you they are committed to your utter destruction and are becoming even more aggressive is objectively insane — and suicidal.
• 
You can't possibly trust this radical, Islamo-fascist regime to honor its agreements when it has already broken promises it made to us on the very issue we're discussing — not to mention that this regime also is committed to our destruction and the destruction of Israel.
• 
Actuaries and other experts uniformly predict that entitlements will swallow our entire budget — 100 percent of our federal revenues — within a generation or so, and when it comes to budget projections, the gloom-and-doom predictions are always understated.
• 
All the noisemakers are talking about the mythical threats of global warming and completely ignoring — suppressing, actually — the incontrovertible fact that we are fiscally done if we don't get our entitlements under control, yesterday.
• 
Far too many people (just one is too many) who hate America and want to destroy it are streaming over the border.  Forget assimilation or acculturation.  To leftists, you're a hero if you agree with them that America stinks.  The more the better — because they'll vote Democratic.
• 
This administration is deliberately fanning the flames of division in this nation, and this distrust is tearing away at the fabric of our society.  But if you support proven conservative policies, you're a racist, sexist, bigoted homophobe.
• 
Obama is making a mockery of its limitations on his power, the most recent example of which is the Obamacare subsidies. 
• 
But the wrecking ball that is Barack Obama and his army of enablers in his party and the media proceed unabated in their destructive march.
      We need to cultivate wisdom — individually and socially  (JWR 06/12/2015)
• 
Wisdom doesn't get much respect.  When did you last hear a U.S.  leader being praised as wise?  When did you last hear someone stress the social importance of wisdom or speak about our nation's need for more of it?
• 
Yet across time and cultures, wisdom has been viewed as a primary human virtue — a key to the advancement and integration of knowledge, our most reliable guide to action, and a personal good linked to long-term fulfillment and well-being.
• 
Wisdom is hard to define succinctly, in part because it's not one trait so much as the blending of a number of traits.
• 
Richness of knowledge.  ... At the same time, being smart and being wise are not the same — we're all familiar with the clever, well-educated person with a high IQ who is anything but wise.
• 
Empathy.  Self-centered people are far less likely to be wise.  Wisdom is consistently associated with compassion and the ability to put oneself sincerely in the other person's shoes.
• 
Equanimity and resilience in times of adversity.  The wise person can regulate his emotions so as to meet sorrow and suffering calmly and to treat setbacks as problems to learn from and puzzles to try to solve.
• 
Perspective.  Nearly everyone agrees that the wise person is able to see the overall, the big picture.  The wise person's point of view is broad and disinterested, not partisan.
• 
Recognition of values pluralism.  Some values (sometimes called natural laws) are so essential that they should be binding on everyone.  But the wise person likely realizes that such values are few, do not come with operating instructions, and are often themselves subject to interpretation.
• 
Acceptance of uncertainty.  The wise person likely views doubt and ambiguity not as enemies to be resisted, but as acquaintances to be accommodated.  Indeed, much of wisdom appears to be the capacity to accept realistically what's not known and what's not knowable.
• 
And more broadly, surely our politics and public conversation today could use a little more empathy, perspective and conciliation and a little less certitude, aggression and intransigence.
• 
Wisdom is not common in human affairs.  It's typically in short supply.  But it probably can be consciously cultivated, both individually and socially.
• 
The first step is wanting to do so.
      Time to pull your kids out of public school?  (Fox 06/11/2015)
• 
Something very strange, if not bordering on insidious, is happening to this country.
• 
"They just want to use these words.  'That's racist.  That's sexist.  That's prejudice.' They don't even know what they're talking about."
• 
"Send him to Catholic school if you can afford it." How can anyone not afford it when the secular authorities appear to be brainwashing the next generation into believing that any choice is valid and should be universally accepted, and that anything one might say in opposition to these new sensibilities is labeled sexist or racist?
• 
If there were an exodus from public schools by people who are sick of political correctness, not to mention the government school system's inability to bring students up to the levels of other nations, perhaps the politicians and those responsible for these propaganda camps might wake up and offer parents school choice.
• 
As long as parents willingly put their children in a school system that not only undermines their values, but in many cases openly opposes them, and then makes children who hold to a different worldview feel odd, even bigoted and behind the times, public schools will continue to do so.
• 
This is what happens when standards are abandoned and truth becomes subjective.
• 
Better get your children out now before it's too late and you and the nation have lost them to an alien intellectual philosophy and a hostile moral power.
      When 'God' is a bad word at graduation  (Fox 06/11/2015)
• 
Censoring, silencing, threatening with jail — are these the lessons of free speech and religious liberty that school officials want to teach graduating high school seniors?  Is this how our schools should reward our most academically successful high school graduates?
• 
"It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
• 
Schools need to remember their graduates are not government officials.  The students speak for themselves, not as agents of the state.
• 
"[T]here is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect."
• 
For a positive change, let us enjoy the graduation speech for what it is: the time when a few students who have worked themselves into the position of success speak directly to their peers about what is on their hearts while the rest of us respectfully listen.
• 
Let us see the benefit of the free exchange of ideas and appreciate the wisdom of our founding fathers in protecting the private speech of our high school graduates.
• 
"Free speech, free exercise, and the ban on establishment [of religion] are quite compatible when the government remains neutral and educates the public about the reasons."
• 
Let the public be educated about religious free speech.  And let the students speak — they've earned it. 
      Rumsfeld: ‘Unrealistic’ for Bush to pursue democracy in Iraq  (Fox 06/09/2015)
• 
"I'm not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories."
• 
"The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic.  I was concerned about it when I first heard those words."
• 
"The movement for a caliphate, the movement against nation states is central and fundamental.  And no one's talking about it."
• 
"If leaders aren't willing to do it, why the hell should a guy with a wife and kids in the community put himself at risk?"
• 
Rumsfeld also accused President Obama of abandoning "America's historic role in promoting and defending free societies."
      'Broken Windows' policing is not broken  (Fox 06/05/2015)
• 
Obama Administration's Department of Justice has shown troubling signs it hopes to use racial politics to prevail over the courts and public safety.
• 
Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote, "A revolt of the judiciary is more dangerous to a government than any other, even a military revolt.  Now and then it uses the military to suppress disorder, but it defends itself every day by means of the courts."
• 
The fear is that some in the judiciary, guided by radical theory, will "revolt" against the police on the street.
• 
The criminal courts are driven by the daily actions of the cop on the beat, the point of intersection between the violence of victimization, and the quest for justice.
• 
There is no more important daily function for our justice institutions than when police maintain order, summarized in the idea of "broken windows" policing.
• 
... "one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing."
• 
"The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself." When the community withdraws in fear, disorder enters that space.
• 
"Serious crime was more likely to occur in a lawless environment — and ubiquitous low-level disorder signaled lawlessness even more than serious crime, which was less common."
• 
"Arresting someone for a misdemeanor frequently prevents him from graduating to committing felonies, for which severe sanctions like prison may result."
• 
Did it work in New York City?  There were 1,946 men, women, and children murdered in 1993.  In 2014, there were 328.  In some measure, regardless of your theory, cops were the instrument of that achievement.
• 
"Our policing is based on conduct, not demographics." Where the statistics show concentrated racial impact, Bratton argues that Blacks and Hispanics "represent half of our city's population, but 96.9 percent of those who are shot, and 97.6 percent of those who commit the shootings."
• 
That is, the strictest equality in crime is that between victimizers and victims.
• 
Let us not forget who cops are, many with low pay and miserable working conditions, and the wife and kids who wonder every night whether you're coming home or will be shot in the face sitting in your patrol car.
• 
Citizens, and those who protect them, have a duty to each other.
      Intellectual Dishonesty  (JWR 06/03/2015)
• 
To call any science settled is sheer idiocy.  Had mankind acted as though any science could possibly be settled, we'd be living in caves, as opposed to having the standard of living we enjoy today.  That higher standard of living stems from challenges to what might have been seen as "scientific fact."
• 
Many academics know that to call any science settled is nonsense.  But their leftist political sentiments and lack of academic integrity prevent them from criticizing public officials and the media for misleading a gullible public about global warming.
• 
The concept of white privilege, along with diversity and multiculturalism, is part of today's campus craze.
• 
The bottom line to this campus nonsense is that "privilege" has become the new word for "personal achievement."
• 
"If we can't ask from society's lottery winners to just make that modest investment, then really this conversation is for show."
• 
Are those who work hard, take risks, make life better for others and become wealthy in the process the people who should be held up to ridicule and scorn?  And should we make mascots out of social parasites?
• 
Most instructive for us is that Obama's remarks were made at a university.  Not a single professor has said anything about his suggestion that people accumulate great wealth by winning life's lottery.  That is just more evidence about the level of corruption among today's academics.
      Vince Vaughn is right about guns  (and was brave to be so honest) (Fox 06/02/2015)
• 
"I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home.  We don't have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government.  It's not about duck hunting; it's about the ability of the individual.  It's the same reason we have freedom of speech.
• 
It's well known that the greatest defense against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back.  All these gun shootings that have gone down in America since 1950, only one or maybe two have happened in non-gun-free zones.  Take mass shootings.  They've only happened in places that don't allow guns.  These people are sick in the head and are going to kill innocent people.  They are looking to slaughter defenseless human beings.  They do not want confrontation."
• 
... mass public killers want to commit suicide in a way that will bring them attention.  And they know that the more people they can kill, the more publicity they will get.  They also know that if they launch their attack where people carry guns, they will quickly be stopped.
      Does the truth matter?  (Fox 06/01/2015)
• 
We live in an age of unprecedented challenges to the truth.  Reality is under siege.
• 
Does it matter?  Why, after all, is the truth said to be sacred?
• 
The answer is this: Human beings suffer in exact proportion to the extent that they depart from the truth.
• 
This is a structural beam of the individual and collective human mind and soul, perhaps literally encoded in our DNA, and it defines our place in the universe.  Human beings need the truth as much as we need food.
• 
And, for the sake of this argument, it matters not at all to me whether you believe that this elemental need is woven into us by God or by science.  It just is.
• 
How do I know?  I have sat with thousands of men and women who find themselves in profound psychological pain, in large part because they have attempted to avoid facts about their lives...  And I have seen how retracing their steps, facing these facts and accepting them have alleviated their pain and made them more powerful.
• 
The toll of avoiding the truth is always the same: a falling down or a falling apart. Every debt to the truth must be paid, with interest.  Every debt.
• 
This is the case for not paying attention to a mole on your skin that has darkened ominously, then continues its malignant transformation, uses the bloodstream to spread itself and attacks vital organs.
• 
It is the case for not paying attention to lower quality goods or ideas being produced or embraced by one's company, which then sparks falling revenues, which then minimize the potential of the venture or lead to bankruptcy.
• 
It is the case for honoring celebrities of low character who then corrupt the characters of our young people, who emulate them.
• 
It is the case for ignoring mortal enemies of the nation who may seem weak or far away today, but who are gathering strength enough to become a cancer here, in a way that could end freedom.
• 
The truth will not be denied.  The truth always wins.  To the extent that we align ourselves with it, we thrive.  To the extent that we deny it, we suffer.
• 
For human beings, created, as I see it, in the image of God, it has always been that way and it will always be that way.  And this is why great leaders cannot also be liars, and why great initiatives cannot also be half-measures, and why a cure for all that afflicts us is already inside us.
      Differences Between Left and Right: Part I  (JWR 05/26/2015)
• 
Most Americans hold either liberal or conservative positions on most matters.  In many instances, however, they would be hard pressed to explain their position or the position they oppose.
• 
Left-of-center doctrines hold that people are basically good.  On the other side, conservative doctrines hold that man is born morally flawed — not necessarily born evil, but surely not born good.  Yes, we are born innocent — babies don't commit crimes, after all — but we are not born good.
• 
First, no religion or ideology denies that we have goodness within us; the problem is with denying that we have badness within us.  Second, it is often very challenging to express that goodness.  Human goodness is like gold.  It needs to be mined — and like gold mining, mining for our goodness can be very difficult.
• 
This so important to understanding the left-right divide because so many fundamental left-right differences emanate from this divide.
• 
Perhaps the most obvious one is that conservatives blame those who engage in violent criminal activity for their behavior more than liberals do.  Liberals argue that poverty, despair, and hopelessness cause poor people, especially poor blacks — in which case racism is added to the list — to riot and commit violent crimes.
• 
Since people are basically good, their acts of evil must be explained by factors beyond their control.  Their behavior is not really their fault; and when conservatives blame blacks for rioting and other criminal behavior, liberals accuse them of "blaming the victim."
• 
In the conservative view, people who do evil are to be blamed because they made bad choices — and they did so because they either have little self-control or a dysfunctional conscience.  In either case, they are to blame.  That's why the vast majority of equally poor people — black or white — do not riot or commit violent crimes.
• 
Likewise, many liberals believe that most of the Muslims who engage in terror do so because of the poverty and especially because of the high unemployment rate for young men in the Arab world.
• 
Yet, it turns out that most terrorists come from middle class homes.  All the 9/11 terrorists came from middle- and upper-class homes.  And of course Osama bin Laden was a billionaire.
• 
Material poverty doesn't cause murder, rape or terror.  Moral poverty does.  That's one of the great divides between left and right.  And it largely emanates from their differing views about whether human nature is innately good.
      Mr.  Obama, climate change didn't create ISIS, Boko Haram  (Fox 05/26/2015)
• 
"Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world.  Yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram.  It's now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East."
• 
Really?  Are young girls and women being raped and forced into slavery because religious fanatics can't grow crops on arid land?
• 
If "climate change" made terrorism possible, how does the president explain violent jihadism dating back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad, long before carbon was a concern, or even a footprint?
• 
If unemployment causes terrorism, millions of jobless Americans would be taking up arms.
• 
No amount of evidence will dissuade a climate change cultist that he is wrong, but for students who might Google the subject for a term paper, let's try.
• 
"It is hard to even take today's speech by Obama seriously on either a logical, scientific or political level.  The speech was so farcical in its claims that it hardly merits a response.  It is obvious that the climate establishment is seeking new talking points on 'global warming' to change the subject from the simple fact that global temperatures are not cooperating with their claims."
• 
Islamic terrorism, not droughts, ice or tornadoes, presents a far greater clear and present danger.
      Kool-Aid, Advertising, And The Science Of Everyday Brainwashing  (JWR 05/23/2015)
      Pampered academics are the 'privileged' ones  (JWR 05/21/2015)
• 
The irony of arguably the most cosseted and subsidized among us demanding that others "check their privilege" is lost on them.
• 
What they call "privilege" is really "a consequence of hard work, of delaying gratification and of sacrifice."
• 
"If we have privilege, it was earned at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Normandy." ... It's a function of character, not of "skin tone or the number of vowels in your name."
• 
Per capita GDP in the Roman Empire was about $3.50 a day.  It didn't change much for 1,700 years.  English-speaking whites benefited first, and most, from the vast explosion of wealth in the Industrial Revolution — for a reason that has nothing to do with race or gender.
• 
Shakespeare and Chaucer wrote before John Locke published his Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690).  Great pictures were painted, great music composed, great cathedrals built.
• 
But before Locke, little about Western civilization was exceptional.  The West hasn't produced better architects and engineers than the Egyptians who built the pyramids or better mathematicians than the Mayans.  Art, music and science flourished in several Chinese dynasties.  For the better part of 800 years, Moorish Spain was more culturally and scientifically advanced than Christian Europe.
• 
The ideas Locke introduced and our Founding Fathers refined made the Industrial Revolution possible.  He and they were white males.  But their ideas — that all have a right to life, liberty and private property; that government should serve the people, not people the government — apply to all races.
• 
Their ideas grew largely from (Protestant) Christianity, another target of the "check your privilege" crowd.  The philosophical basis for liberty is the belief "all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
• 
We must be treated as individuals — not as part of a gender, racial or socio-economic tribe — because God will judge us as individuals.
• 
It's no coincidence that almost all prosperous nations are free, that the more they embrace the principles first expounded by Locke, the more the wealth of all peoples — white and nonwhite — increases.  When people are free to pursue their dreams, prosperity follows.
• 
The only legal discrimination blacks under age 50 have known has been discrimination in their favor.
• 
When "gender equality activists" at Georgetown University whine about how unfair it is that guys can urinate standing up, we know the long battle for equal rights has been won.
• 
It is college administrators and faculty — whose lavish lifestyles are financed from taxes paid chiefly by the white males they malign — who should "check their privilege."
• 
No responsible parent should send a son or daughter to a college that shames, harasses and intimidates students because of their race or gender.  Such colleges shouldn't receive a dime of public funds.
      Think like a lib — or else  (JWR 05/21/2015)
• 
What happens when the public does not wish to live out the utopian dreams of its elite leaders?  Usually, the answer for those leaders is to seek more coercion and less liberty to force people to think progressively
• 
How, then, do politically correct planners force the people to think and act properly when they push back?
• 
Obama granted blanket amnesties, proposed rules that would lead to the closure of many coal plants, and arbitrarily chose which health or labor statutes should be enforced and at what times.  A filmmaker was even jailed on a trumped-up probation charge after making a video about Islam that was deemed unhelpful to the official administration Benghazi narrative.  The IRS hounded nonprofit groups considered insufficiently progressive.
• 
"We're going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we're going to have to change how the media reports on these issues, and how people's impressions of what it's like to struggle in this economy looks like."
• 
"Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed."
• 
When news organizations, judges or Americans in general do not think or speak in the correct fashion, then elite progressives believe they must do whatever is necessary to silence them — while making themselves exempt from their own agendas.
      All for nothing?  US vets who fought for Ramadi angry over fall to ISIS  (Fox 05/21/2015)
• 
Many are wondering why their hard-fought gains were so easily surrendered when Iraqi forces, following the U.S.  pullout, were unable to stand up to the black-clad terrorist army.
• 
"We were fighting non-stop for three months.  Our mission was always to make sure that the supply route was secure."
• 
"It's gut-wrenching and disgusting to me that we choose to stand by and do nothing."
• 
"At one point we had to take over for the Iraqi police because many of them were helping insurgents."
• 
"It's hard to watch and then be told that it's all part of a successful plan.  Ramadi was a model success story and we continue to see all of the gains we made there be somewhat reversed."
• 
"It's a slap in the faces of families of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice."
      How a rogue fourth branch of government is threatening our republic  (Fox 05/19/2015)
• 
Two years ago this month, we learned of the burgeoning scandal at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – the deliberate targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups – a coordinated move to keep these groups on the sidelines during a critical election.
• 
But over the course of the two years when the scandal broke, one thing has become very clear: unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats were at the center of this scheme.
• 
What's equally troubling – there's been no accountability.  Not one person has been fired.  Zero.
• 
The IRS, along with a long list of other agencies, is run by bureaucrats.  And these bureaucrats destroy our liberty and threaten our democracy.
• 
... we are in serious peril because of this – the most powerful branch of government we did not even learn about in high school civics class.
• 
The constitution only allows for three branches of government – not a fourth branch.  Yet we have one.  It's called the federal bureaucracy.
• 
We have created an unconstitutional, self-sustaining monster that is swallowing our democracy.  And our constitutional republic hangs in the balance.
• 
This does not involve just the IRS.  This is a much larger problem than the corruption of a single government agency.  This is the corruption of an entire system of government.
• 
Consider this fact: from 2009 to the end of 2012, the federal government's bureaucracy created more than 13,000 new regulations – each with the binding force of law.
• 
And according to a new report, federal agencies issued 3,554 new regulations in 2014 alone.
• 
That's a staggering number of new laws.  And not one American voted for any of the regulators who drafted, evaluated, and approved those new laws.
• 
And this culture also has created a bureaucratic climate of arrogance.  Investigators recently revealed that nearly 1,600 IRS employees – those responsible for enforcing our tax laws – actually willfully evaded paying their own taxes for up to a decade.
• 
First, resist.  Americans cannot consent to unlawful overreach.  We must challenge federal lawlessness in courts of law and in the court of public opinion.  And when you challenge, you can win.
• 
Next, reform.  Congress must reform our civil service to introduce real accountability, limit agencies' rulemaking authority, and strip public officials of their effective immunity from liability when they violate citizens' constitutional rights.
• 
Finally, restore.  We must engage in a long-term effort to teach Americans the virtues of constitutional democracy.  We are not a great nation because we always make the correct policy choices (indeed, we make many mistakes) but because a great people live under a great system of government.
• 
The answer to our challenge lies not in any specific idea.  But instead in our own resolve.  We are heirs to a great nation, and we are caretakers of that nation's constitution and liberty, its blood-bought liberty.
• 
Impatient presidents don't get to change the law.  The same goes for unelected bureaucrats.  It is time to turn the power switch off and reclaim our republic.
      Why Pamela Geller Is Hated  (JWR 05/19/2015)
• 
Reason One: The left Hates Those Who Confront Evil
• 
Today, the world's greatest evil is Islamism (the movement to impose Islam and its Sharia on society).
• 
Reason Two: Moral Confusion.
• 
Because neither Christianity nor Mormonism produces evil that needs to be fought.  The Muslim world, however, is producing tens of thousands of murderers and millions more sympathizers; and those who criticize Islam and confront Islamism are hated because those who don't fight evil hate those who do.
• 
Reason Three: Lack of Courage.
• 
America calls itself, in the final words of the National Anthem, "the land of the free and the home of the brave." This description no longer applies — not only to the left-wing intellectual and media elite but also to the increasingly large segment of the American people that the left has influenced.
• 
This combination — of the steep moral decline of the American left; the inability of too many Americans to reason morally; and the greater value increasingly placed on protecting (certain) people's feelings than on protecting freedom of speech — is why a woman who did nothing more than organize a contest to draw cartoons of Muhammad may be the most reviled American alive.
      Congress cannot let Obama negotiate a free trade agreement without tough new rules  (Fox 05/14/2015)
• 
... without tough new rules to stop currency manipulation and other cheating on trade deals.
• 
Trade agreements eliminate tariffs and lower regulatory barriers to commerce — for example, restrictions on U.S.  banks and information technology for companies operating in foreign markets.
• 
Those arrangements should offer consumers a wider range of less expensive imported goods, boost exports and increase American incomes by moving workers from lower paying jobs — such as assembling cell phones — to higher paying employment — designing new devices and software.
• 
Too often, free trade disappoints.
• 
The president implemented a trade pact with South Korea in March 2012 promising big gains.  Bilateral imports are up $15.5 billion but exports only $3 billion — killing more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs.
• 
When imports grow more than exports, economists expect the value of the dollar to fall against foreign currencies — that raises prices for foreign goods, lowers prices for U.S.  products sold abroad and creates good-paying jobs.
• 
Since last summer the value of the dollar is up 16 percent.  That's enough, for example, to kill virtually all of the good paying jobs promised by the President's proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership establishing free trade with 11 other Asian nations — including long-time currency manipulator Japan.
• 
Also, governments target industries — such as autos and information technology — and compel U.S.  firms to move factories and R&D abroad to sell in their markets.  That steals jobs that should stay in America.
• 
Already, U.S.  imports exceed exports by more than $500 billion annually — directly destroying 4 million jobs.
• 
Currency manipulation is illegal under World Trade Organization rules, but Obama has ignored pleas from industry, members of congress and both liberal and conservative economists to effectively address the problem.
• 
U.S.  trade laws permit the Commerce Department and U.S.  International Trade Commission to impose tariffs on subsidized imports that destroy jobs.  But those ignore currency manipulation and have been weakened in recent years permitting many Asian exporters to evade enforcement.
• 
... but it only makes sense with enforceable disciplines on currency manipulation and unfairly subsidized foreign goods.
      We cannot allow our police, law enforcement officers to become political punching bags  (Fox 05/13/2015)
• 
It is hard to find a more transparent example of politically expedient "justice" than the rushed investigation and the knee jerk charges brought against six Baltimore police officers who were involved in the Freddie Gray arrest earlier this month.
• 
It has become a simple, tragic formula: technology captures law enforcement in action; the footage, with uninformed color commentary, goes public and a social and mainstream media conviction ensues in near-real time.
• 
Political opportunists, grandstanders, and professional criminals — many of whom have no real concern for the actual issues at hand — show up to either rail in front of network cameras or loot and destroy property with relative impunity.
• 
She faces the difficult burden of actually proving a host of serious criminal charges against the six Baltimore officers.
• 
Mosby's lack of judgment in this matter cannot be ignored.  Given her strident public statements promising justice for the Gray family, with no mention of justice for the accused, one would expect early motions for a change of venue for any trial.  Already, defense requests to examine the knife possessed by Gray have been rebuffed, which will only make the issue grow rather than dissipate.
• 
There is now a darker shadow of mistrust cast over all law officers who report for duty every day and face potentially life threatening situations with chilling regularity.
• 
The weekend deaths of two Mississippi police officers and the recent death of a police officer in New York remind us just how dangerous a cop's job can be.  Mississippi police officers Benjamin Deen and Liquori Tate were shot and killed while making a traffic stop.  New York Police officer Brian Moore was killed after questioning an individual.
• 
The recent attempted terrorist attack in Garland, Texas is another prime example of the skill, vigilance and heroism required for an officer to effectively do his job.  A lone, off-duty traffic officer armed only with a handgun killed two would-be terrorists carrying high power weapons who were bent on inflicting mass carnage, presumably in the name of ISIS.
• 
We have entered, or perhaps returned to, a new era in our country.  One where the confluence of long-standing police practices, with their mandate to provide assistance to the public, have intersected with the white hot spotlight.
• 
The reality is that police officers are routinely forced to make split second decisions in highly charged situations, often without all the information they may need, in order to protect the public.
• 
The prosecutor said the officer, "...did not have the ability to use non-lethal force during this incident, based on space and time considerations."
• 
Whatever the outcome of the Baltimore trial, it's important to remember that the vast majority of police officers are hardworking men and women who are dedicated to serving the public.
• 
We cannot allow our police to become political punching bags, targets for political opportunists who often generate unwarranted criticism of the people who report for a difficult and dangerous job.
      Clinton cash controversy: Why it matters to every American  (Fox 05/11/2015)
• 
One of the last vestiges of broad-based bipartisan agreement in American politics is the belief that foreign money should not influence U.S.  political leaders and their decisions.
• 
We now know that the Clinton Foundation served as a conduit for the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign individuals, entities, and governments.
• 
And therein lies a core concern for those opposed to corruption: charities, despite their noble exteriors, frequently come under financial scrutiny and should.
• 
This is especially true of the Clinton Foundation; its operational structure and principals offer the ideal back-door method — especially when sweetened with speaking fees for Mr.  Clinton — for foreign entities that cannot legally contribute to U.S.  political campaigns to instead circumnavigate election laws in an effort to curry favor with the Clintons.
• 
Throughout Mrs.  Clinton's tenure as Sec.  of State, Mr.  Clinton received enormous speaking fees, some of which were funded by foreign money.  Mr.  and Mrs.  Clinton's family foundation also received considerable sums from foreign donors.
• 
... four of those donations totaling $2.35 million came through Ian Telfer, the former head of the Uranium One, a company which sought and received approval from nine agencies including Mrs.  Clinton's State Department to sell its assets — including 20 percent of all U.S.  uranium — to the Russian government.
• 
Furthermore, investors in the transfer of U.S.  uranium to Russia donated millions to Mrs.  Clinton's family foundation.
• 
Did the eight other agency heads receive eight-figure donations?  Or have spouses who received $500,000 speaking fees for a Moscow speech funded by a Kremlin-linked bank as the Russian government aggressively pursued the acquisition of 20 percent of U.S.  uranium?
• 
It is important to remember that Clinton Foundation transparency requirements for donation disclosures came not at the insistence of conservative Republicans in Congress; rather, the Obama transition team required the memorandum of understanding in order for Mrs.  Clinton's appointment to proceed.
• 
What is clear is that progressive and conservative concerns about the Clinton Foundation's acceptance of contributions from foreign governments, entities, and individuals are warranted.
• 
Unlike political campaign contributions that are illegal for foreign executives and governments to donate to, a U.S.  politician's charity can capture all foreign donations, with no restrictions.  Such financial pass-throughs run afoul of the longstanding American tradition that opposes the infiltration of foreign money into U.S.  politics.
      Defense attorneys in Gray case call for state's attorney to be recused  (Fox 05/09/2015)
• 
The attorneys argue in the documents that the officers were victims of an 'overzealous prosecution' by State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who they claim has personal and political motivations in the case.
• 
"...His wife, Marilyn Mosby, had a professional and personal interest in accommodating the needs of her husband – his political future directly affects her personal, professional and political interests."
• 
The defense also argues that Mosby denied the officers their right to due process by using inciting rhetoric when announcing the charges last week.  Mosby told protesters: "I heard your call for ‘no justice no peace.' Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man... You're at the forefront of this cause and as young people, our time is now."
• 
"Rarely in the history of any criminal case has a prosecutor so directly maintained so many conflicts of interest.  Rarer still are instances where such clear conflicts exist and a prosecutor steadfastly refuses to recuse him or herself."
• 
Baltimore suffered days of unrest after Gray died April 19 following a week in a coma after his arrest.  Protesters threw bottles and bricks at police the night of his funeral on April 27, injuring nearly 100 officers.  More than 200 people were arrested as cars and businesses burned.
      Race, Politics and Lies  (JWR 05/05/2015)
• 
Totally ignored was the fact that a black policeman in Alabama fatally shot an unarmed white teenager, and was cleared of any charges, at about the same time that a white policeman was cleared of charges in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
• 
In a world where the truth means so little, and headstrong preconceptions seem to be all that matter, what hope is there for rational words or rational behavior, much less mutual understanding across racial lines?
• 
The "legacy of slavery" argument is not just an excuse for inexcusable behavior in the ghettos.  In a larger sense, it is an evasion of responsibility for the disastrous consequences of the prevailing social vision of our times, and the political policies based on that vision, over the past half century.
• 
We are told that such riots are a result of black poverty and white racism.  But in fact — for those who still have some respect for facts — black poverty was far worse, and white racism was far worse, prior to 1960.  But violent crime within black ghettos was far less.
• 
You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.
• 
Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state...
• 
One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994.  Behavior matters and facts matter, more than the prevailing social visions or political empires built on those visions.
      The Jihad Against Free Speech Comes to Texas  (INN 05/05/2015)
• 
We are living in infamous times.  Reality outpaces fiction, and the worst case scenarios keep unfolding in our daily headlines.
• 
Critics of torturers and mass murderers are demonized as "extremists" and "provocateurs."
• 
Israel is accused of human rights atrocities it has never committed by those very entities who themselves actually commit such atrocities; anyone who points this out is deemed an "extreme conservative" and a "racist."
• 
Anti-infidel hate speech — as long as it is directed against America and Israel — is seen as protected by the First Amendment and by the doctrine of Free Speech; exposing the diabolical Big Lies is considered politically incorrect "racist" hate speech which has no place in the Western media, on campus, at the UN, or in any international human rights organization.
• 
Either the West fights back or it surrenders to these Orwellian rules.  Many Western intellectuals prefer scapegoating Israel and surrendering quietly to these diabolical Islamist rules rather than risk their reputations and their lives.
• 
... followers of ISIS had been "calling for an attack online for more than a week after learning about the cartoon contest."
• 
This event was a "defiant gesture" in support of Free Speech in the wake of the January massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists — and, I would add, in the wake of the cowardice of those PEN authors who are protesting the Freedom of Expression Courage award being given to a surviving Charlie Hebdo editor and a cartoonist.
• 
"This is a war.  This is war on free speech.  What are we going to do?  Are we going to surrender to these monsters?"
• 
Free speech and, in America, the First Amendment, were crafted to protect all free speech, including that which some people find offensive or even scurrilous.  We are not all meant to like or agree with it.  This concept is the fruit of centuries of Western-style evolution, something that Islam has never enjoyed.
• 
In Islam, "blasphemy" as well as "apostasy" are viewed as capital offenses.
• 
In 2004, Dutch filmmaker, Theo Von Gogh was butchered by Moroccan-Dutch jihadist...
• 
In 2005, Flemming Rose published the original Mohammed cartoons in Jyllens-Posten, the Danish newspaper.  These cartoons were relatively tame.
• 
Jihadists secretly added some more malicious cartoons to the mix — and sent it around the globe via the internet.  Violent and highly choreographed riots ensued around the world.  Gunmen in Gaza invaded the EU's offices there demanding an apology.
• 
Between 2005-2013, protests spread across the Middle East.  Infidel Embassies were attacked.  Charlie Hebdo republished the cartoons and reaped a whirlwind of lawsuits and attacks.
• 
In 2008, the Danish police arrested several suspects who were plotting to kill Kurt Westergaard, the original Mohammed cartoonist.
• 
In 2010, a Somali Muslim with an ax and a knife entered Westergaard's house; luckily, Westergaard fought him off.
• 
In 2010, American cartoonist Molly Norris proposed an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." She published her own rather harmless and funny cartoon.  Norris has had to live in hiding ever since.  In hiding.  In America.
• 
In 2011, Charlie Hebdo's offices were burned down in an arson attack the day after they published an issue with the prophet Mohammed as the Editor-in-Chief.
• 
In early 2015, Jihadists massacred 12 Charlie Hebdo writers in Paris; for good measure, they murdered five Jews later the same day.
• 
Also in 2015, in Copenhagen, a gunmen opened fire at a debate on Islam and Free Speech.  One documentary filmmaker, Finn Noergaard, was shot and three police officers were injured.  The shooter, Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein, got away and soon after murdered a security guard at a synagogue; he was then killed.
• 
Now, Jihadists have attacked Free Speech in America.  Whether or not people find Geller, Spencer and Wilders "extremely provocative troublemakers" both they and We the People are absolutely entitled under our laws to exercise our First Amendment rights.  About anything.
• 
Westerners have absolutely no trouble criticizing Christianity and Judaism.  Why so much angst about criticizing one religion only: Islam?
• 
If what Geller, Spencer, and Wilders have just done advances the cause of freedom of speech, we may not all have to follow their tactics, but we should at least acknowledge that we support their goals.
• 
If not, what exactly are our alternatives?
      SCOTUS should not usurp the voice of the people  (JWR 05/05/2015)
• 
"You're not seeking to join the institution.  You're seeking to change what the institution is."
• 
It's common to hear opponents of same-sex marriage described as bigots, religious zealots or inhabitants of the "wrong side of history," as if we were walled up behind Check Point Charlie in East Berlin.
• 
... when it comes to the dignity of people who object to gay unions on religious or moral grounds, they are dismissed as bigots.
• 
They could not find an actual "right" to abortion in the constitution, and so they switched their focus and started talking about the "dignity" of women while at the same time, minimizing the dignity of the unborn child.
• 
But we don't like to be told by a few men and women in black robes that, because we disagree with the frenetic wave of change orchestrated by a motivated minority, we are bigots. 
• 
"People feel very differently about something if they have the chance to vote on it than if it's imposed on them by the courts."
      Message for our new surgeon general: Be a doctor, not a politician  (Fox 05/04/2015)
• 
I wish my colleague in medicine would try to remember that he's a doctor, not a politician.
• 
"Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they're scared of NRA.  Guns are a health care issue."
• 
Without a change in the Senate's filibuster rules, Murthy's nomination would not have come to a vote.
• 
... "even after being nominated for this job by a president I deeply admire, I almost didn't get to be your surgeon general."
• 
So wouldn't you think Murthy would have figured out by now that politics and medicine aren't always a good mix, and that some things are better left unsaid?
• 
Let's face it ... There are disparities in health care, and they need to be studied and better understood.  But "health inequity" refers to disparities of race and socioeconomic status.  You have to be very careful about using that term, because it really is not something we medical practitioners can fix.
• 
Murthy was right when he said health equity is a civil rights issue – and that's exactly why he shouldn't have said it.  Civil rights issues are better left to our politicians.  They're not the surgeon general's job.
• 
"Today, we face a rising tide of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  We will lose nearly half a million lives this year to tobacco-related disease."
• 
"Forty-two million people in our country struggle with mental illness."
• 
"Heroin and prescription drug abuse ravage towns across America, and vaccine-preventable diseases we thought we had contained have come back with a vengeance because of fear and misinformation."
• 
That's Murthy's job.  Having said that, he should have smiled for the camera, shaken Vice President Joe Biden's hand and left the stage to get to work.  Because what followed left me wondering if he wanted to be the surgeon general or the secretary of homeland security:
• 
Public health [is] intrinsically linked to education, employment, the environment and our economy.  There is a whole world beyond hospital corridors and clinic waiting rooms where people are struggling with issues of transportation, housing and development.
• 
The point is, we cannot effectively address the challenges before us until we treat health as a shared responsibility.  That is why we have to build the great American community.
• 
Building the great American community?  When did that become the surgeon general's job?
• 
"The statements I've made in the past about gun violence being a public health issue, I stand by those comments because they're a fact.  They're a fact that nearly every medical professional who's ever cared for a patient will attest to."
• 
Will Murthy never learn?  Gun violence isn't a medical issue.  It's a political issue.  The medical issue is the precursor to gun violence: mental health.  That's what the surgeon general should focus on.
• 
Dr.  Murthy, please ... Be a doctor, not a politician.
      A Dangerous Certainty  (JWR 05/04/2015)
• 
Truth and inquiry are replaced by propaganda.  Education becomes indoctrination.  All speech save that which has been pre-approved is forbidden.  Those with opposing viewpoints are mocked, dehumanized and finally silenced — typically by imprisonment or death.
• 
The justifications are always the same: Such strictures are necessary to remediate "oppression." One group (the "oppressed" and their ideological allies) is in possession of all "truth." Questions and competing arguments are dangerous to society, and those advancing them are enemies, against whom any and all tactics are warranted.
• 
What is notable about these regimes is not only the brutality and misery they inflict, but the steel-booted certainty of their adherents.
• 
It is alarming, therefore, to see the speed with which these kinds of attitudes are seeping into the public discourse and political activity in the United States.
• 
By way of example, college campuses, intended to be bastions of vigorous inquiry, have taken on a vague whiff of leftist authoritarianism:
• 
Unpopular viewpoints are characterized as threats to student "safety," or contributing to a hostile climate.  Conservative speakers are shouted down, pelted with pies or — increasingly — "uninvited" out of fears of public disorder or violence.
• 
In classrooms and extracurricular activities across the country, discussion of innumerable topics is preceded or even precluded by "trigger warnings" — calls for "sensitivity" so indiscriminate and sweeping that faculty of all political stripes find themselves silenced and infuriated.
• 
The new accusation of "privilege" effectively silences or discredits anyone who is male, or white, or Christian, or Jewish, or upper-middle class, or not disabled, or raised in a family with both parents, or not the victim of a crime.
• 
As recent events in Indiana and Oregon demonstrate, Christians who wish only to go about their business and live their faith must be hauled out into the public eye, mocked and shamed, threatened, driven out of business — all for holding a personal viewpoint that is presently unpopular.
• 
No, this isn't Cambodia.  But there is cause for concern in a climate where differing beliefs are not allowed; where opposing views are silenced by sweeping and unsubstantiated accusations; where your livelihood can be destroyed by hate campaigns on social media; where those who threaten your safety publicly proclaim their justification in doing so; where political opponents use vague and overbroad laws to break down your door, terrify your children, seize your property, intimidate you into silence and deprive you of legal recourse; and where social pundits call for violence against those with whom they disagree.
• 
... quotes Friedrich Nietzsche: "Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one."
• 
Good advice, as far as it goes.  But the Left would do better to stop characterizing their opponents as monsters in the first place.
      Thuggish censors in the marketplace of ideas  (JWR 05/04/2015)
• 
Baltimore burns, shops are looted, rioters attack firefighters with bottles and bricks.  And amid all the violence and ruin, what drives the chattering class into a froth of indignation? 
• 
That anyone would use the word "thugs" to describe the vandals and criminals reducing Baltimore to rubble.
• 
"Too many people have invested in building up this city to allow thugs to tear it down."
• 
It didn't take long for the mayor to surrender.  "We don't have thugs in Baltimore...  We have a lot of kids that are acting out."
• 
"I wanted to clarify my comments on 'thugs'.  When you speak out of frustration and anger, one can say things in a way that you don't mean."
• 
So now in Baltimore, which has the nation's seventh-highest violent crime rate, the nonracial word "thugs" is banished as racist — even when spoken by a black mayor.  Thus the degradation of the public discourse proceeds.
• 
Within days, the businessmen were begging for mercy, berating themselves as if they were inmates in a North Korean slave-labor camp, forced to confess their crimethink in public.
• 
More and more, this is what the marketplace of ideas is turning into.  The ruthless determination not just to silence opposing points of view, but to humiliate and crush even allies willing to hear an opposing point of view, violates every liberal principle of tolerance, reason, and dialogue in the public sphere.
• 
Increasingly, the censors and silencers are at work, stifling ideas, demonizing speakers, ostracizing open-mindedness — decreeing even certain words beyond the pale.  It is a dangerous, illiberal, antidemocratic trend.  If we don't rouse ourselves to reverse it now, we may never get the chance.
      Muhammad cartoon contest: Note to jihadists, in America, we shoot back  (Fox 05/04/2015)
• 
A pair of would-be jihadists learned a very important lesson over the weekend – in America, we shoot back.
• 
It turned out those practicing their First Amendment rights were protected by those practicing their Second Amendment rights.  Within a matter of moments – the jihadists were quickly dispatched to the Hereafter thanks to a straight-shooting traffic cop.
• 
Now, you may not agree with Miss Geller's tactics.  Some might accuse her of poking a bear – and that may very well be true.
• 
But Miss Geller does have Constitutional right to poke the bear.  She does have a Constitutional right to free speech.  And those who disagree with her have a Constitutional right to disagree.
• 
But they do not have a constitutional right to gun down those who might say or write or draw something that disparages the Prophet Muhammad.
• 
"The gunmen are fighting against freedom of speech.  The First Amendment protects all speech – not just ideas that we like – but most particularly political speech."
• 
"Who would decide what is good and what is forbidden?  The Islamic State?  Muslim Brotherhood groups?  This is the key issue of our age."
• 
"The truth of the matter is that even though President Obama will not admit it – Islam has a problem, and it is called radical Islam.  And the proponents of radical Islam hate our First Amendment, they hate freedom of speech and they want to destroy it and us."
• 
Jindal also called on Muslim leaders to condemn the violence.  He said it's time for them to step up and "declare that perpetrators of such violence are the enemy, they are wrong, and they will not be rewarded in the afterlife."
• 
The cold hard reality is that we don't know how many more radicalized Muslims might be living among us – waiting to wage jihad.  Wilders sounded the alarm last week in Washington, D.C.
• 
"I'm warning America.  Don't think that what's happening in Europe today, will not happen in America tomorrow – because it will."
• 
And it did.
      More love and marriage ahead, American style  (JWR 05/01/2015)
• 
American ingenuity is the envy of the world, and why not?  The exceptional nation may no longer be the workshop of the world — Americans drive cars built in Japan, wear pants made in Malaysia, shirts sewn in Burma, shoes cobbled in Canada and drawers, from petite to queen size, manufactured in China — but nobody makes excuses, takes offense quicker and nurtures hurt feelings longer like the Americans.  Taking offense is the great American growth industry.
• 
Just when a reasonable man thinks there's nothing left to redress in the public square, that every feminist has found a job supervising a man, every gay caballero has found a baker to bake his wedding cake, that every aspiring Rev.  Al has started a riot, here comes someone with a fresh mob to whore after the new thing.
• 
The gay lobby is in court now, trying to persuade the Supremes to require the states to sanction the ringing of their wedding bells and to join them in a search for an orange blossom to sniff.
• 
"Suppose we rule in your favor in this case and then after that, a group consisting of two men and two women apply for a marriage license.  Would there be any grounds for denying them a license?"
• 
"But what would be the ground under the logic of the decision you would like us to hand down in this case?  What would be the logic of denying them the same right?"
• 
Today a nut, tomorrow a plaintiff.
      Why Marilyn Mosby may not be able to convict police on murder charges in Freddie Gray's death  (Fox 05/01/2015)
• 
Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby stepped up to the podium ... and announced what much of the crowd wanted to hear: her office had filed 20 separate charges (including murder and manslaughter) and issued arrest warrants for six Baltimore police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray...
• 
Gray, who had been arrested after fleeing from police on April 12, suffered mysterious and eventually fatal spinal injuries while in the back of a police van that was transporting him to the station.  He died a week after his arrest.
• 
Some speculated that he suffered the spinal injury as a result of a ‘rough ride,' a punishing tactic where officers leave a defendant unbuckled and swerve the van to cause him to slam against the interior.
• 
Others thought he was beaten by officers who stopped the van several times on the way to the station.
• 
Matters were complicated further when it was rumored that the medical examiner's report concluded that Mr.  Gray had caused his own injury while slamming himself against the inside of the van out of apparent frustration over being arrested — a fact that was supported by another prisoner in the van who later partially recanted that alleged statement.
• 
But that doesn't mean that's what happened here.  It seems highly unlikely that someone would bang their head with sufficient force to sever their own spine.
• 
First, her office's investigation concluded the officers arrested Gray without probable cause, apparently based on his possession of a knife that was lawful to possess in Maryland.
• 
The officers in this case were apparently mistaken about the criminality of possessing the knife, a fact that would certainly expose them to civil liability for money damages but not typically to criminal prosecution.
• 
The more serious criminal charges stem from the officers' failure to buckle Mr.  Gray in to his seat while transporting him and ignoring his pleas for medical attention.
• 
So we are left to conclude that Mr.  Gray suffered this life-ending injury as a result of the negligence of the six officers charged.
• 
Don't get me wrong, if your loved one inadvertently dies because the police failed to buckle him in the transport van and failed to render aid, your loss is as huge as if it had been an intentional act.
• 
But those details matter when criminal charges are filed.  Every criminal charge is made up of elements that must be proven.
• 
Murder requires a criminal state of mind — whether it be premeditation, ill will, hatred, spite; it's what differentiates murder from manslaughter.
• 
Manslaughter, on the other hand, does not stem from intent to do harm but rather from a high level of negligence often called gross negligence or culpable negligence; a higher fault than simply failing to use reasonable care.
• 
What Ms.  Mosby presented was a strong argument for negligence, a civil wrong, or possibly the criminal charge of manslaughter if a jury agrees that failing to render aid when requested or failing to buckle Mr.  Gray in to his seat amounts to gross or culpable negligence.
• 
Further complicating her case is the fact that every day people who are arrested often claim to be injured, in pain or having difficulty breathing.  It is a common tactic used to get an officer to loosen the handcuffs or release their grip on the defendant so he can continue to fight.
• 
As a result, officers faced with such claims sometimes transport the defendant to the hospital wing of their local jail for checkup, but they don't usually stop on the road and wait for Fire Rescue to arrive.
• 
Under those circumstances is a jury going to feel that officers who don't take immediate action on those frequent claims of injury not only deserve to be sued but deserve to go to prison?
• 
In the end, a jury will decide what criminal charges, if any, are appropriate in this case.  Based on the facts laid out today, however, the prosecutor failed to lay out a basis for murder and even manslaughter may be a difficult sale.
      Analysis: In Baltimore unrest, liberalism on trial?  (Fox 05/01/2015)
• 
"This has been a slow-rolling crisis," President Obama said at the White House on Tuesday, ... "This is not new, and we shouldn't pretend that it's new."
• 
In that assessment of the origins of the Baltimore riots, the president is assuredly correct.
• 
Then, as now, one can observe in the commentary on Baltimore the emergence of two distinct camps: the Literalists and the Impressionists.
• 
... the Literalists embrace realism and regard both life and the larger universe as reducible to particulars: Objective facts can be established, any scene can be rendered in minute and unfailingly accurate detail.
• 
The Impressionists eschew the particular for generalization; they paint in broad strokes and speak not of specific cases but of sweeping historical dynamics and trends.
• 
"What it is, is young folks of the community showing decades old anger, frustration, for a system that's failed them.  I mean, it's bigger than Freddie Gray.  This is about the social economics of poor urban America."
• 
Both sets of onlookers of the moral decay on display this week, the Literalists and the Impressionists, are indeed recording the Baltimore Riots of 2015 with strong doses of accuracy.
• 
Where some see the commission of thousands of discrete criminal acts, many captured on video, others peer through an invisible veil to glimpse the effects ... of "a system that's failed."
• 
Of those governments, perhaps the most salient fact to the objective political scientist, tasked with anatomizing the failed system, would be that both governments have long effectively functioned as one-party systems.
• 
In systemic terms, one-party control is generally considered unhealthy and to many eyes the record of one-party government in Baltimore, measured in the usual societal metrics, demonstrates as much with crystalline clarity.
• 
"It's a group of politicians that believe that the answers to everything lies in ever bigger government and ever more government spending."
• 
"We understand the basics about how to get out of poverty.  Number one, for example, has to do with a good education....We're spending a huge amount of money on schools, not educating students, and you end up with a lot of kids in poverty."
• 
Almost 88 percent of Baltimore voted for President Obama in 2012.  And earlier this year, Obama indicated that he has in turn been impressed by the governance he has observed in Baltimore – at least since 2011, when Mayor Rawlings-Blake assumed office.  In remarks to the U.S.  Conference of Mayors in the East Room in January, Obama singled her out by name and said he was "proud" of her.
      Obama’s muddled message: How Baltimore riots are becoming partisan fodder  (Fox 04/30/2015)
• 
The conservative side tends to focus on the criminals who inflict destruction on minority communities, the liberal side on police misconduct and the underlying anger that leads to such explosions.  And in the end little progress is made, and the media, and the country, gradually move on.
• 
Yet the media have a responsibility to remind folks that whatever the history of tensions in some communities, most police officers are honest people who risk their lives on a daily basis.
• 
Obama said Freddie Gray's family understandably wants answers — implicitly suggesting that the responsible officers need to be held to account.
• 
Then he said that police departments and communities "have to do some soul searching" — although politicians are not generally in the business of advising on souls.
• 
"If you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty; they've got parents — often because of substance-abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves — can't do right by their kids; if it's more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead, than they go to college.  In communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there's no investment, and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community, and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks."
• 
... "we'll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets, and everybody will feign concern until it goes away, and then we go about our business as usual."
• 
The media, reflecting society, excel at outrage that quickly burns itself out.
• 
The media thrive on conflict, so there's often an assumption that different factions must be at odds.  If you attack the hoodlums and thugs who loot and burn, you're unsympathetic to the poverty that some insist on blaming.  If you attack police officers for killing unarmed black men, you're unsympathetic to the pressures that cops face in fighting crime.
• 
"No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation.  Baltimore's police department is, like Detroit's economy and Atlanta's schools, the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by black identity politics.  This is entirely a left-wing project, and a Democratic-party project.  When will the Left be held to account for the brutality in Baltimore — brutality for which it bears a measure of responsibility on both sides?"
      The long list of unsolved problems Obama will leave behind  (Fox 04/30/2015)
• 
President Obama declared he was determined to "make the most of every moment" left in office, saying he had been working on a "bucket list" that included executive action on immigration and climate regulation.  Aware that his critics believe he's often acted lawlessly, Mr.  Obama joked that the title for his list rhymes with "bucket."
• 
Regardless of what items Mr.  Obama checks off, he will leave to his successor a staggering array of domestic problems, some he ignored and many he made worse.
• 
After this president's six years in the White House the country is adrift, thanks to leadership that has been mistaken, insufficient or absent.
• 
Slow economic growth will be at the top of the list of problems.  The pattern of American history has been that the more severe the recession, the stronger the recovery.  Until now.
• 
The number of jobs also will be on that list.  It took from June 2009 to April 2014 — nearly five full years — to get back to having the same number of people working as when the recession began in December 2007.
      Gay marriage debate: Will we erase the boundaries that have guided humanity for generations?  (Fox 04/30/2015)
• 
Justice Anthony Kennedy asked the right question: whether it is appropriate for the Court to discard a definition of marriage that "has been with us for millennia," adding, "it's very difficult for the court to say, 'Oh, well, we know better.'"
• 
Should this court, or any court, re-define and force the states to accept a new definition of marriage that will not only affect same-sex couples, but open the door to other petitioners, for example, polygamists, who wish to "marry" more than one person?
• 
If human history, tradition, the Bible, the Constitution and biology are to be ignored or re-defined, on what basis do courts say "no" to anything?
• 
If "equality" and "fairness" are the new standard, one might as well have no standard at all because such emotional appeals could justify any relationship or form of behavior.
• 
The problem for traditionalists — especially those who believe scripture is the sole authority in such matters — is that in an increasingly secular society where younger people are less attuned to appeals about an Authority higher than themselves, how can they be persuaded that same-sex marriage is a bridge too far?
• 
After all, don't they "know" gay people, whom they regard as wonderful and kind?  That "standard" becomes subjective and when it reaches the level of personal feelings it becomes a shifting boundary that is drawn in invisible ink rather than set in stone.
• 
Justice Kennedy warned it was wrong for courts to "put a thumb on the scales and influence a state's decision as to shape its own marriage laws." And now this court could do precisely that.
• 
"But if you prevail here, there will be no more debate...  People feel very differently about something if they have a chance to vote on it than if it's imposed on them by the courts."
• 
"The opposite rule has been the law everywhere for thousands of years....  And, suddenly, you want nine people outside the ballot box to require states, that don't want to do it, to change what you've heard ... change what marriage is to include gay people."
• 
That is precisely what the advocates for same-sex marriage want, just as the pro-abortion movement wanted the same court 42 years ago, in "Roe v.  Wade," to discard state laws protecting the unborn.
• 
If people worship pleasure and material things, they are more likely to get leaders who give them what they want instead of what they need to hold society together.  If we erase the boundaries that have guided humanity for generations, we weaken our society.
• 
A verse from the Book of Judges seems to define America in 2015, as we sink deeper into a moral and cultural morass: "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit." (Judges 21:25)
      Two-State-Solution?  Try Baltimore  (INN 04/29/2015)
• 
Considering Baltimore, the Obama Administration ought to think twice before lecturing Israel about adopting a "two-state-solution."
• 
Is there a difference between America's Inner-city Unrest and Israel's Palestinian Arab Conflict?  Sure, plenty, but here is where they meet.
• 
In both cases inflexible grievances define a particular minority. 
• 
But only Israel finds itself associated with guilt.  Why, asks the world, can't Israel make peace with these people?  Not so easy when you're dealing with people nursing an irreconcilable grudge.
• 
Like America, Israel keeps trying, but it's tough going with generations who feel entitled to their resentments.
• 
President Obama weighed in today about "troubling interactions between police and African Americans."
• 
Nonsense, according to oft-decorated Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, himself African American.  Clarke won't have any of it and spells it out it plainly when he refers to Inner-city criminals as "sub-humans" operating from within a "sub-culture" all made possible from a culture of (failed) Liberalism.
• 
Clarke goes on: "Ninety percent of the homicide victims in the Baltimore area are Black as are 90 percent of the suspects." This trends nationwide.
• 
Obama says we need to change the "System" – and so where has he been all these six-plus years?
• 
This time Obama almost got it right when he mentioned "broken homes"... no guidance, no fathers.
• 
Too true.  We expect the police to do the job that ought to be done by parents and teachers.
• 
We demand that the police act as fathers where there are no fathers and teach discipline where there is no discipline.
• 
Society can't seem to get it done.  So, need help?  Call a cop.  But we are watching every move.
• 
Go in, we say, into where the streets and corners are bustling with knives, guns, drugs, robbery and murder; break up the street fights, settle the domestic disputes, curb the rioting, separate the gangs — but do it gently.  Be tender with the goons, or else.
• 
If you use force of any kind, listen to our cameras clicking and watch our righteous indignation kick up.  We will judge you!
• 
That ought to sound familiar enough for Americans and Israelis who face the multitudes feeding on bitterness and self-fulfilling discontent. 
      Baltimore proves need for ‘Broken Windows’ policing  (NY Post, 04/29/2015)
• 
The disgraceful orders for cops to disappear or stand by and watch as rioters, looters and arsonists had their way should never be repeated anywhere again.
• 
Nor should any mayor talk, as Baltimore's foolishly did, about giving "those who wished to destroy space to do that."
• 
Those painful lessons are especially relevant to New York now because de?Blasio pal Al Sharpton and wackos on the City Council are pushing the mayor to roll back "Broken Windows" policing.
• 
Baltimore should be his wake-up call.  It shows that handcuffing the cops ultimately leads to more violence and crime, not less, and ends up with the National Guard patrolling the streets like a war zone.
• 
Indeed, the anti-police agenda — the same agenda that carried de Blasio into City Hall — helped to create the atmosphere where criminals were free to roam across much of Baltimore for days.  The rioters' excuse, that they were protesting after a young black man died under unexplained circumstances in police custody, was just that — an excuse.  Almost as infuriating was that officials let them get away with it.
• 
The answer in Baltimore, and in all cities plagued by high crime, is not to retreat, even after a provocative incident.  It is more and better policing.
• 
What America is witnessing in Baltimore is what happens every day in neighborhoods that are under-policed.  Violence spirals out of control and doesn't stop until someone stops it.
      Hero of Baltimore riots: A mom  (Fox 04/28/2015)
• 
In the contest for Mother of the Year, we have a winner.  A woman caught on video, who has been identified as a mother disciplining her son, is the hero of the Baltimore riots.
• 
So what did Graham do that has everyone buzzing?  What could be that extraordinary?  It's called parenting, folks.  Good ol' fashioned, no-nonsense, no-excuses parenting.  This is what it looks like.  The sad part is that we see so little of it these days that we no longer recognize it.
• 
According to news reports, Graham was home watching television coverage of the riot Monday night when she saw a young man in a black hoodie, throwing rocks at police officers.  And although his face was covered, she recognized him.  It was her 16 year-old son.  She ran out the door and into the street, and she found the young man.  And that's where his troubles began.
• 
The video shows Graham furiously grabbing her son's sweater, yelling at him, and shoving him away from the crowd.  It also shows her slapping him in the head and ripping off his hoodie and mask, as if to say: "I'm your mother!  You're not going to hide from me!" The same young man who — just a few minutes earlier — hadn't been afraid to hurl rocks at police was frantically trying to get away from his mother.
• 
Where were the parents or guardians for the rest of these kids?  They need to step up, too.  No more tolerating lawlessness, or making excuses, or blaming misbehavior on societal ills.  Normally, this young man might be arrested, put in a cell, and hauled into court.  In this case, Hero Mom was the police, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner — all rolled into one.
• 
"Good for you, ma'am.  You're obviously a good mother, and you did the right thing.  Because of how these things can escalate, you might even have saved your son's life.  You also did a public service by reminding other parents that they have a duty to control their children.  Parenting is our most important job.  Thank you for doing it well."
• 
When people catch a whiff of anarchy, and think they can misbehave without consequences, all is lost.
• 
But consequences take different forms.  And sometimes, it's not the authorities that a young person needs to worry about.  Sometimes the most effective arbiter of justice is, shall we say, closer to home.
• 
What we typically hear from politicians is that parents have no power to control their children.  The popular narrative is that of helplessness, of the poor child who either grows up without parents or has parents who aren't up to task because they're overwhelmed by their own problems.
• 
President Obama made that mistake.  He talked about "parents (who) — often because of substance-abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves — can't do right by their kids."
• 
Mr.  President, you don't get it.  That kind of thinking is part of the problem.  If you want to help people, empower them.  You can't do that when all you do is emphasize how little power they have.
• 
Obviously, Graham had the power to strike fear into her son's heart and she used it.  Now, when their own child misbehaves, other parents need to do the same thing.
      Baltimore riots: Who will protect rights, lives and property of city's residents?  (Fox 04/28/2015)
• 
When Freddie Gray was arrested by Baltimore police two weeks ago for no lawful reason and then died of a broken neck and crushed windpipe sustained while in police custody, and no one was charged with a crime, the tone deaf leadership of Baltimore's government ought to have anticipated the public reaction.
• 
For generations the residents of inner-city Baltimore have grown dependent on the government.  The government of that once great city and of the State of Maryland have kept large numbers of folks in Baltimore in near poverty by offering dependence in return for votes — not personal or economic freedom, not even safety; just dependence.
• 
That lamentable state of affairs has been looking for a tipping point; and in the unexplained death of Freddie Gray it found one.  Many peacefully took to the streets to demand accountability by the government that promised it could take care of them.  How did Freddie die?  Who killed him?  Why has no one been charged in his death?  These are all legitimate questions that the government has been unwilling or unable to answer.
• 
At a deeper level, even those dependent upon the government need to know whether a culture exists in the Baltimore Police Department where any cops could think that whatever they did to Freddie, that resulted in his death, could be acceptable in American society.
• 
The Constitution protects free speech, and even gives it breathing room.  It protects hateful speech.  It protects provocative speech.
• 
But it does not protect threats to innocent life and destruction of property in the name of free speech.  Looting and rioting not only destroy dreams and property and ruin neighborhoods for generations, they impair the ability of those with legitimate concerns about the government to be heard.
• 
Baltimore needs leadership that serves the people by protecting their lives, their rights, their freedoms, and their property.  The people need to break their cycle of dependence.  The cops who kill and the rioters who destroy need to be identified and prosecuted.  And Freddie Gray needs to rest in peace.
      Baltimore riots and the price of protest  (Fox 04/28/2015)
• 
People have the right to protest, but too many politicians are afraid or unwilling to stop looting and rioting.  The dividing line between liberals and conservatives could hardly be starker.
• 
"I worked with the police and I instructed them to do everything that they could to ensure that the protestors could exercise their right to free speech.  It is a very delicate balancing act because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.  And we worked very hard to keep that balance and to put ourselves in the best position to de-escalate."
• 
Now it appears that police were ordered to "stand down" when riots broke out on Monday night.
• 
... mayor's "total capitulation to these rioters and looters ... appeasement has never worked anywhere in the United States as a strategy."
• 
"We don't ever think about using the equipment we have against our own citizens, certainly not because they were exercising their first amendment rights."
• 
Armored vehicles, body armor, and shields might look threatening, but they keep police safe.  In Baltimore, there is a "credible threat" that local gangs are targeting police for murder.
• 
The ultimate irony is that politicians who are so careful to give "those who wished to destroy space to do that" are making life exceeding difficult for the law-abiding poor who live in the areas being destroyed.  Many businesses looted and burned down aren't likely to re-open, and the ones that survive will face dramatically higher insurance premiums.  The result is fewer jobs and higher prices.
• 
"After all the cameras are gone, we still have to live here." The costs of slowly responding to rioters are something that many poor blacks in Baltimore will be living with for years to come. 
      Supreme Court justices appear divided in historic gay marriage arguments  (Fox 04/28/2015)
• 
... marriage has been understood as one man and one woman for "millennia-plus time."
• 
"It's very difficult for the court to say 'We know better'."
• 
Chief Justice John Roberts said gay couples seeking to marry are not seeking to join the institution of marriage.
• 
"You're seeking to change what the institution is."
• 
Justice Antonin Scalia said the issue is not whether there should be same-sex marriage "but who should decide the point." He expressed concern about the court imposing a requirement on the states that "is unpalatable to many for religious reasons."
• 
"This case is not about the best marriage definition.  It is about the fundamental question regarding how our democracy resolves such debates about social policy: Who decides, the people of each state or the federal judiciary?"
• 
Only 11 states have granted marriage rights to same-sex couples through the ballot or the legislature.  Court rulings are responsible for all the others.
      Baltimore mayor's 'balancing act' gave protestors permission to turn violent  (Fox 04/27/2015)
• 
"I wanted to give space to those who wished to destroy."
• 
"I made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech.  It's a very delicate balancing act."
• 
The resulting violence escalated as flyers were distributed describing how the city was going to have a "purge" Monday styled after the movie of the same name where all laws were suspended for one night.
• 
On Monday alone, seven police officers were injured with one reportedly "unresponsive." Looting is occurred in broad daylight with cars being torched and bottles, rocks and other large objects being hurled at officers at close range.
• 
... police standing passively by while a family trying to drive through the streets by Camden Yards found their car surrounded, windows smashed, passenger door pried open with the female passenger screaming in terror as the police observed.
• 
The thin veneer of safety that is required for outsiders to venture into a place as a tourist was shredded by Mayor Rawlings-Blake's pronouncement that her citizens lives and property were not worth protecting from a violent mob.
• 
What's perhaps even worse is that the mayor's "giving space to those who wished to destroy" legitimized the actions of the rioters and encouraged an escalation effectively telling rioter and police officer alike that the city does not have either law enforcement's or the law-abiding citizen's backs as the confrontation continues to grow. 
• 
When the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect the people and property of a community know that their elected boss believes that the lawbreakers are justified in creating mayhem, it destroys the resolve to provide that security.
• 
Tourist destinations that just may be tainted for the foreseeable future with the devastating reputation of being unsafe.
• 
And all because a mayor provided a not so subtle OK to the street criminals to destroy not only the city's buildings, but its good name and allowed them to rip at the fabric of civilization and the illusion of security it provides.
      Another Jewish Charm Offensive Won't Fix What Obama Has Broken  (JWR 04/27/2015)
• 
Its only purpose is to disarm Jewish groups and to persuade them to stay quiet during the impending debate about the Iran nuclear deal while still threatening Israel with diplomatic isolation over the Middle East peace process.
• 
As with the reelection year charm offensive, the administration is doing little to mend fences with an Israeli government that it has slandered and undermined.
• 
What bothers him is the prospect that a critical mass of American Jews will be sufficiently fed up with the president's threats toward Israel and insufficiently sold on the virtues of the Iran deal that they will exert pressure on wavering Democrats to vote against the agreement if it is actually signed and then comes up for a vote sometime this summer.
• 
The president entered office convinced that the U.S.  must distance itself from Israel and engage Iran and after years of effort, he finally seems to have accomplished both objectives.  To that end, the president has consistently sought to pressure Israel to make concessions and blamed the Jewish state when these efforts failed, as they always have, to entice the Palestinians to make peace.
• 
Even more ominously, the White House has embraced a new bizarrely Iran-centric policy in the Middle East that has alienated both Israel and moderate Arab nations while negotiating an agreement that, at the very least, establishes Tehran as a threshold nuclear power and gives it two paths to a bomb, one by cheating and the other by waiting until the deal expire
• 
All he needs is to neutralize the mainstream groups that could make a lot of trouble for him if they decided to go all out to try and defeat an Iran deal that poses a potential mortal threat to the security of the West, regional security, as well as Israel's existence.
      Keep America safe, plug European security gaps that allow ISIS and Al Qaeda supporters to travel...  (Fox 04/21/2015)
• 
But despite these arrests, we are nowhere close to shutting down the jihadi superhighway that has allowed thousands of young people to shuttle between the West and the world's deadliest terrorist sanctuary.
• 
Over the course of just two months last spring, the suspect managed to book a one-way ticket to Greece, slip across the Turkish border into Syria, train with an Al Qaeda-linked group, and return to our country after being dispatched to conduct an attack.  Despite expressing support for ISIS and other extremists on social media, it doesn't appear he was stopped in either direction.
• 
More worrisome, intelligence officials have publicly estimated that at least another 40 Americans have returned to the United States after having joined extremists in Syria, and thousands of Europeans who are still over there fighting have visa-free access to our country.
• 
It's disturbingly easy for these violent fanatics to get to and from the conflict zone undetected, and security gaps in Europe are a big part of the problem.
• 
Extremists are exploiting European security gaps to return from the conflict zone, too.  Tens of thousands of illegal aliens from Syria are flowing into Southern Europe by boat each month, and already ISIS claims to have used these routes to sneak operatives into the West.
• 
Sadly, authorities in places like Italy are often turning a blind eye, hoping the immigrants will flee into the heart of the continent and become another country's problem.
• 
But the Achilles Heel is Europe's weak terrorist watchlist capability.  EU law forbids blanket screening of citizens, meaning that EU nationals are rarely checked against terrorist watchlists when they travel — even though thousands of them have fought alongside extremists in Syria.
• 
Compare this to America, where a U.S.  citizen flying home is checked run against the watchlist at multiple stages.
• 
This glaring weakness is allowing potential terrorists to fall through the cracks, and although officials are talking about solutions, Europe's slow bureaucracy may take months — even years — to fully implement one.  How many more extremists will travel undetected through Europe in the meantime?
• 
And how many of them will ultimately seek to come to America?
• 
Most concerning are the EU citizens who have joined violent extremist groups and whose passports can get them into the United States with relative ease.  If European authorities cannot identify these fighters to begin with or detect them when they travel, they are more likely to reach our shores unnoticed, too.
• 
To protect America, we must push our border security outward.  That means working with our foreign partners in Europe and beyond to urgently fix their security deficiencies — before more extremists leave the battlefield and set their sights on our city streets.
      An open letter from the mother of the first Navy Seal killed in Iraq to General Martin Dempsey  (Fox 04/20/2015)
• 
"The city itself is not symbolic in any way"?  Oh, really?  Are you willing to meet with me and with the families who have lost a son, daughter, husband, wife, father, mother, aunt, uncle, grandson, or teammate?
• 
My son Marc Lee was the first Navy SEAL who sacrificed his life in Ramadi Iraq Aug 2, 2006.  His blood is still in that soil and forever will be.
• 
Remember that was when so many of our loved ones were taken from us.  You said that "it's not been declared part of the caliphate on one hand or central to the future of Iraq." My son and many others gave their future in Ramadi.
• 
What about the troops who sacrificed their limbs and whose lives will never be the same.  Our brave warriors who left a piece of themselves in Ramadi.  What about the troops who struggle with PTS/TBI who watched their teammates breath their last or carried their wounded bodies to be medevac'd out of Ramadi.
• 
I've traveled to Ramadi and visited Camp Marc Lee in 2007.  I brought back soil from that city where Marc breathed his last.
• 
I interviewed Iraqi General Anwer in 2010 when I returned.  I asked him "If you could say one thing to the American people what would you tell them?  He paused and with deep emotion said "We will tell our children, our grandchildren, for generations to come we will tell them what Americans have done.  There is American blood poured out on our soil."
• 
It seems the Iraqis understand the importance more than you do sir.
• 
You sir owe an apology to the families whose loved ones blood was shed in Ramadi.  Ramadi matters to us and is very symbolic to us.
• 
You need to apologize to our troops whose bodies were blown to pieces from IEDs and bullet holes leaving parts and pieces behind, Ramadi matters to them.
• 
You need to apologize to our troops who endured the extreme temperatures and battled the terrorists in some of the worst battlefields in Iraq, Ramadi matters to them.  They carry vivid memories of the battles and the teammates whose future is gone, Ramadi matters to them.
• 
You and this administration have minimized that Ramadi could fall, now you are minimizing that it is falling, but you Sir WILL NOT minimize the sacrifice my son Marc Lee made or any of our brave warriors!
      Forget Cuba or health care reform, Obama's real legacy is Middle East nukes  (Fox 04/17/2015)
• 
"You asked about an Obama doctrine.  The doctrine is: We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities."
• 
It was vintage Obama – vague, but important sounding.  It could mean whatever you wanted it to mean.  Anyone could read into it what he wanted.  It would mean all things to all people.
• 
The Obama administration has spent six years in search of a doctrine worthy of the Chosen One.
• 
At first it was "Leading from Behind." But that didn't work, because rather than take our cue, others rushed to fill the void created by our withdrawal from the front of the pack.
• 
Then it was "don't do stupid stuff." But the administration kept doing stupid stuff, like the premature withdrawal from Iraq that gave birth to ISIS, or the Libyan war that left the country in jihadi chaos, or the decision to blame the Benghazi terrorist attacks on an obscure YouTube video.
• 
More recently, the Obama administration claimed its doctrine was "strategic patience" and made references to the great arc of history bending in our direction.  But that's like saying – even though the world seems to be "exploding all over," to quote former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel – don't worry, everything will turn out well in the end.  It's basing America's national security on "fingers crossed."
• 
The president talks in every speech about the "global community" and the "rules-based international community." He puts his faith in the creation of new entities based on common interests and shared values to deal with everything from governing the Internet to global warming. 
• 
Sadly, we have seen that the alternative to American leadership isn't world peace, but rising regional hegemonies – or even worse, chaos.  China, Russia, Iran and the Islamic State don't want to play by our rules.  They want to kick over the global chessboard and establish their own rules.
• 
President Obama is about to get his nuclear deal with Iran, which he believes will be the crowning achievement of his historic, transformational presidency.  Yet wise and respected diplomats like former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, who are no strangers to historic treaties, have warned that the agreement will not do what he has promised.
• 
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are in search of greatness.  The president will sign an agreement with Iran on behalf of the United States but without the concurrence of its elected representatives.
• 
In effect, that allows Iran to get nuclear weapons and ignites a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
• 
... he has just bet America's security, and the world's, on an agreement that can neither be adequately verified nor successfully enforced with a handful of messianic mullahs who are convinced they've been chosen to rule the world.
• 
President Obama will be known as the man who allowed nuclear weapons into the Middle East in exchange for one vainglorious moment.
• 
If, in a few years, the Middle East is awash in nuclear materials and weapons of mass destruction, the likelihood they will be used will go up exponentially – whether they're used intentionally, accidentally or even inadvertently.  If so, the blame will fall squarely on Obama's shoulders.  Chamberlain's capitulation and folly will look minor compared to his.
      Obama's Wanton Lawlessness Should Disturb All Americans  (JWR 04/17/2015)
• 
We live in a constitutional republic in which our elected officials are bound by the constraints of the Constitution, which means they don't have a license to do whatever they please, even if they think it would be best for the country.
• 
How will they act outside the scope of their constitutional authority to take action they claim will be beneficial?  It doesn't matter if their planned actions will be beneficial.  Illegal actions are not permitted, even if for ostensibly benign purposes, lest we descend into tyranny and lose our liberties.
• 
They believe — and daily demonstrate, in general terms — that if a policy is desirable, they will find a way to implement it, irrespective of whether they have the constitutional authority to do so.  It's such an antiquated document, after all.
• 
This is such a dangerous mindset and one that will inevitably lead to the end of the republic as we know it if we don't get control of it.
• 
Under no other president ... we might find the executive branch attempting to enter into an agreement with a foreign country involving something as monumentally important as nuclear weapons without acknowledging the obvious truth of its being a treaty and requiring the Senate's approval.
• 
... it is deplorable that we would ever get to the point that the Senate needs to be voting on a matter validating its own unambiguous authority and duty under the Constitution.  This is disgraceful.
• 
People think they know the difference between a democracy and a republic.  But some of them don't appear to understand that for our republic to work, the rule of law has to be honored.  This means that we are a nation of laws, not men, such that all people, even our president and all other elected officials, are bound by the law.
• 
Our constitutional republic has a major democratic element: The people elect their representatives, and they are also the ones with the vested interest in ensuring that these representatives act within the law.
• 
Obama, with his faux compassion and tolerance, has, with the sinister stroke of his poison pen, not only granted legal status to millions of immigrants in wanton violation of the Constitution but also bestowed major substantive benefits on them that affect the rest of us.
• 
The people, through their elected representatives, are supposed to have a say in these matters, and they've already spoken legislatively against Obama's action, which, along with so many of his other ones, shows he has no respect for the rights of the people and that he has cynical contempt for the Constitution.
• 
If you think I'm being too harsh, then I think you are being too complacent.  This is our nation unraveling before our eyes.  When will more people speak up against these abuses?  When will Obama's party, including its rank and file, demand law and order from the highest elected official in the land?
      Saving Democracy from Itself  (INN 04/17/2015)
• 
Every democracy must defend itself against those who exploit its liberties to destroy it from within.  The West must realize that naively open societies are the meals of plotting wolves, and totalitarian ideologies will exploit every freedom and benefit of the doubt that they are given.
• 
Ironically, the leader of Egypt, a country that is about 90% Muslim, has shown far more courage and honesty in confronting the Islamist threat than Obama has – perhaps because Egypt's very survival depends on strategic clarity.  But distance from the epicenter of the Islamist threat (in the Middle East) doesn't guarantee security from it, as Europe's experience teaches.
• 
North Americans who cherish their freedoms must oppose the dangerous trend on campuses today: university administrations that tolerate intolerance while hate groups try to silence those who defend the only democracy in the Middle East.
• 
When students openly welcome Hamas and sharia law on campus and university administrators respond to encroaching Islamist influences with naivete or indifference, the stage is set for far more aggressive and potentially violent forms of Islamist activism.
• 
If universities are increasingly dominated by an Islamist agenda, and they are where our democracy's future is trained, what sort of future awaits us?
      Why the 'death tax' deserves to die  (Fox 04/16/2015)
• 
The money in a person's estate has already been taxed over the lifetime that it was earned.
• 
It would be much more efficient to cap the charitable deduction at say $50,000 a year and then eliminate the estate tax altogether.
• 
Predictably, Barack Obama has threatened to veto any estate tax repeal.  He says the money is better used for jobs and worker training programs.  Really?  Two-thirds of jobs come from small and family-owned businesses. 
• 
Wouldn't the smart way to create jobs be to make sure that the next generation can grow these enterprises rather than sell them off at auction to pay this economically destructive and fiscally inconsequential tax?
      Harry Reid is the poster child for why our Constitution must be changed  (Fox 04/15/2015)
• 
At the height of the heated campaign for president in August of 2012, then-Majority Leader Harry Reid stood on the floor of the U.S.  Senate and smeared Mitt Romney as a millionaire tax dodger.  Reid claimed the Republican nominee paid no taxes for ten years.
• 
He appeared to invent the accusation out of thin air in a brazen ploy to turn votes away from Romney in favor of Obama.
• 
When pressed by reporters, Reid offered up a classic in prevarications, sputtering something about how he heard it from someone.  Who exactly?  He refused to say.  How convenient.
• 
Indeed, he continued to brag about his canard ... saying the fabrication was justified because "Romney didn't win, did he?"
• 
In other words, in Reid's world it is perfectly acceptable to conjure a complete fiction if you can throw an election and subvert the democratic process.
• 
The salient point is this: he was emboldened by a law which grants him unfettered freedom to lie and defame.
• 
And thus, Harry Reid is the reason why senators and representatives should no longer be given absolute immunity for the reckless and venomous words they spew on the floor of Congress.
• 
The Founding Fathers wanted lawmakers to engage in spirited debate, but feared that Senators and Congressmen might hurl invectives at one other.  Ensuing defamation lawsuits might chill an otherwise vigorous debate.  Thus, absolute immunity was granted.
• 
What the Framers did not anticipate, but should have, is that an unscrupulous lawmaker might use his position on the floor of the chamber to defame someone who is not a member of Congress.
• 
"No man ought to have the right to defame others under the colour of a performance of the duties of his office.  Every citizen has as good a right to be protected by the laws from malignant scandal, and false charges, and defamatory imputations, as a member of congress has to utter them in his seat."
• 
The year was 1833.  Justice Story was prescient.  He knew it was only a matter of time before scoundrels would emerge to abuse their Constitutional privilege and breach the trust of their high office.
      The New Inquisition  (JWR 04/14/2015)
• 
How long will this country remain free?  Probably only as long as the American people value their freedom enough to defend it.  But how many people today can stop looking at their electronic devices long enough to even think about such things?
• 
Meanwhile, attempts to shut down people whose free speech interferes with other people's political agendas go on, with remarkably little notice, much less outrage.
• 
"Scientists must disclose their sources of financial support to continue to enjoy societal trust and the respect of fellow scientists."
• 
The idea that you can tell whether a scientist — or anybody else — is "objective" by who is financing that scientist's research is nonsense.  There is money available on many sides of many issues, so no matter what the researcher concludes, there will usually be somebody to financially support those conclusions.
• 
Science is not about "consensus" but facts.  Not only were some physicists not initially convinced by Einstein's theory of relativity, Einstein himself said that it should not be accepted until empirical evidence could test it.
• 
Politicians determined to get their own way by whatever means necessary may have no grand design to destroy freedom, but what they are doing can amount to totalitarianism on the installment plan.
      Avoiding seeing things as they really are  (JWR 04/13/2015)
• 
I was particularly interested in what happened in Indiana last week.  Of all the fascinating developments in this Land of the Free (as long as you think the right things) and Home of the Brave (as long as you have the media and public opinion on your side), that was the one that made me realize just how inoculated against common sense we've become.
• 
"Tolerance is a word without meaning if it doesn't work both ways..."
      America's Decay Is Speeding Up  (JWR 04/07/2015)
• 
With few exceptions, every aspect of American life is in decline.
• 
The Decline of the Family: Nearly half (48 percent) of American children are born to a mother who is not married.  Forty-three percent of American children live without a father in the home. 
• 
The Decline of Education: Compared to nearly all of American history, the average American school teaches much less about important subjects such as American history, English grammar, literature, music and art.  Instead, schools are teaching much more about "social justice," environmentalism and sex.
• 
Most universities have become secular seminaries for the dissemination of Leftism.  Moreover, aside from indoctrination, students usually learn little.
• 
To the extent that American history is taught, beginning in high school and often earlier, American history is presented as the history of an immoral nation characterized by slavery, racism, colonialism, imperialism, economic exploitation, and militarism — not of a country that, more than any other, has been the beacon of freedom to mankind, and the country that has spent more treasure and spilled more blood to liberate other peoples than any other nation.
• 
The End of Male and Female: Whatever one's position on same-sex marriage, one must acknowledge that at the core of the argument for this redefinition of marriage is that gender doesn't matter.
• 
The End of Right and Wrong: At least two generations of American young people have been taught that moral categories are nothing more than personal (or societal) preferences.
• 
The End of Religion: There are no moral truths because there is no longer a religious basis for morality.
• 
Instead of being guided by a code higher than themselves, Americans are taught to rely on their feelings to determine how to behave. 
• 
The End of Beauty: Just as morality is subjective; so are beauty and excellence.  There is no good or bad art or literature.
• 
If you acknowledge that American society is in decay, it is your obligation to fight to undo it.
• 
If you can't acknowledge that American society is in decay, you are providing proof that it is.
      Colorado double standard: Bakers should not be forced to make anti-gay cakes  (Fox 04/07/2015)
• 
Bill Jack wants to make one thing perfectly clear: Bakers should not be forced to make a cake that would violate their conscience or freedom of expression.
• 
Jack, of Castle Rock, Colo., is making national headlines over an experiment he conducted in the wake of attacks on Christian business owners who refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages.
• 
So if Christian bakers who oppose gay marriage are compelled under law to violate their beliefs – what about bakers who support gay marriage?  Would they be compelled to make an anti-gay marriage cake?
• 
Jack, who is a devout Christian, asked three bakeries to produce two cakes – each shaped like an open Bible.
• 
On one side of one cake he requested the words, "God hates sin – Psalm 45:7." On the other side he wanted the words, "Homosexuality is a detestable sin – Leviticus 18:22."
• 
On the second cake he asked them to write another Bible verse: "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us – Romans 5:8" along with the words "God loves sinners."
• 
And finally, Jack wanted the bakers to create an image – two grooms holding hands, with a red "X" over them – the universal symbol for "not allowed."
• 
Now if you read the national news accounts of Jack's experiment – you would've read that he wanted gay slurs written on the cakes.  But that wasn't true.
• 
Mark Silverstein, the legal director for Colorado's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, accused Jack of wanting obscenities written on the cakes.
• 
Does the ACLU consider the Bible to be obscene?
• 
As you probably guessed, the bakeries rejected Jack's request for what some would call "anti-gay" cakes.
• 
So Jack filed a discrimination complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission – just as the gay couple did in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
• 
Using the commission's logic – if a Christian baker is forced to violate his beliefs, shouldn't all bakers be forced to violate theirs, too?
• 
Absolutely not, says the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
• 
It ruled that Azucar did not discriminate against Jack based on his creed.  It argued that the bakery refused to make the cakes because of the "derogatory language and imagery."
• 
"It's unequal treatment before the law.  The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is being used to coerce businesses to participate in events that violate their consciences."
• 
"Christians need to understand that this is the state of Christianity in the United States," he said.  "We are now second-class citizens.  Our free speech is being censored."
• 
To be clear, Jack believes the bakeries had the right to deny him service.  His point was to draw attention to the hypocrisy.
• 
"I stand for liberty for all, not liberty for some.  If we don't have liberty for all, then we have liberty for none."
      The Right to Mind Your Own Business  (JWR 04/06/2015)
• 
Indiana passed a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the righteous indignation industry is in overdrive.  Whatever happened to "live and let live"?  The ability to go about your business and let others attend to theirs?
• 
The unspoken truth here is that Americans interact every day — including doing business — with people with whom we may not only disagree but whose lifestyles, behaviors or choices we may find personally offensive.
• 
Most of those interactions do not force us "condone" or "participate" in the behavior itself, or express any opinion about it.
• 
There is a point, however, at which one is being asked to condone or participate in behavior or choices with which one profoundly disagrees.  And our laws are determinedly pushing in that direction.
• 
We have moved from calls for the elimination of laws that forbid private conduct to calls for laws that mandate public expressions of approval of private conduct. 
• 
The evident motivation behind these laws is not the advancement of liberty, per se, but the elimination of widely held — often (though not exclusively) religiously based — views about sexual behavior.
• 
The HHS regulations adopted as part of the Affordable Care Act now require that my business provide your contraceptives.  And pay for them.  And if I object, the debate is no longer whether you have lawful access to them (you do), but how bigoted and backward I am for feeling the way I do about it.
• 
The same can be said of abortion.  Legal since 1973, activists are constantly pushing for public funding of abortion (and will certainly push for it under Obamacare).  And yet, notwithstanding the legality of abortion for over four decades, ever larger numbers of Americans are opposed to abortion and do not wish to pay for it.
• 
But the legality of gay unions does not create a legal obligation to participate in those events for others who do not share the same views about the morality of a gay relationship.
• 
Selling commoditized products is one thing.  But professional services and artisanal businesses such as baking and floral arrangements are expressions of personal skill and creativity.  Owners of these enterprises often feel that the work they do for a client is an extension of themselves.
• 
It stands to reason, therefore, that they might not wish to have their work associated with causes with which they disagree. 
• 
Even then, most businesses of any type will prefer not to choose between customers on that basis.  But some will.  And they ought to be left alone.  Those who wish to patronize them may do so.
• 
Do what you like, but do not insist that everyone else behave as if they approve of your infidelity, your philandering, your abortions or whatever other choices you have personally made.
• 
Would that we could all just mind our own business
      Age of intolerance: What the Indiana pizza attacks tell us about free speech  (Fox 04/06/2015)
• 
Now I don't think it's fair to blame this on "the left." It's not that liberal commentators or leading activists were mounting a crusade against the pizzeria, it's these morons who spew venom, often anonymously, with nasty tweets, nasty emails, and now nasty restaurant "reviews."
• 
... clashes in Indiana and Arkansas were largely about the politics of symbolism.  Whether you're more concerned about religious liberty or about gay rights, how many bakers and florists could have been affected by the Indiana law as originally signed, before a media and business backlash prompted Pence to accept gay rights language in the revised measure?
• 
But the larger problem is that too many on the left want to silence free speech or punish those whose beliefs are deemed unacceptable.  You see this every time a campus protest forces a conservative speaker to cancel an appearance — and that should depress honest liberals who once fervently fought for free speech.
• 
Remember last year, when pressure from gay activists and boycott threats forced Brendan Eich to resign as CEO of the browser company Mozilla?  His sin was to make a donation to the 2008 Prop 8 campaign in California, which succeeded at the time in banning gay marriage.
• 
"Comparing RFRA laws to Jim Crow laws turns all of this on its head.  Jim Crow laws forced tolerant businesses to be intolerant of blacks.  No one, anywhere, is suggesting that people who want to do business with same-sex couples should be barred from doing so.  The argument is whether the government should force a few ardent Christians (or Jews or Muslims) to participate in a ceremony that violates their faith."
• 
I get that passions are running high.  But if Republicans and Democrats were able to find a compromise in Indianapolis, perhaps we could all lower the temperature a bit — and that includes those who think it's great sport to harass a small pizza shop owner.
      Democrats Surrender To Iran  (INN 04/05/2015)
• 
The "framework" to delay (not to stop) Iran's nuclear program is a deal that renders us all sitting ducks to the whims of the ayatollahs.  For this we can thank the Democrats who spent months working as lawyers for the other side.
• 
Iran gets to keep its nuclear arsenal intact.  President Obama came out to say, "It's a good deal." For them, yes.
• 
So yes, what did you expect when the safety and security of the entire world is in the hands of John Kerry and his Party?
• 
This is the same John Kerry who backstabbed and double-crossed his fellow Vietnam buddies.  These are the same delegates who jeered Israel at the Democratic National Convention.  This is the Party that gave us Harry Reid of Nevada who ran the Senate as his own private club...
• 
Reid falsely accused presidential candidate Romney of failure to pay taxes and when asked, by CNN, if he regretted the fabrication, he smirked.
• 
"He lost, didn't he?" said the man who used to wield so much power.
• 
This is the same Party that gave us Ted Kennedy, the "Lion of the Senate" for some 50 years even after he drove a woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, to her death into the waters of Chappaquiddick Island.  The "scoundrel factor" was no bother to Massachusetts's voters.
• 
... when a top General from Iran declared that destroying Israel was non-negotiable, John Kerry was deaf to the taunt from one sovereign nation to another.  He continued negotiating.
• 
Nothing about it was unusual or outrageous and Obama addressed Iran with "respect" – even with chants of "Death to America" ringing in our ears.
      Indiana and the culture wars  (Fox 04/02/2015)
• 
If I visit a kosher restaurant and order a pork chop, am I being discriminated against when the waiter says they don't serve pork?
• 
If an establishment requires that men wear jackets and women dress in what that establishment defines as an "appropriate way," does that constitute discrimination?
• 
When I visit the Vatican, the Swiss Guards won't let me in if I'm wearing shorts.  They offer a cover-up.  It is the same for women, if they bare too much flesh.  Is that discrimination?
• 
What about the sign "no shoes, no shirt, no service"?  Is that bigotry against the shoeless and shirtless?  Should the government force any of these entities to violate their standards?
• 
The state legislature passed and Gov.  Mike Pence signed a law that says the government cannot force a business or individual to violate tenets of their religious faith, unless the government has a compelling interest in doing so.
• 
But facts don't matter when the media and gay activists believe they can find an issue that stirs controversy (the media) and advances their cause (the activists).
• 
The uproar about Indiana's law is political theater.  It is also a trap set by the Left, which Republicans risk falling into.
• 
In this theater of the absurd, any defense becomes indefensible.  The die has been cast; the scarlet letter attached.
• 
The debate has become far more visceral, vitriolic and ugly than intellectual, thanks to the secular progressives who have made it that way.
• 
"Indiana isn't targeting gays.  Liberals are targeting religion."
• 
One potential good has emerged from this, however.  Miley Cyrus has announced she won't be bringing her "twerking" self to Indiana, which is bound to have a positive effect on the state's moral climate.
      On Obama: There are Only Five Hours Left to the Fast  (INN 03/27/2015)
• 
He has wreaked more damage on America and on the world, often through incompetent interventionist bad policies and equally often through incredibly incompetent inaction, than has any American President before him.
• 
He never was qualified to get the job, and — remarkably — he somehow never grew while in the job.
• 
He rose in American politics without any executive experience, lacked world affairs experience, and had served only very briefly in the United States Senate, doing limited legislative work and leveraging his very brief time there to focus primarily on running for President.
• 
So everyone wanted a change, and he slipped in, with the famous proclamation that this would be the day that the oceans stopped rising and the earth healed.
• 
Suddenly we had a narcissistic incompetent, a vindictive and petty megalomaniac who surrounded himself at one famous public speech with Greek or Roman columns on either side, like an emperor addressing his empire.
• 
And the world's liberals and bleeding hearts lapped it up.  Historians will scratch their heads a century from now as they try determining how Obama got awarded the Nobel Peace Prize practically on the day he was elected.
• 
We all have him figured out now.  The voters know him well enough to surround him on both sides with both a Republican Senate and a Republican House of Representaives, augmented with an overwhelming array of Republican governors.
      Do all black lives really matter to liberals and the media?  (Fox 03/27/2015)
• 
"Hands Up, Don't Shoot" mantra that had been used since August was based on a lie.  The lie was widely embraced by the media, public officials, and some with celebrity status.
• 
The lie of ‘hands up, don't shoot' concealed deeper truths, truths all too common in America – that Michael Brown was yet another young black male engaged in serious crime and who invited a deadly encounter with a police officer who was merely doing his job.
• 
"Black lives matter," found its way into the protesters' messaging.  Their assertion begins with an assumption, of course, that law enforcement, or worse, the public at large, think they don't.
• 
Grouping only what serves their narrative, the protesters with a gleaming new chant, once again fail to recognize the limitations of their cause – that far more black lives are lost at the hands of other blacks than are lost in the narrow battle they protest so loudly against.
• 
Why is there simply no outcry, no media flood, no presidential commission, and no outcry for the more than 7,000 black men, women, and children murdered every year – whose lives, indeed, matter?
      The Army did the right thing: Bowe Bergdahl deserves desertion, misbehavior charges  (Fox 03/25/2015)
• 
The announcement comes as one of the five key Taliban released nearly a year ago in exchange for Bergdahl is reportedly engaged in militant activities.  Two other Taliban are under grave suspicion.
• 
The next step is akin to a grand jury proceeding, and a decision could still be made that would let Bergdahl walk free.
• 
It was clear from the outset that any charges against Bergdahl would be potentially embarrassing to the Obama White House.  That includes the president, who publicly embraced Bergdahl's parents in the Rose Garden after telling the world of his release and National Security Adviser Susan Rice who claimed on various Sunday talk shows that Bergdahl served his country with "honor and distinction."
• 
Against the backdrop of the White House, the Army had a responsibility to its own — to the thousands of soldiers who actually did serve with honor and distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan, none of whom walked off their combat outpost into the waiting arms of the enemy.
• 
Bergdahl's case will likely be defended not just his capable and experienced attorney but by any number of pro-Obama, pro-administration legal strategists and behind-the-scenes advisers who want him to be found not guilty on all counts.
• 
Not guilty findings would validate the gushing White House praise of his release and certify to the American public that the so-called Taliban Five were worth the trade.
• 
Bergdahl, a soldier who reportedly expressed his disillusionment with the Army and his country and acted on it by leaving his post and possibly collaborating with the enemy, will now be on center stage with the whole world watching.
• 
Some will watch with detached curiosity, but the men and woman who have served or are still serving our country in uniform, will watch with utter disgust.
• 
They will know they are looking at a man who betrayed every core principal that our servicemen and women hold dear — loyalty to our country and to those with whom you are serving.
      It Worked for Netanyahu, It Can Work for the GOP  (INN 03/24/2015)
• 
...the big loser in Israel's national elections was not the Israeli Labor party nor the other smaller opposition parties all running on an "anyone but Netanyahu ticket", but Barack Obama who did everything in his power to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu and lost big league.
• 
Obama, a big stickler for protocol when Netanyahu spoke to both houses of Congress has no qualms about intervening in Israel's national elections and sending veiled threats that should Netanyahu be re-elected, Israel will become isolated and that America will re-evaluate her commitment to Israel's security and international standing.
• 
The Obama administration's State Department allegedly gave taxpayer-funded grants to an American nonprofit seeking to defeat Netanyahu in the recent election, triggering a probe by a U.S.  Senate committee.
• 
For many of us, this election is good news not only because Netanyahu won and Obama lost, but also due to the ramifications for the American Presidential elections in 2016.
• 
Israel has done more than her share in the name of peace and ... the problem has been and will always be that the Palestinian Arabs are unwilling to accept the right of Israel to exist.
• 
The possibility that Obama will agree to allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear capability means endangering not only Israel and her neighbors, not only Europe, but all of the Eastern coast of the American continent.
• 
The American "silent majority" can live with being told what to eat at lunchtime, and can even reluctantly buy medical insurance through the Obamacare exchange, but they will not stand for Obama's inability to take responsibility for the consequences of his decisions.
• 
The American "silent majority" has begun to reject the arrogance and condescension of the Obama Presidency and his political allies, the 2014 midterm elections are proof of the true transformation that has occurred in America.
• 
That very same "silent majority" in America is very likely to stand up again in 2016 for similar reasons, as they did in 2014 at the midterm elections.
      Obama’s revenge against Israel  (Fox 03/19/2015)
• 
President Obama is angry with Israeli voters for re-electing Benjamin Netanyahu, and he's willing to risk the lives and security of Israeli citizens to show it.
• 
The State Department ... is threatening to allow the Security Council to compel Israel to enter forced negotiations with Hamas-controlled Palestine.
• 
This action would be reckless — and shameful.
• 
"Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model to be followed, the Koran its constitution, Jihad its way, and death for the sake of Allah its loftiest desire."
• 
"Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it."
• 
If the United States does not block this at the United Nations, the international community will support the aggressors in this conflict.
• 
This would force Israel to negotiate with people whose clear goal is their eradication and destruction.
      Hillary Clinton: What if former secretary of state will never respect our laws?  (Fox 03/19/2015)
• 
What if Hillary Clinton's emails were hacked by foreign agents when she was the secretary of state?
• 
What if this is the sore underbelly of an arrogant and lawless secretary of state who used her power to exempt herself from laws that govern executive branch employees and didn't care about national security?
• 
What if the law required Clinton to swear an oath at the time she left office that she had no federal records in her possession or control?
• 
What if she signed that oath knowing that nearly all of her records were in her possession and not the government's?
• 
What if the president has known since 2009 that Clinton has concealed government records from the government?
• 
What if Clinton is a lawyer who knows the law and knows when she is breaking it?
• 
What if Clinton turned that law on its head by keeping all of the government's records and having her own representatives review them?
• 
What if after that review she decided which records to return to the government and which ones to DESTROY?
• 
What if this amounted to the destruction of government property? 
• 
What if we are not talking about destroying meaningless scraps of paper, but rather 33,000 emails over the course of four years in office?
• 
What if she did this because she didn't want anyone in the government or the public to see her records?
• 
What if the real reason for her theft of records was not personal convenience, as she has claimed, but fear of exposure of her true thoughts and unguarded behavior?
• 
What if she feared she could not publicly account for her concealed behavior, and so she kept it from the government?
• 
What if all this lawlessness and secrecy was orchestrated by Clinton herself — a person devoid of a moral compass and disdainful of compliance with law and a habitual stranger to the truth?
• 
What if she is presently the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president?
• 
What if the Democrats don't care?
      Obama-linked nonprofit filed for new IRS status after accusation of meddling in Israeli election  (Fox 03/17/2015)
• 
... Cruz expressed outrage over the mounting indications the Obama administration could be implicated in efforts to meddle in the Israeli election.
• 
"This is manifesting itself right now in President Obama's national field director helping run the campaign to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel in coordination with a nonprofit group that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the American taxpayer."
• 
"What does it say about the President of the United States when he's more concerned about undermining and attacking the prime minister of Israel than he is standing up to the mortal threat a nuclear Iran poses?"
• 
... the State Department awarded OneVoice the $350,000 in grant money in 2013...
• 
"No one is objecting to private American citizens participating in political activity.  At issue here is the possibility taxpayer funds in the form of the State Department grants were used for overtly political activity..."
      It's Not Just Iran You Can't Trust  (JWR 03/12/2015)
• 
The president who claimed, in an abrupt about-face in 2013, that he would request congressional authorization for air strikes on Syria because he believes "the people's representatives must be invested in what America does abroad" now proposes to conclude a treaty with America's most dangerous enemy and to sidestep the Senate's advice-and-consent role by playing word games.
• 
It isn't just that the Iranians cannot be trusted.  The president cannot be trusted.  After six years, the evidence of his duplicity is abundant.
• 
"The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.  ....  Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel."
• 
"And what I have said is, is that we will not countenance Iran getting a nuclear weapon.  My policy is not containment; my policy is to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon — because if they get a nuclear weapon that could trigger an arms race in the region ... it could potentially fall into the hands of terrorists."
• 
In fact, ... the president's true wish — for a detente with Iran including a deal paving the way to nuclear status — has long been evident, but became brazenly so after he was safely reelected.
• 
The 47 senators who signed that letter are not just afraid of a nuclear Iran.  They are afraid of our president.
      The Farcical Ferguson Report  (JWR 03/12/2015)
• 
The NBA consists of 76 percent black players.  But blacks are just 13 percent of the country.  Clearly, the league engages in racial discrimination against whites.  Silly, right?
• 
Well, this is exactly what the sleight-of-hand Department of Justice pulled off to find that the Ferguson Police Department engages in "implicit and explicit racial bias"!
• 
"Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and 20 times more likely to end up in prison."
      Mr.  Obama, Hillary Clinton turned the law on its head.  Don't you know that?  (Fox 03/12/2015)
• 
Failing to secure classified secrets in a government-approved facility or moving them to a non-secure facility outside the government's control is a misdemeanor, punishable by a hefty fine and a year in jai1.
• 
Mr.  President, are you not troubled that your secretary of state had a non-secure email account and used it for all of her work?
• 
Does it not trouble you, Mr.  President, that foreign intelligence services likely would have had a far easier time hacking into the emails of your secretary of state because of all this?
• 
Thus, rather than the government deciding which emails were personal, Clinton decided which emails were governmental, and she turned those over to the government.  How does the government know what is contained in the emails she kept?
• 
Mr.  President, this is a privilege that even you don't have, and it is the very behavior that the laws you have sworn to uphold were written to prevent.
• 
Mr.  President, is it true that there are standards of behavior for Bill and Hillary Clinton and their friends and other standards for the rest of us?
• 
Mr.  President, when you ran against Hillary Clinton, you promised the most transparent government in history.  Do you honestly think you have given us that?
      The 'Disparate Impact' Racket  (JWR 03/10/2015)
• 
The bottom line is that all this hard evidence, and more, show what a complete lie was behind all the stories of Michael Brown being shot in the back or being shot while raising his hands in surrender.  Yet that lie was repeated, and dramatized in demonstrations and riots from coast to coast, as well as in the media and even in the halls of Congress.
• 
"Disparate impact" statistics have for decades been used, in many different contexts, to claim that discrimination was the reason why different groups are not equally represented as employees or in desirable positions or — as in this case — in undesirable positions as people arrested or fined.
• 
The implicit assumption is that such statistics about particular outcomes would normally reflect the percentage of people in the population.  But, no matter how plausible this might seem on the surface, it is seldom found in real life, and those who use that standard are seldom, if ever, asked to produce hard evidence that it is factually correct, as distinct from politically correct.
• 
Even with things whose outcomes are not in human hands, "disparate impact" is common.  Men are struck by lightning several times as often as women.  Most of the tornadoes in the entire world occur in the middle of the United States.
      Former Navy SEAL Sniper: Stop selling out our national security  (Fox 03/05/2015)
• 
I refuse to be part of a generation that went abroad to defeat the evils of terrorism, only to come home and see Washington lose that fight through misguided national security and foreign policies.
• 
I cannot remain silent as our leaders fail to speak openly and truthfully about the spreading cancer of Islamic extremism.  I will not simply sit back and watch as we turn our backs on our allies and appease those who are not our friends.
• 
In the tribal world, it is practically suicidal to make unilateral concessions, to appear weak, or to weaken the position of one's allies.  The only way to keep or establish peace or command any respect or retain any influence is to demonstrate one's power.
• 
We need leaders who understand that the world is not a classroom on a college campus; the world is a very dangerous place, filled with people who respect only strength and power.
• 
America needs leadership with the courage to call Islamic terrorism what it is: pure evil.
• 
We need leaders who understand that our interests align with other common-minded nations, and not with those that fund terrorism, create regional unrest, or seek nuclear weapons.
• 
These are challenging times, but the thing about America is this: we are never out of the fight.  We fall down, but we always rise again, we dust ourselves off, and we press ahead.  This is who we are.  This is how we started, and this will be how we move forward.
• 
It seems absurd that we give foreign aid packages to so many — without making sure they know whom to thank.
• 
If you're a runner you know it is much easier to keep up than to catch up.  The same is true in our defense spending.  We can definitely find savings in the Pentagon budget, but the sequestration cuts are indiscriminate.
• 
There are evil people in the world that want to erase the advances of the last centuries and subjugate men and women to the ignorance of their misguided and wrong beliefs.  They present us with the greatest challenge of our lifetimes.
      The New Terrorism: How to fight it and defeat it  (Fox 03/02/2015)
• 
The fight against radical Islam and the global jihadist movement is the challenge of our time.  Threats to our homeland are constantly increasing and our lack of real border security has only compounded the problem.
• 
The 9/11 Commission said that "9/11 was a failure of imagination." It's important that we quit preparing for the last threat, but be imaginative so that we can prevent the next terrorist attack on America.
• 
Today we live in a world on fire and it's important from a historical perspective to understand how and when the world caught fire.  We need to understand radical Islam, the history behind it and what motivates ISIS, Al Qaeda and others who want to kills us and destroy Western civilization.
• 
Since the 15th century, radical Islamic scholars have wanted a return to their version of a so-called perfect society at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and the first 4 Caliphs.
• 
Their belief was that the Islamic nation, the "umma," would spread its influence until the entire world had come under its sway.
• 
Infidels would convert and live as 2nd class persons ("dhimmitude") or be eliminated.
• 
Presently, the United States faces a number of very real terrorist threats which we must be better prepared for.
• 
At the top of this list is cyber war.  In short, cyber war is the most complicated national security threat America has ever faced.
• 
To better secure our skies, we need laser jammers on our civilian aircraft.  ... Since a terrorist can buy a MANPAD for as little as $5K, we need to outfit our civilian aircraft with countermeasures.
• 
And we've got to do a much better job of securing our borders, harbors and ports.
• 
Don't forget that the radical Imam Said Jaziri was caught trying to come across our southern border.  Further, some 59,000 people from countries other than Mexico were apprehended illegally trying to enter the United States in 2010.  These included people from countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, and Sudan.  Where are the ones we didn't catch and what are they doing?
• 
The threat of underwater mines and IEDs is very real.  Here, we need a real mine countermeasure capability on the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
• 
There are many other threats that must be addressed with real solutions.  These include the biological and electromagnetic pulse threats.
• 
And make no mistake, political correctness and bureaucratic red tape continue to imperil our national security efforts.
• 
American victory also depends on the United States being truly energy independent and sustaining that energy independence.  We must produce more energy so the United States can defund radical Islamists once and for all.
• 
And we must improve our missile defense capability.  The East Coast needs a land based interceptor capability just like the West Coast.
• 
Following 9/11, there was a heightened sense of awareness and commitment by all of us.  Unfortunately, as ISIS has reminded us, the threats have not subsided.
• 
The world is an even more dangerous place today than it was immediately after 9/11.  As a people, though, we've let our guard down and taken too much for granted.
• 
This is the time to divert our attention away from typical everyday issues and, for now, give our full attention to the survival of Western civilization.
      Our President and the Constitution: Barack Obama has gone rogue  (Fox 03/05/2015)
• 
Can the president rewrite federal laws?  Can he alter their meaning?  Can he change their effect?
• 
What's going on is the exercise of authoritarian impulses by a desperate president terrified of powerlessness and irrelevance, the Constitution be damned.
• 
I say "damned" because when the president writes laws, whether under the guise of administrative regulations or executive orders, he is effectively damning the Constitution by usurping the powers of Congress.
• 
... when the president acts in defiance of Congress he operates at his lowest ebb of constitutional power and can be enjoined by the courts unless he is in an area uniquely immune from congressional authority...
• 
The president's oath of office underscores those limits.  It requires that he enforce the laws faithfully.
• 
The reason James Madison insisted on using the word "faithfully" in the presidential oath and putting the oath itself into the Constitution was to instill in presidents the realization that they may need to enforce laws with which they disagree — even laws they hate.
• 
One of the safeguards built into the Constitution is the separation of powers: Congress writes the laws, the president enforces the laws, and the courts interpret them.
• 
The purpose of this separation is to prevent the accumulation of too much power in the hands of too few — a valid fear when the Constitution was written and a valid fear today.
• 
When the president effectively writes the laws, Congress is effectively neutered.
• 
Yet, the reason we have the separation of powers is not to protect Congress, but to protect all individuals from the loss of personal liberty.  Under Obama, that loss has been vast.
• 
Will Congress and the courts do anything about it?
      Justice Department reached only possible conclusion in Michael Brown case  (Fox 03/05/2015)
• 
The report's acknowledgment that there was no evidence of improper actions on Wilson's part is neither new nor particularly interesting.  The only question is why the report took so long to release.
• 
Postponing the report on Wilson most likely occurred because the Obama administration wanted to wait until they had finished their report on the Ferguson police department.  That report also released today claims persuasive evidence of racially bias.
• 
"Ferguson's law enforcement practices overwhelmingly impact African Americans.  Data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014 shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson's population."
• 
Yet, by itself this proves nothing.  The Obama administration is implicitly assuming that blacks are committing crime at the same rate as other groups in the population.
• 
nfortunately, that is not true.  For example, the average black is 6.5 times more likely to be murdered than the average white and over nine out of every ten blacks who were murdered were killed by other blacks.
• 
Indeed, given their share of the population, if blacks in Ferguson were to commit murders at the same per capita rate that blacks do nationally they would make up 94.2 percent of those incarcerated.
• 
Many blacks have their lives disrupted by the criminal justice system, but the lives and property of many blacks are also protected by that same system.
• 
Racism is horrible and it may indeed be present, but screaming "racism!" when there is no evidence of it is downright dangerous.
      Ferguson: Why Justice reports on Wilson, police matter to us all  (Fox 03/04/2015)
• 
Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it had rejected the claim that that Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, had his hands up and was surrendering to police when Officer Darren Wilson shot him dead on August 9, 2014.
• 
First, was a federal crime committed; and second, does the government possess sufficient credible evidence to obtain a conviction.  The DoJ has answered both questions in the negative.
• 
It concluded that Brown attempted to seize control of Officer Wilson's service gun, Wilson was justifiably in fear for his life, and as a result of Brown's behavior and Wilson's fear, Wilson's use of deadly force was justified; thus, no federal crime was committed.  The alleged crime is the use of State sanctioned force — here, Wilson's service gun — to deprive Brown of a federally protected right — here, the right to life and to be at liberty.
• 
The Justice Department found that Brown was hit by six service-issued bullets, and all the bullets entered his body from the front.  It also found that the witnesses who claimed Brown raised his hands in surrender or shouted "don't shoot" were not credible witnesses, and so it disbelieved them.
• 
It discounted their credibility because they gave varying versions of what they claimed to have seen, many of which were contradictory to other versions the same folks had given, and because their hands up or "don't shoot" versions of Brown's death were strongly contradicted by medical and ballistics evidence and could never have survived cross examination.
• 
It found that police and clerks regularly, consistently, and systematically used race as a basis for prosecutions and the imposition of onerous fines; that they used criminal prosecutions not to assure public safety, but as a revenue stream; and that this unlawful behavior has been rampant for many years.
      Ex-Iranian hostages agree with Bibi: Tehran can't be trusted  (Fox 03/03/2015)
• 
For 444 days, the 52 Americans were held prisoner in the U.S.  Embassy by the student revolutionaries that would help usher in the hard-line Islamic theocracy that remains in place today.  Many of the hostage takers and guards held key roles in the Iranian government then and continue in important positions today.
• 
"I think it's very naive because the Iranians talk out both sides of their mouth.  Their actions betray their conversations.  Their conversations say one thing and then they do something else."
• 
"They have an agenda that is to wipe out Israel and take over America."
• 
"If they want to negotiate, they have to deal with the issue of the hostage taking, which the current government is still responsible for.  The Iranian government has to take responsibility or you can't take them seriously in any negotiations."
• 
"Benjamin Netanyahu had a good point when he spoke to Congress.  Any negotiation should not be about technical issues.  The negotiation should be about changing behavior, and it is not."
• 
"I truly believe that the war on terrorism started on Nov.  4, 1979, when I was a young Marine standing guard at the embassy.  I was only 30 yards away from that fence when they came over it.  They used Iranian women as shields when they broke in because they knew we'd stand down."
• 
"They have never been held accountable for what they've done to us.  How do you trust a government that publicly says Israel needs to be eliminated?  Anyone should understand why Israel needs to be concerned."
      Netanyahu's Iran Speech: Real reason Obama White House doesn't want it  (Fox 03/03/2015)
• 
... many believe the real reason the administration opposes Netanyahu's speech is because he will tell the truth about Iran's nuclear threat and the administration wants to cover up what could ultimately become a very bad deal.
• 
Iran wants nuclear weapons.  And yet the U.S.  is promoting the fiction that despite past behavior and the apocalyptic statements by its leaders, Iran will agree to stop its nuclear program.  It will not.
• 
Iran cannot be trusted to honor any agreement.  Iran wants to become a global player.  It wants Israel gone.  No agreement meant to hamper either goal will have any lasting effect.
• 
There are none so blind as those who will not see.  The Obama administration should open its eyes to a world that is aflame.
• 
"The United States Constitution divides foreign policy powers between the President and the Congress so that both share in the making of foreign policy.  The executive and legislative branches each play important roles that are different but that often overlap.  Both branches have continuing opportunities to initiate and change foreign policy, and the interaction between them continues indefinitely throughout the life of a policy."
• 
"Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted.  In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder.  It is a howling reproach."
• 
Israel's prime minister should offer such a howling reproach to America's disastrous policy with Iran and the administration's failure to tell the truth about the threat should Iran go nuclear.
      Netanyahu's Iran Speech: Why it's important for Congress to at least listen to Israel's leader  (Fox 03/02/2015)
• 
The speech Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to give to a joint session of Congress Tuesday is one of the most critical of recent times.  It concerns not only the very existence of his nation, but also the terribly real possibility of nuclear holocaust in the foreseeable future.
• 
Our own security is at stake as well: Iran is developing intercontinental missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons that will reach our shores.
• 
The question isn't why should Congress listen to what he has to say, but rather why in the world would certain members not to hear him out?
• 
The agreement President Obama wants to strike with Iran would not put in place effective controls to prevent the mullahs – and plausibly in turn the many terrorist organizations they actively support – from acquiring weapons-grade fissionable material.
• 
Allowing Iran to join the nuclear club – or come perilously close — would trigger a frightening round of weapons proliferation.  Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region would all be understandably motivated to similarly arm themselves.
• 
Iran's ability to not only attack, but also to intimidate other countries into meeting its demands would increase exponentially with its acquisition of nuclear capabilities.  Imagine Tehran "suggesting" to European countries how to treat their growing Muslim populations?  Sharia law, anyone?
• 
But obviously, the nation most likely to first suffer from Iran's nuclear ambitions is Israel.  That is why it is so important for members of Congress to listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
• 
We cannot refuse our close ally at least the opportunity to explain how a nuclear Iran would affect it.  No one demands that every member of Congress agree with the Prime Minister, but they all have a duty to listen to him.
• 
Additionally, Congress definitely has a fundamental obligation – to the American people and the world - to be actively involved in this policy decision.  This is not Obamacare or regulating the Internet.
• 
The consequences of allowing President Obama to go it alone with another opaque executive action could not only be catastrophic, but also impossible to remedy with after-the-fact legislation.  Once Iran has the bomb, the game is over.
• 
The stakes here could not be higher – Israel's continued existence, America's moral authority, nuclear conflict, and the ghastly breakdown of world order.
• 
Party politics cannot be allowed to interfere with bringing this matter to the most successful resolution possible.  Congress must listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu — and so should President Obama.
      Fulfill George Washington's last wish — a national university  (CNN 03/02/2015)
• 
In 1796, in his final annual address to Congress, President George Washington called for the creation of: "...a National University; and also a Military Academy.  The desirableness of both these Institutions, has so constantly increased with every new view I have taken of the subject, that I cannot omit the opportunity of once for all, recalling your attention to them."
• 
In order to build a 21st Century National University, all the federal government has to do is something very simple: Approve itself.
• 
Fortunately, there's no need for new buildings — or, for that matter, administrators, libraries, faculty, and all the rest.  Existing colleges and universities, flush with federal dollars, have already created all the essential building blocks for National U.
• 
With some authorizing language from Congress and a small, one-time start-up budget, the U.S.  Department of Education could create a nonprofit, bipartisan organization with only two missions: approving courses and granting degrees.
• 
Don't worry, federal bureaucrats won't be in charge of academic matters.  Instead, National U.  would hire teams of leading scholars to evaluate and approve courses.
• 
While many of the courses will be free, students will bear small costs for taking exams through secure online channels or in-person testing facilities.
• 
Students will also pay a modest fee of a few hundred dollars for the degree itself, enough to defray the operating costs of National U.
• 
Since National U.  will likely be much cheaper, this will actually save the taxpayers money in the long run.
• 
The federal government's higher education approval powers are long-established.  Now it just needs to use them on behalf of students, instead of traditional colleges and universities that are charging far too much.  George Washington was right all along.
      Sorry, Mr.  Obama: Here's why raising taxes on the rich won't work  (Fox 02/25/2015)
• 
So it's time for a reality test.  Here are the latest statistics from the IRS for 2011:
• 
The top 1 percent earned 19 percent of the total income and paid 35 percent of the federal income tax.
• 
The table also shows that the top 10 percent pay two-thirds of the income tax.
• 
... bottom 50 percent — Americans with an income below the median — pay just 3 percent.
• 
... the top 0.1 percent paid 16 percent of the income tax.  So the top 0.1% paid an aggregate amount more than five times that of half the population.
• 
In 1980, when the highest income tax rate was 70 percent, the richest 1 percent paid roughly 19 percent of the income tax.
• 
In 2007, when the top tax rate was 35 percent, the tax share of the richest 1 percent was more than twice that amount.
• 
Listen to John F.  Kennedy, who said at the New York Economics Club in 1962 that "it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now."
      'Knives are out': Hawaii Dem faces backlash for taking on Obama over 'Islamist' extremism  (Fox 02/28/2015)
• 
"Every soldier knows this simple fact: If you don't know your enemy, you will not be able to defeat him."
• 
"Our leaders must clearly identify the enemy as Islamist extremists, understand the ideology that is motivating them and attracting new recruits, and focus on defeating that enemy both militarily and ideologically."
• 
Gabbard called "mind-boggling" Obama's refusal to associate ISIS with the Muslim religion, even though the terrorist army is emphatic it is enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam.
• 
"[Obama] is completely missing the point of this radical Islamic ideology that's fueling these people."
• 
"It could hurt me politically, but I don't worry about it because that's not what I care about.  ... Our national security and the future of our country is infinitely more important than partisan politics or my personal political future."
• 
"[Gabbard] has taken a very courageous stand in a party that just refuses to face reality."
• 
"Rep.  Gabbard is correct as a matter of history, she is correct as a matter of current events, and she is correct of published Islamic law."
• 
"She along with the soldiers of the 29th didn't spend all their time inside the wire, and witnessed the horrific Muslim on Muslim violence and carnage in the name of Allah."
• 
"Anyone who thinks I'm playing politics with national security issues clearly doesn't know me."
      Illiberal approach to immigration only invites more acrimony  (JWR 02/26/2015)
• 
President Obama did not, as he alleges, override Congress because it failed to act on immigration.  Instead he ignored it because Congress would not act in a particular fashion that he found ideologically akin to his own beliefs.
• 
Illiberal immigration would also mean that new arrivals could ignore the cost, time and inconvenience of applying for visas.  Instead, they would simply enter the U.S.  illegally and not be transparent about their illegal status.
• 
Ensure that those who have committed crimes in the United States, or who have no history of work but instead only a record of dependency on entitlements, return to their nations of origin.
• 
Those who have just illegally arrived in cynical anticipation of amnesty should likewise return home to go through the process legally.
• 
Make immigration a meritocratic system that does not take into consideration the particular country of origin or ethnic background of the would-be immigrant.
• 
The solution to the immigration mess is not to threaten militancy if a particular political agenda is jeopardized.  It is not to slam a federal judge who demands adherence to the law.  And it is certainly not to scapegoat a generous host for not agreeing to political demands of guests.
      DOJ Clears Zimmerman: Holder's political pandering comes to predictable end  (Fox 02/24/2015)
• 
There was never a scintilla of evidence that the confrontation had anything to do with race or civil rights.  But that did not stop Holder from abiding the racial hysteria ginned up by the Reverend Al Sharpton crowd.  Nor did it stop President Obama from injecting race into a race-less case.
• 
It seems inescapable that Holder chose to demagogue a tragic case to appease civil rights vocalists and burnish his liberal bona fides.  If so, he elevated racial politics over the integrity of the law.
• 
Which is beyond shame.  It is an abuse of power.
      Louisiana Governor: ISIS threat reveals Obama's failure as commander in chief  (Fox 02/23/2015)
• 
President Obama has shown the country that he is incapable of being commander-in-chief of the United States of America.  One of the defining military challenges of our time is the spread of radical Islamist terrorism, and President Obama has focused more on criticizing America and lecturing the American people than on devising a plan to hunt down and kill these extremists.
• 
Every day, Islamic State is expanding its atrocities, killing more innocent people, all while the president and his administration are refusing to admit we are at war, giving us history lessons about the Crusades, refusing to call out radical Islam as the root problem, and contending that jobs programs are the key to defeating terrorism.
• 
The American people are not looking to blame peace-loving Muslims for anything, but we also demand a leader who will be honest with us about the threat we are facing from radical Islamic terrorists.
• 
We demand a leader who is going to spend less time criticizing America and more time hunting terrorists down and killing them.
• 
Our president cannot admit the problem of Radical Islamic terrorism, so he cannot possibly hope to fix it.
• 
Islam has a problem.  There is an evil belief system that has taken root in radical Islam.  It contends that many of us must be killed, women should be treated like property, some of us are eligible for slavery, and others need to be crucified.
• 
Radical Islamic terrorists are cutting off people's heads, killing children, crucifying people, and burning people alive, and we need to find jobs for them?
• 
Perhaps the most incredible statement yet from this administration came from our State Department, which said, "we cannot win this war by killing them.  We cannot kill our way out of this war."
• 
This is madness.  Killing the enemy is exactly the way you win a war.  More than any other statement, this one demonstrates in broad daylight that the president is not up to the job.
• 
Whether we ever use ground troops or not, the decision should be primarily informed by the wisdom of our military commanders on the ground.
• 
The president's prohibition on ground troops is not a military strategy, it is a political strategy designed to appease the left in this country, which also happens to populate his entire administration.
• 
The military must be given the mission, and they should then propose the specific tactics.  If that includes some use of ground troops, then that's what has to be done.
• 
Politicians on both sides of the aisle need to stop pretending that we will never use ground troops, and they have to stop telling our enemies what we will not do.
• 
It's time for our president to have the fortitude to tell the American people the truth about radical Islam and put his political base aside so we can defeat these terrorists.
      Obama the Unwitting Recruiter  (JWR 02/20/2015)
• 
President Obama seems more interested in defending the religion of Islam than in defending the United States against the threat of Islamic jihad, but Islam isn't under attack; we are.
• 
The stubborn reality is that acts of terrorism in the world today are overwhelmingly committed not by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus or Zoroastrians but by those claiming to be Muslims, no matter how much Obama strains to advance his fraudulent claims of moral equivalency.
• 
After all, if peaceful Muslims don't identify with the radicals, how would treating those radicals as enemies and enemy combatants alienate the peaceful ones?  And if he believes that the billion-plus Muslims he talks about are so peaceful, why does he act as if they are on a hair trigger to become terrorists, to the point that we can't even call out the radicals among them without fear of every Muslim's turning into one?
• 
What Obama and his mouthpieces need to understand is that Islamic terrorists are not driven by grievances, unless you define grievances as opposition to their determination to create a global caliphate.  They are motivated by deeply held religious and ideological convictions that are not going to be mollified by liberal domestic policy overtures.
• 
Obama is doing more to fuel Islamic State recruitment by showing its potential recruits how weak we are and that Islamic State aspirations for a global caliphate are not such a fantasy if the world is rolling over for them rather than fighting them with equal and superior force.
      Silly denials of Islamic terrorism bring a silver lining  (JWR 02/20/2015)
      Mr.  President, America is fighting a war on jihadists, not poverty  (Fox 02/19/2015)
• 
Now we know why apocalyptic jihadists rule vast stretches of the Middle East, beheading and burning alive all who oppose them.
• 
Because it's too hard to start a business in Syria.
• 
This is not the language of war.  And it betrays willful ignorance of the facts and of the nature of our enemy.
• 
... more British Muslims are reportedly fighting for ISIS than have voluntarily joined the British Army.
• 
The most notorious terrorists are often wealthy, coming from educated backgrounds.  Usama bin Laden came from a wealthy Saudi family.  Mohamed Atta — one of the key leaders of the 9/11 attacks — was an architect.  ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has advanced degrees from the University of Baghdad.
• 
Jihadists are motivated by religious belief, not by poverty.
• 
In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.
• 
When the apocalypse is at stake, "starting a business" is a waste of time.
• 
... the right response to jihadists is time-tested: Overwhelming force.
• 
Obama administration threw away victory, withdrawing our troops and then withholding support from key allies until it was almost too late.  Al Qaeda in Iraq gained new life in Syria (as ISIS), then poured back into Iraq, triggering the geopolitical crisis we face today.
• 
Now we're left with the worst of both worlds — an administration that is plainly not committed to using the necessary force to defeat our enemies while mouthing platitudes about economic opportunity that seemed purposefully designed to make Americans complacent about the threat.
• 
The situation is both absurd and tragic.  Absurd, because the language of new businesses and "legitimate grievances" is virtual self-parody.  Tragic, because our willful blindness and lack of will is costing lives and harming our national security.
• 
Our fight against ISIS is a real war, not a fake "war on poverty" or a politically correct war on "extremism."
• 
And in real war, you fight your enemy until he surrenders or ceases to exist.
      On immigration, it's Constitution 1, impatient Obama 0  (Fox 02/17/2015)
• 
The decision itself comprehensively demonstrates how the president's immigration actions impose considerable direct costs on the states ... and the court showed again and again how the administration's own prior legal arguments cut against its current position.
• 
Critically, the court also found that the Obama administration had essentially "abdicated" its "statutory duties to enforce immigration laws."
• 
"Congress has clearly stated that illegal aliens should be removed ... the DHS program circumvents immigration laws and allows individuals that would otherwise be subject to removal to remain in the United States."
• 
The court's meaning is clear: The president's action directly contradicts his legal duty.
• 
"Non-enforcement is just that — not enforcing the law."
• 
The court went on to note that the administration's policies represented a "massive change in immigration practice" that would affect "the nation's entire immigration scheme and the states who must bear the lion's share of its consequences."
• 
This decision represents a victory for the rule of law, for plain English, and for the core American constitutional concept of the Separation of Powers.
• 
But our Constitution exists for a reason, and reforms impacting not just the millions of illegal immigrants already in this country, but also hundreds of millions of American citizens (and our national economy) must be enacted through constitutional processes.
      Life lessons from an airport cleaning woman  (Fox 02/13/2015)
• 
All thanks to an old toothless, simple, uneducated, uncultured, happy African-American woman, doing a job that most Americans won't do — and doing it with joy.
      What is more likely to kill you — a gun or a car?  (Fox 02/12/2015)
      Immigration: Obama’s executive actions could undermine elections in Ohio  (Fox 02/12/2015)
• 
People from every country on earth want to come to America.  Some want to learn.  Some want to work.  But everyone wants to better their lives, and you cannot blame anyone for their willingness to struggle, sacrifice and risk everything to come to the land of opportunity.  After all, that's the American story!
• 
This is what frustrates Americans the most: Our president is bending over backwards to divert resources from those trying to come here legally, and instead unconstitutionally giving taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants without congressional approval.
• 
After all, we have already seen video of sting operations by journalists proving how easy it is to weaken voting integrity.
• 
Additionally, President Obama's administration has been undermining our Homeland Security Department for years.
• 
In the context of voting, the recent push by third-party groups to register Americans to vote means that non-citizens could easily be swept up into the voter rolls, deliberately or not.  And such an action would completely undermine the right of Americans to choose their own government.
• 
... in truth the only way to guarantee voting integrity – Congress must act to arrest the president's actions and return decision-making on immigration policy to where it constitutionally belongs: the hands of America's elected representatives.
      John Gotti Jr., the Middle Ages and Barack Obama  (Fox 02/10/2015)
• 
"How many murders have been committed in the name of religion?  Ever hear of the Inquisition or the Crusades?"
• 
I don't want to accuse the president and his speechwriters of cribbing from Junior Gotti's autobiography.  Probably this is just a case of great minds thinking alike.  And there is no doubt that Obama and Gotti are both right about the Crusades and the Inquisition.
• 
But that was a quite a while ago.  Very few terrorist murders are carried out these days by fanatics screaming "Christ is Great!" in a Romance language.
• 
I get why John Gotti Junior went all the way back to the middle ages to find depredations great enough to smear the Church with the charge of hypocrisy.  It was his own father who was denied burial, after all.
• 
Question is, what's Obama's excuse?
      A psychiatrist’s view: Why would Brian Williams make up stories?  (Fox 02/09/2015)
• 
What leads a man to make him look even more courageous than the courage he displayed?  What leads a man to cast himself as the leading man in dramas that course through even greater dangers than the very real perils that unfolded?
• 
One potential answer is that some people must do everything they can to camouflage deep feelings of weakness and unworthiness.
• 
People very often cast themselves as one thing to avoid being seen as the opposite.
• 
Casting oneself as heroic and powerful and fearless, when it is done to stave off buried feelings of being vulnerable and frightened, is no different than using any other drug.  A person can become just as addicted to praise and the admiration in someone's eyes as he can to cocaine or heroin.
• 
And just like any other drug of abuse, mainlining the ill-gotten respect of others is never enough to really quell the internal sadness and anxiety a damaged person carries inside.  You need more and more praise, however you can get it, to keep the negative feelings at bay.
• 
The truth always wins.  Ask anyone who uses any drug to try to distance himself from any reality.  It never, ever works.
• 
The psyche or God or one's self (maybe all the same thing) has a way of bringing you to your knees in an instant, and making you confront the very things you have been running from.
• 
And, as strange as it sounds, and as painful as it could be, it could be a transformational one.
      Netanyahu Must Absolutely Make that Speech  (INN 02/11/2015)
• 
We now have a President in the United States who has absolutely no comprehension as to how to deal with tyrants, dictators, bullies, and thugs.  Worse — much worse than that — is that this President does not know what he does not know.
• 
Barack Obama became President without ever governing, without ever encountering the real world of terror and dictatorship.
• 
He has enjoyed a grace of opportunities without achievements, opportunities that others have been able to attain only after they charted achievements.
• 
Many who voted for Obama were excited by the prospect of electing America's first Black president, marking an exciting historic end to America's shameful and horrific centuries of enslaving Black people.
• 
Having lived the life of grace — and it is hard to imagine that even half of this happened for him in his life if it were not so public (except for his college and law school transcripts) — he legitimately and understandably has evolved a sense that anything he touches will work out his way.
• 
Obama sincerely believes a Mideast narrative that is popular among American left-wing ideologues and pseudo-intellectuals: that Israel is a White colonialist settler state, created and propped up by Western imperialism, aimed at suppressing an indigenous Third World population of victimized people who lived in that land long before Jews did, from time immemorial.
• 
It also is imperative to understand that, as a governing authority, Obama does not accept upon himself the usual restraints on the executive that the American Constitution assigns in its separation of powers.
• 
Congress also has one other Constitutional option for stopping a President who commits high crimes and misdemeanors: impeachment by the House and removal from office by the Senate.  However, for political reasons, that is not a realistic or practicable option, and no sensible Republican can entertain that step, regardless of what Obama does.
• 
On his watch, Vladimir Putin has deciphered that he can add the Crimea to the Russian polity, and Putin further is emboldened on defying Obama over the Ukraine.
• 
Israeli intelligence knows the deal that Obama is about to make with Iran.  Congress knows what he is doing but Constitutionally cannot stop him.
• 
The lesson is not to worry about whether a President, who already hates Bibi or has mixed views on Israel, will hate Bibi even more and remain even more mixed on Israel.  There is no "more" that he can hate Bibi, and Obama cannot be worse to Israel than he is because, for reasons beyond his control, he is as bad as he can be.
• 
At such times, the wise and prudent advisors always counsel "Not now.  You will make things worse." But a speech to Congress by Bibi Netanyahu will not make things worse.  Things between Israel and Obama will not get worse because they cannot get worse.
• 
But when history is written, that speech may — just may, depending on how it is crafted and delivered — result in a Congressional response that assures that Iran not get the nuclear bomb.
      How believing in the Bible can get you canned in today's America  (Fox 02/10/2015)
• 
"Little by little, they are stripping us of any thought we might have, or any difference of opinion.  This is our religious freedom at stake."
• 
The "tyranny of tolerance" claims that the sexual rights of some are more important than the religious rights of others.
• 
Yet this remnant of militant activists refuses to tolerate dissenters to their lifestyle choices.
• 
At first, homosexual activists wanted acceptance.  Then they wanted appreciation.  Now they demand celebration.
• 
It's not enough to live and let live, these activists are now forcing their lifestyle choices on everyone.
• 
The idea of forced acceptance infringes on our constitutional rights as Americans.
• 
The question is not should we as Americans be involved in the battle for freedom, the question is: are you willing to stand with courage at any cost if and when the battle comes knocking on your door?
• 
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?"
      Speechless on Iranian Nukes  (INN 02/09/2015)
• 
A bad deal on Iranian nukes would be so catastrophic to global security that presidential resistance to a related speech – by the leader of an allied democracy, who may be the greatest expert on the issue – should leave everyone speechless.
• 
Now Obama is trying everything in his power to unseat Bibi, including what he accuses Bibi of doing: meddling in another democracy's domestic politics.
• 
If Bibi does nothing to prevent Obama from making Iran a threshold nuclear state, then he will be excoriated for any Israeli military attack undertaken to defang that threat; but if he speaks up now while a non-military solution is still possible (with adjustments to Obama's disastrous negotiating strategy), then he is accused of meddling in U.S.  politics and breaching protocol.
• 
Separation of powers improves governance precisely because overly concentrated power tends to corrupt and no single institution has a monopoly on wisdom.  Congress has been involved in Iran-related decisions and sanctions for decades, so how could it be prudent or constitutional for Obama to circumvent Congress on this issue?
• 
Obama's extraordinary fear of different views speaks volumes about his amateurish policymaking approach and his dubious motives.
• 
Is he trying to get a deal at any cost just to show a foreign policy win after so many conspicuous failures (from Ukraine to Syria)?
• 
Does he not realize that his legacy would be far more tarnished as the leader who enabled the world's leading sponsor of terror to acquire nuclear weapons?
• 
Now that Obama is unshackled from reelection pressures, his shocking true face has emerged – with unbridled hostility towards Bibi, and a frightening willingness to sacrifice Israeli security on the single greatest threat facing this New Jersey-sized country.
• 
Obama's efforts to silence Bibi only exacerbate serious concerns about Obama's strategy, competence, and intentions.
• 
Any time a president tries this hard to suppress an opposing view shared by myriad experts and allies, the public needs to hear that other view.
      Obama at Prayer Event: Christians did terrible things, too  (Fox 02/05/2015)
• 
"From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith – their faith – profess to stand up for Islam but in fact are betraying it."
• 
"And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place – remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ."
• 
"When Christians act violently they are acting in opposition to the teachings of their founder, Jesus Christ.  They cannot cite a single verse in the New Testament that calls for violence against unbelievers.  On the other hand, radical Islamists can point to a number of verses in the Koran calling for Muslims to ‘crucify the infidels.'"
• 
On Wednesday a United Nations watchdog group reported that Islamic militants were crucifying Iraqi children and burying them alive.  Others had been sold as sex slaves and boys as young as 18 had been used as suicide bombers, Reuters reported.
• 
"They are following the example of their founder Muhammad who slaughtered and beheaded those who opposed him."
• 
While the Crusades were terrible, ... they were a response to hundreds of years of Muslim aggression.
• 
... something else President Obama said: "We are summoned to push back against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends."
• 
What did he mean by "our religion"?  Whose religion?  And why did he compare the Crusades to ISIS?
• 
The Crusades ended some 700 years ago.  Perhaps the president should be a bit more concerned with the Islamic jihad being waged in this century.
      ISIS Burns Jordanian Pilot: Mr.  Obama, when will you get angry about radical Islam?  (Fox 02/03/2015)
• 
America wants to know, when is President Obama going to get angry?  When is he going to slam his fist on the desk, demand vengeance, put aside his incessant campaigning and call out the Islamic radicals of ISIS as the animals they are?
• 
Interrupted in the course of yet another photo-op on the benefits of ObamaCare, the president looked almost irritated Tuesday to be asked his reaction to the murder of the Jordanian pilot, shown on an Internet video being burned alive by ISIS.
• 
At the least, we would expect Mr.  Obama to be angry that his relentless pursuit of legacy goals is yet again likely to be sidetracked by pesky questions about his anti-terrorism strategy.
• 
Meanwhile, most Americans think the most serious threat facing the country is Islamic terrorism – not climate change, not income inequality – Islamic terrorism.
• 
Rather, he appears desperate to sign a deal with Iran, he pretends that withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq has made us safer, he proposes in his budget to actually cut back spending on our overseas anti-terrorism effort, he spurns Israel, and can't be bothered to show up in Paris when the world gathers to protest the savage murders at Charlie Hedbo.
• 
He made the case, once again, that we need to acknowledge that though ISIS is a "particular problem that has roots in Muslim communities," we harm our cause if we fail to recognize that most Muslims "reject this ideology."
• 
Fair enough, but a case could be made that Muslims around the world are doing far too little to "reject" extremism.
• 
Where are the moderate Imams?  Their silence is deafening.
• 
Mr.  President, these savages of ISIS have taken your measure, and are not impressed.  They know we do not have the resolve to put aside politics and devote the country's energies towards coming after them full-bore.  They know you are obsessed with you infernal "legacy" which, as luck would have it, will include some of the worst foreign policy blunders of modern times.
• 
Presumably the ISIS strategists (unlike your administration it appears they do have a strategy) decided we were becoming inured to beheadings; they took it up a notch.  Their most recent video does just that, signaling a new and more gruesome barbarism.
• 
President Obama, you need to address the nation, and condemn Islamic radicalism – something you have been unwilling to do.  The time is now.
      Stormy Weather and Politics  (JWR 02/03/2015)
• 
What is at issue is not whether there is "climate change" — which nobody has ever denied — but whether the specific predictions of the "global warming" crowd as to the direction and magnitude of worldwide temperature changes are holding up over the years.
• 
The ultimate test of any theoretical model is not how loudly it is proclaimed but how well it fits the facts.  Climate models that have an unimpressive record of fitting the facts of the past or the present are hardly a reason for us to rely on them for the future.
• 
Meteorology has many facts and many scientific principles but, at this stage of its development, weather forecasts just a week ahead are still iffy.  Why then should we let ourselves be stampeded into crippling the American economy with unending restrictions created by bureaucrats who pay no price for being wrong?
• 
Certainly neither China nor India will do that, and the amount of greenhouse gasses they put into the air will overwhelm any reductions we might achieve, even with draconian restrictions at astronomical costs.
      Obama's Mad Dash to the Finish Line  (JWR 02/03/2015)
• 
To Obama, accomplishments are executive or legislative actions that move the nation's laws and culture further toward the goal line of socialist control.
• 
It doesn't matter if these actions damage the economy, reduce our liberties, make Americans less safe and hurt more people than they help.  The goal is to transform America; the people aren't even important beyond being convenient propaganda props.  In the leftist mind, the impersonal collective is paramount.
• 
He wasn't sincere when he said people could keep their plans and their doctors — period.  He was deceiving people when he promised that they would save substantial money personally and that the government would also cut its health care outlays under his plan.  The point was never to improve health care, reduce costs or preserve our health care choices.  It was to expand nominal health insurance coverage at any cost — and many of his fellow leftists have as much as admitted this.  To them, the end justifies the means — even when those means are lying through their teeth repeatedly.  They know what's best for us.
• 
One can only infer that he doesn't fear the virtual bankruptcy of the United States, and he could only lack that fear if he imagines it as useful in his grandiose plan to transform America.
• 
Obama is doing his best to drive this country over a cliff — at the bottom of which most people would find an America that we barely recognize and that is contrary to everything the Founding Fathers envisioned.  Obama and his ilk, on the other hand, see that bottomland as utopian — definitely contrary to the founders' vision but in line with what they believe the founders should have designed as the ideal society.
• 
He has no intention of letting little things like checks and balances and the Constitution get in his way.  You had better believe it.
      Fierce backlash against the liberal who trashed the PC police  (Fox 01/30/2015)
• 
"At a growing number of campuses, professors now attach ‘trigger warnings' to texts that may upset students, and there is a campaign to eradicate ‘microaggressions,' or small social slights that might cause searing trauma.  These newly fashionable terms merely repackage a central tenet of the first p.c.  movement: that people should be expected to treat even faintly unpleasant ideas or behaviors as full-scale offenses."
• 
"Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate."
• 
"If a person who is accused of bias attempts to defend his intentions, he merely compounds his own guilt.  (Here one might find oneself accused of man/white/straightsplaining.)... If you are accused of bias, or ‘called out,' reflection and apology are the only acceptable response — to dispute a call-out only makes it worse.  There is no allowance in p.c.  culture for the possibility that the accusation may be erroneous.  A white person or a man can achieve the status of ‘ally,' however, if he follows the rules of p.c.  dialogue."
• 
"The p.c.  style of politics has one serious, possibly fatal drawback: It is exhausting.  Claims of victimhood that are useful within the left-wing subculture may alienate much of America.  The movement's dour puritanism can move people to outrage, but it may prove ill-suited to the hopeful mood required of mass politics."
      It's the patriotism, stupid.  What liberal critics don't get about "American Sniper"  (Fox 01/28/2015)
• 
It's awfully easy for progressives to cast criticism down from their isolated ivory towers, but next time they consider demeaning the warriors protecting them afar, as Chris Kyle once did, they may want to consider who protects those towers and keeps them from tumbling.
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 01/27/2015)
• 
In politics, never assume that because something is insane, it will not be done.  The Holocaust was as insane as it was a moral horror.  But it was done.  Even after the tide of war turned against Germany and it faced invasion and devastation, Hitler continued to pour scarce resources into the mass killing of people who were no threat.
• 
So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers' unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.
• 
Would you go to a funeral if you knew that your presence would be unwelcome and would just add to the pain of the mourners?  Probably not.  But New York's mayor Bill de Blasio went to both funerals for the two New York City policemen recently murdered — and gave speeches.  That epitomized what a truly despicable human being he is, even by the low standards of politicians.
• 
Somewhere Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of an education should be to produce a mind that cannot be humbugged.  But today our educational system, from kindergarten to the universities, is engaged in the mass production of fashionable humbug — propaganda rather than education.
• 
President Obama may have gained something politically or ideologically by recognizing Cuba, but just what did the United States gain?  Like so much that has been done by this administration, the diplomatic recognition of Cuba demonstrates how safe it is to be our enemy, while our policies toward Ukraine and Israel demonstrate how risky it is to be our ally.
      The White House's Emily Post moment  (JWR 01/27/2015)
• 
President Barack Obama has a notoriously piratical attitude toward Congress.  He deliberately and gleefully trampled all over its role as the lawmaking branch, and cast aside his own as the executor of the laws.  He has distorted the constitutional order to suit his whim, and now his allies are peeved that John Boehner made a wayward speaking invitation?
• 
More to the point: The speaker leads a coequal branch of government.
• 
He can invite or not invite anyone he wants, up to and including the president, who is only invited to give the State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress as a matter of tradition.
• 
The speaker shouldn't have to wait for White House sign-off for his invitations to address the House any more than the White House should coordinate with him whom it invites into the Oval Office.
• 
The administration is in a panic to get a deal with Iran, any deal.  At this point, it doesn't want to hear a discouraging word from anyone, least of all Netanyahu, who is such a powerful communicator.
• 
The White House is worried that the prospect of more sanctions will destroy its delicate dynamic with Iran, although Iran has continued to extend its tentacles in Yemen, Syria and Iraq without any fear of spooking us.
      Kudos to Congress and Netanyahu  (JWR 01/27/2015)
• 
We must reject the premise that Netanyahu's speaking before Congress, which has every constitutional right to invite him, is about Benjamin Netanyahu.  It is about a matter of the gravest importance to Israel's and our national security.
• 
Why aren't they pointing out that it is Obama who should be criticized for conducting meetings with YouTube pop culture figures who eat Froot Loops out of a bathtub instead of with the leader of one of our best and most important allies?
• 
Enough of the guarded behavior from our side.  Obama has been on a lawless tear for most of his time in office, usurping Congress' constitutional role and thumbing his nose at it and its authority and daring it to do anything to stop him.
• 
Do you actually think those in this modern Democratic Party — currently led by Obama and Harry Reid (who has unilaterally modified Senate rules for partisan advantage) — are ever concerned at all about their violating protocol?  They don't care about the Constitution; why would they care about protocol?  This incident doesn't change anything.
• 
But in fact, Boehner has the authority to ask Netanyahu to speak, and it is his prerogative to invite whomever he chooses.  He is neither usurping nor abusing his authority in inviting Netanyahu.
• 
It also doesn't hurt for Congress to be sending a loud message, within its own constitutional authority, that there are many in the United States — probably the majority of Americans — who take these matters seriously and intend to take action to defend the security interests of the United States and its allies.
      Iran's price for Obama's coveted legacy  (JWR 01/27/2015)
• 
The importance of any political event is best measured against its opponents' reactions.  By that yardstick, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's agreement to speak about the dangers of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons before a joint session of Congress is already enormously significant.
• 
Though the president has said he would veto any new sanctions bill, his angry overreaction to the idea that House Speaker John Boehner and Mr.  Netanyahu would cooperate in opposing him is a strong indication of the weakness of Mr.  Obama's position in the negotiations.  It also indicates how badly Mr.  Obama wants a deal with Iran to be part of his presidential legacy.
• 
"[Obama] expects us to stand idly by and do nothing while he cuts a bad deal with Iran.  Hell no, we're going to do no such thing."
• 
The simplest solution would be for Mr.  Obama to agree to submit any agreement with Iran to the Senate for ratification.  It would be considered, debated and voted on in the manner called for in the Constitution.  That would obviate the need for a new sanctions bill, which will be pointless anyway because Mr.  Obama will veto it.  But the idea of submitting any portion of his power to congressional approval is abhorrent to this president.
• 
This leaves us with a political drama over a vital national security interest of the United States, as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia, the rest of the Middle East and Europe.
      Obama's terror strategy is failing: US must heed lessons of  (Fox 09/11/2015)
• 
It is increasingly apparent that the U.S.  war against Islamic extremism has been put on hold by President Obama and his national security team.
• 
ISIL and AQAP are two faces of the same enemy, radical violent Islam, which is on the march around the world.
• 
The United States and all civilized countries need to coordinate our efforts to fight the Islamic State first by cutting them off.
• 
Syria, Yemen, and Libya are all examples of our failure to learn one of the fundamental lessons of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — that failed and failing states breed instability and are potential safe havens for terrorists who will eventually turn their attention toward us.
• 
We also cannot afford to ignore another lesson of 9/11 and curtail intelligence gathering capabilities that have been legally and painstakingly established following those horrific attacks.
• 
Lofty speeches and half measures do not defeat terrorist groups.  They also do not keep Americans safe in the long term.  The threat from Islamic extremism is only growing and without greater leadership from the United States, I fear that it will only be a matter of time before innocent Americans pay the ultimate price if we continue to underestimate our enemies and not develop a strategy that is commensurate to the threat.  Which One is it, Obama?  Chicken* or Courageous?  1/26 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/16365#.VMadfZB4qO4
• 
Obama will do everything he can do to get rid of Netanyahu in Israel's March 2015 election, install a 'West Bank' terror-state, and keep the truth about Iran's nukes from Congress, and the American people.  That is why it is vital Netanyahu come to the US Congress, and tell the truth about Iran.
• 
For the past six years, PM Netanyahu has displayed undaunted courage facing up to Obama's incessant Two-State-Solution extortion of pushing Israel into 1967 ‘Auschwitz borders', and his crowning of Iran as a nuclear weapons state.
• 
But, what if Obama is actually not merely just appeasing Iran?  What if Obama is actually lying to the US Congress, and the world, and de facto arming Iran with nukes.  In fact, the real reason Obama doesn't want Netanyahu to come US Congress is that he will tell the truth about Iran. 
      White House going nuclear on Netanyahu  (NY Post, 01/24/2015)
• 
Thou shall not cross Dear Leader.
• 
"Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price."
• 
Trying to instruct this White House on manners recalls what Mark Twain said about trying to teach a pig to sing: It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
• 
How dare Israel be more concerned with the existential threat of Iranian nukes than with Obama's feelings?  And what do members of Congress think they are, a separate branch of government or something?
• 
Yes, the presidency deserves respect, even when the president doesn't.
• 
The argument has a point — but not a compelling one.  To give Obama veto power over the visit would be to put protocol and his pride before the most important issue in the world.
• 
Outside the president's yes-men circle, nobody believes the mad mullahs will voluntarily give up their quest for the bomb.
• 
Any deal that leaves Iran with a capacity to make a nuke in weeks or months will ignite a regional arms race.
• 
And Congress must not shirk from its duty to demand a meaningful agreement with Iran, or none at all. 
• 
As Ronald Reagan famously said about Soviet promises, "Trust but verify."
• 
So must it be with Iran and, sadly, our own president.
      Stalin, Muhammad and Obama  (Fox 01/23/2015)
• 
President Obama and his commissars fit the longstanding pattern of behavior (insistence, denial, castigation) that the hard left has embraced for generations.
• 
But leftists need a utopia, a fantasy heaven on earth, to comfort them and to give their lives purpose.  Robbed of the Soviet dream, the forlorn left was in need of a new redeemer.
• 
Islamism fit the left like a tailored glove...  From the comfort of Cambridge or the splendor of California's coast, they can rationalize radical Islam, a creed that would, if imported here, exterminate them as surely as Comrade Stalin would have purged the old American left.
• 
When you take the long view, it's disheartening (to put it mildly) that the Western left simply cannot live without dreaming of an impossible utopia to be imposed by one ideology or another on the rest of us.  Radical Islam?  It's a "religion of peace." Just as Soviet Communism was an ideology of peace, justice and brotherhood.
• 
The left's existential bleakness and its resultant need to embrace horrid schemes for man-made heavens on earth form a peerless argument for humankind's need for religion.
• 
Truth is malleable.  Facts are nuisances to be exterminated, along with troublesome people.  Middle-class notions of freedom must be shouted down.  The rule of the intellectuals must be imposed.  Never, ever criticize the cause.  Deny everything.  Never forget that Islam's a religion of peace.
• 
The future is ours, Comrades.
      Can Western civilization survive 'progressive' ignorance?  (JWR 01/23/2015)
• 
Our last president was savaged by Democrats and the foaming-mouth press for the last 13 years as a warmonger and torturer.  In response to a daily din of demand that War Criminal Bush must withdraw all the troops in Iraq, President 43 retorted in 2007 with a psychic prediction.
• 
Dubya prophesized if we pulled all the troops out too soon, Muslims would commit atrocities.  Further, competing Muslim armies with captured US weaponry and vehicles from fleeing Iraqi troops would cause mass murder and genocide.  He also predicted land grabs
• 
It wasn't so much that Bush was a military genius.  He wasn't — and he knew it.  He consulted with military experts both within and out of the armed forces.
• 
Just to show they aren't all about the murder of Jews and Christians, these psychos lined up 13 Muslim teens in Mosul, Iraq and mass executed them in public with machine guns.  Their crime?  They were watching a soccer game on TV, thus violating Sharia law — PRAISE ALLAH!  The bodies of these lads were left in public for hours as a lesson to the rest of the town.
• 
What Obama and Progressives don't know is the world has passed them by.  His speeches are a spiraling rehash of old Socialist/Communist ideas that never worked anywhere.
      Obama's tax plan an assault on economic growth cloaked in populist demagoguery  (Fox 01/22/2015)
• 
Investing is crucial to growth.  It is risky.  Raising the price of risk-taking is self-defeating.
• 
These and other Obama proposals are all destroyers of capital creation and investing, that is, they are anti-growth and would turn the U.S.  into a stagnant economy like that of France.
• 
The GOP should brush aside Obama's capital-destroying, investment-dampening nostrums and instead take a page from his playbook and go on offense.  How?  Propose the flat tax.
• 
Not only does the flat tax give immediate relief to wage earners, it also encourages capital creation and investing, which are critical to getting a dynamic economy again, the kind of economy that leads to better jobs and higher pay.
• 
GOPers must not fall into the trap of letting Obama define the terms of debate.  Force Democrats to respond to the idea of a new code of simplicity and fairness that jump-starts the economy.  Obama's risky schemes would be a tax lawyer's and lobbyist's delight.
      'Diversity' in Action  (JWR 01/21/2015)
• 
Europe is currently in the process of paying the price for years of importing millions of people from a culture hostile to the fundamental values of Western culture.  And this is by no means the last of the installments of that price, to be paid in blood and lives, for smug elites' Utopian self-indulgences in moral preening and gushing with the magic word "diversity."
• 
Meanwhile, in the United States, no one seems to be drawing any lessons about the dangers of importing millions of people from fundamentally different cultures across our open border.  In America, "diversity" has still not yet lost its magical ability to stop thought in its tracks and banish facts into the outer darkness.
• 
It is one of the monumental examples of political irresponsibility that the southern border has not been secured during administrations of either party, despite promises and posturing.
• 
These consequences include irreversible changes in the American population.  Ethnic "leaders" and welfare state goodies guarantee the fragmentation of the population, with never-ending strife among the fragments.  People who enter the country illegally will get, not only equal benefits with the American people who created those benefits, they will get more than many American citizens, thanks to affirmative action.
• 
We cannot simply let in everyone who wants to come to America, or there will be no America to come to.  Cultures matter — and not all cultures are mutually compatible, as Europeans are belatedly learning, the hard way.  And "assimilation" is a dirty word to multiculturalists.
• 
Surely we can think ahead enough to realize that children living in this country illegally are going to grow up and have children of their own, with cultures and values of their own — and ethnic "leaders" to promote discontent and hostility if they don't get as good results as people who have the prevailing American culture, beginning with the English language.
• 
You can't wish that away by saying the magic word "diversity" — not after we have seen what "diversity" has led to in Europe.
      The Real State of Our Union: More entitlements, taxes and unemployment  (Fox 01/19/2015)
• 
His aim is to give Americans buyer's remorse about electing a Republican Congress and boost a Clinton campaign for the White House emphasizing similar themes.
      Is nervous Obama White House holding Bergdahl report hostage?  (Fox 01/16/2015)
• 
There's little question that Bergdahl walked away.  There's little question that he was a captive.  The questions are whether, once he became a captive, he wanted to escape at any point; whether he was given preferential treatment and/or provided information to his captors as time went on; and, most importantly, whether his value was comparable to the five senior Taliban who were exchanged for his release.
• 
In White House terms, not charging Bergdahl means that he was indeed worth the trade for the Taliban Five.  But charging him on any level means that releasing the five Taliban was an error of monstrous proportions, one the administration will never be able to explain away satisfactorily.
• 
Either way, walking away from your post and crossing to the other side during a time of war is an unforgivable act deserving of the harshest of consequences.  Equating Bowe Bergdahl to the likes of John McCain would be a crime in its own right.
• 
      President Obama, here's how you build a legacy  (Fox 01/15/2015)
• 
"Hope" is always in the minds of Americans along with good will for any new president.  Much of that good will and almost all of the "hope," that this president could or would be different, is gone.
• 
His expected veto decision on the Keystone pipeline is to appease the environmentalists.
• 
His executive orders allowing millions of illegals to stay in the country rather than be deported is also viewed as a pandering to the fastest growing voting group.
• 
His alteration by executive order creating changes in his health care law have enraged members of Congress that have the real power to change laws.
• 
His attempt to close Guantanamo prison over the objections of Congress is another critical debate.
• 
But the biggest and most long lasting mistake maybe his withdrawal of ground troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
• 
And one he has not yet made may be more severe and dangerous to world peace — his headlong rush toward an attempt to get a nuclear deal with Iran.
• 
"I don't care about history.  I am going to be dead and gone and they will distort it anyways.  What I care about is those great young people we saw out there today and making sure they have the same opportunities we all had."
• 
Someone should have told you to take your place at the front of the line with other world leaders in Sunday's million person march in Paris, against worldwide terrorism.  Or you should have known yourself.  Yes, Mr.  President, they are terrorists and they hate everything we stand for.
• 
You want a legacy?  Work with the Congress the American people chose and get something done!
      What’s with the word game on Islamist militants?  (Fox 01/14/2015)
• 
President Obama's claim this summer that the Islamic State is not Islamic because its conduct doesn't reflect the values of the faith and not really a state, either.
• 
The president and his team seem to have lashed themselves to the idea that somehow non-Muslim politicians in the West have some say in defining the Pillars of Islam.
• 
"Mr.  President, our enemies are Islamic radicals, not generic 'extremists'."
      Paris lessons: US must revoke citizenship of Americans who join ISIS, Al Qaeda  (Fox 01/14/2015)
• 
The training makes them deadly — the Paris attacks were notable for their deadly precision and meticulous planning.  Their citizenship makes them mobile.
• 
That's why any American strategy to defeat jihad has to include measures to not just deny passports to American terrorists, but also strip them of citizenship.  This is basic common sense.
      New Year's Irresolution  (JWR 01/13/2015)
• 
On the international stage, it is the same principle, where the problem is seen as Western nations being undeservedly better off than other nations, both economically and in terms of greater military power.  Here too, Obama is for redistribution, even at the expense of his own country — if someone with such a "citizen of the world" viewpoint really thinks of America as his country, rather than a staging area for his world-changing, ideologically-driven crusades.
      Je Suis Charlie?  Media need to stop covering for murderous Muslims  (Fox 01/08/2015)
• 
Every Islamic terror attack is like a grenade.  The blast brutally kills and cripples its victims.  Most nearby dive for cover.
• 
That's what the American media have been doing for decades.  Every time another Muslim terrorist beheads, butchers or bombs, journalists do their best to hide from the reality.  Or quickly cover up the result as if they believe the rest of us will soon forget.
• 
"Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone.  Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression."
• 
But they are hardly the only cowardly media involved.  Hollywood has been running scared from radical Islam for years – far worse than how it handled North Korea.
• 
It's all part of how media and the left redefine reality.  "Terrorists" become "militants" and "terrorism" becomes "workplace violence." All to hide reality.
      Lib Pols and Media Are Just Plain Cowards  (JWR 01/10/2015)
• 
Anyone with a brain in their head knows that the killers who attacked the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris were Muslims.  Whether they were fanatics or not, the killers believe they are Muslim when they commit acts of violence while shouting 'Allahu Akbar' to avenge slights against their prophet Mohammed.  Cowardly politicians, however, and the craven media refuse to call a spade a spade and consequently encourage these acts of savagery against civilization.
• 
"The true rationale for the attack is obvious: for years, Western politicians and media have cowered in the face of Islamic assaults on the exercise of free speech.  The hallmark of Western civilization is freedom of the speech and of the press.  The threats against, attacks on, and killings of journalists and satirists who attack Islam, combined with the despicable multicultural cowardice of the West, have destroyed freedom of speech and of the press."
• 
I strongly suggest that Gov.  Dean do some further research as to what the Koran says and doesn't say.  There are over a hundred verses in the Koran exhorting the killing of non-believers.
• 
Dean and other cowardly Democrat politicians are taking their cues from President Obama who back in 2012, told the UN, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
• 
Did you know that since 9/11/2001, the most horrific terrorist attack on civilians in our history, the number of mosques in the US has grown by 75%?
• 
Once it was clear that we were not a vengeful sort, the Muslim community felt emboldened to expand its influence and once it was noted that politicians and the media would bend over backward so as not to offend, the die was cast.
• 
Meanwhile, public schools around the country are celebrating Be a Muslim Day with children dressing up in Arab dress.  Universities across the nation are installing footbaths for the Muslim ritual washing of their feet.
• 
We have not yet, however, reached the level of Islamization as Paris and other no-go areas in France where Sharia law is in place and French non-Muslims are not allowed.
• 
France may be lost but my concern is that we're not far behind as long as we have politicians and a craven media that are too timid to face the fact that we are at war with Islamists who want to kill us.  The moderate Muslims are as irrelevant as those German citizens who were not Nazis in WWII.  They are not in charge.
      When it comes to Islam, the media needs to ditch the 'narrative,' and report the truth  ()
• 
We're in the middle of a Hot War with Islamism.  There will be more attempted, or realized, lone-wolf terrorist attacks on our shores.  In the event, it would be helpful if the liberal media could ditch its love affair with narratives, and stick with the truth.
      Will we ever learn?  Obama White House can't admit Paris attacks 'Islamic terrorism'  (Fox 01/07/2015)
• 
I hate to disabuse our secretary of state, but indeed "freedom of expression" has indeed already been killed by acts of Islamic terrorism. 
• 
"We are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the prophet Muhammad, and obviously we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this," said Jay Carney, the White House spokesman.  "We know these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory."
• 
The president himself, before the United Nations, revealed his own appeasement of Islamic terrorists and hoodlums when he declared in September 2012: "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
• 
The issue we face is not, as Islamist groups falsely claim in the United States — ironically the very ones invited to the White House, Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and State Department — that using the term Islamic terrorism connotes a generalization that all Muslims are terrorists any more than using the term "Hispanic drug cartels" means that all Hispanics are druggies or that the term "Italian mafia" means that all Italians are mobsters or that the term "German Nazis" mean that all Germans were Nazis.
• 
The term Islamic terrorism mean just that: terrorist attacks with an Islamic motivation — whether they attempts to silence critics of Islam, impose Sharia, punish Western "crusaders," commit genocide of non-Muslims, establish Islamic supremacy (or Caliphate), or destroy any non Muslim peoples (e.g.  the Jews and Christians) that are "occupying Muslim lands."
• 
And so in refusing to use the term Islamic terrorism, the administration and their multiculturalist western leaders go along with the patently false charade that Islamic terrorism simply does not exist.
• 
If you cannot name your enemy, how can you expect to defeat him?
• 
And in the West, those Muslim Brotherhood front groups have managed to perpetuate one of the biggest and most dangerous national security frauds of the past 30 years: that use of the term Islamic terrorism is tantamount to a racist generalization that all Muslims are terrorist.  And that any criticism of Islam means you are an Islamophobe.
• 
To our everlasting shame, the Obama administration came to the defense of CAIR, which has been described as a front for Hamas by the FBI and was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist money laundering trial in U.S.  history...
• 
It's time for our leaders to stop this nonsense.  Islamic terrorism and extremism are brutal realities that have killed tens of thousands of people, mostly Muslims.
• 
And to ignore the common denominator in the motivation behind 75% of the world's annual terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists is a sure guarantee that Wednesday's attacks will be repeated over and over again.
      Cop: What you don't get about policing  (CNN 01/06/2015)
• 
In fact, cops are so confident in the true nature of their service, they're willing to strap a camera to their chest and film their behavior on the job (we won't hold our breath waiting for a similar offer from lawyers or politicians).
• 
Every police officer in America is confronted by dark and tragic realities on an almost daily basis...  Cops learn to insulate themselves from outside influence not because of mistrust, but as a way to cope with a world most civilians don't understand.
• 
In 2014, 126 officers were killed in the line of duty.  A significant percentage of these officers were murdered.  To read the stories of their deaths is to read of men and women who were, in many cases, killed because of the uniforms they wore and the values they stood for.
• 
Roughly 400 citizens have died annually, in recent years, as a result of a police action...  The most detailed analyses of cases that end in the death of a citizen as a result of police contact, are being accomplished by other organizations, such as the news media.
      Mario Cuomo and the folly of progressivism  (Fox, 01/06/2015)
• 
The thing about progressivism is that it resembles floor wax — all shine and no depth.
• 
Progressives are happy to embrace church teachings when it favors their political agenda, but reject them when those teachings don't conform to their politics.
• 
Inspiration is good if it motivates people to do for themselves and improve their lives.  Otherwise, it's nothing more than floor wax.
      A Year of Anniversaries  (JWR 01/02/2015)
• 
A hundred years ago, the President of the United States was Woodrow Wilson — the first president to openly claim that the Constitution of the United States was outdated, and that courts should erode the limits that the Constitution placed on the federal government.
• 
Today, after a hundred years of courts' eroding the Constitution's protections of personal freedom, we now have a president who has taken us dangerously close to one-man rule, unilaterally changing laws passed by Congress and refusing to enforce other laws — on immigration especially.
• 
Like Woodrow Wilson, our current president is charismatic, vain, narrow and headstrong.  Someone said of Woodrow Wilson that he had no friends, only devoted slaves and enemies.  That description comes all too close to describing Barack Obama, with his devoted political palace guard in the White House that he listens to, in contrast to the generals he ignores on military issues and the doctors he ignores on medical issues.
• 
It should be noted that, after the charismatic Woodrow Wilson, none of the next three presidents was the least bit charismatic.  Let us hope that the voters today have also learned how dangerous charisma and glib rhetoric can be — and what a childish self-indulgence it is to choose a president on the basis of symbolism.  Woodrow Wilson was the first Southerner to be elected president since the Civil War, as Obama was to become the first black president.  But neither fact qualified them to wield the enormous powers of the presidency.  Nor will being the first woman president, the first Hispanic president or other such firsts.
      The Inequality Problem  (JWR 01/02/2015)
• 
As a general principle, taking from people who make money to give to people who don't is a bad idea.  Giving to charity is different; we should all give what we can, but institutionally mandated redistribution is wrong.
• 
There are three aspects to becoming a financial success in this country: intelligence, ambition, and hard work.  There's also serendipity, but since no one can control that, it doesn't really count.  Intelligence differs with the individual of course, but it can be improved upon with education.  Likewise, the amount of ambition a person has also differs, but it can be cultivated and encouraged.  There's nothing easy about hard work, you just need to do it and keep on doing it.
There's no magic pill, and no amount of governmental assistance can help a person who doesn't have the desire to help himself.
• 
And according to people who study these things, when uneducated, poor people suddenly are given a lot of money; they are unable to hold on to it for very long.  Wealth will eventually end up back with the people who created it in the first place.  Simply giving non-working people money will not make them "equal" to those who work.
• 
There can never be true income equality for people; there will always be people with more money than others.  But there is a way for people to improve their lot in life if they are willing to do the hard stuff it takes to get there.
• 
America has always been the land of opportunity if you are willing to try for it.  Does that mean that every single person will get rich?  No.  But it means that every single person has the opportunity to try.  And that's the best anyone can ask for.
      The ironies of oil  (JWR 01/02/2015)
• 
In the vice presidential debates of 2008, Joe Biden mocked Sarah Palin for the supposedly mindless campaign mantra of "Drill, baby, drill." Biden intoned that, "It will take 10 years for one drop of oil to come out of any of the wells that are going to be drilled."
• 
The energy secretary-designate, the professorial Steven Chu, in 2008 had unwisely voiced a widely held but wisely unspoken progressive belief that, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" — or about $9 a gallon.
• 
Just two years ago, when up for re-election, Obama reminded Americans, "We can't just drill our way to lower gas prices."
• 
Obama ridiculed the Republican idea of lowering gas to $2 a gallon through new oil-recovery techniques.  "They're already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas," Obama mocked.  "I'll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling."
• 
The late Hugo Chavez used his oil windfall in Venezuela to subsidize subversion throughout Latin America.  Petrodollar-rich Russian President Vladimir Putin charted a confident anti-American foreign policy.
• 
Iran used its growing riches to step up progress toward producing a nuclear bomb while upping subsidies to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.
• 
Then, finally, oil and gas prices plunged due to the "drill, baby, drill," can-do attitude of the private sector.  Americans should thank the U.S.  oilman — from the drillers in the field to the engineers behind the scenes — who did the impossible.  They vastly increased the supply of what was supposedly a permanently declining resource, and thereby helped to crash prices.
• 
Oilmen, not the government, returned hundreds of billions of dollars to American consumers.  They, not Ivy League experts and Wall Street grandees, kick-started the economy where federal subsidies had failed to.  They, not the policies of the Obama administration or the rhetoric of Secretary of State John Kerry, weakened our enemies.
• 
What Obama once ridiculed is now saving him from himself — after he had championed policies that nearly destroyed him.
      Anti-Semitism at an All-Time High — Happy New Year  (INN 01/01/2015)
• 
Finally I have arrived at this conclusion, that a visionary is not someone who sees the future, but someone who has the power of clarity to see exactly what's directly in front of him.
• 
What is it about Jewish people that keeps them turning to the Left when all signs point to Liberalism as a recipe for suicide?
• 
During the 1930s the warnings were all over the place and even when there was still time to leave, those who could leave, stayed.
• 
They stayed and they perished because they could not see or refused to see what was directly in front of them.
• 
"A word of advice to any Israeli politician ready to give up land for peace, start by giving up your own home and neighborhood.  Illustrate your sincerity."
      You only thought the world was on fire in 2014  (CNN 01/01/2015)
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      Mike Rowe weighs in on Ferguson, Garner and police protests  (CNN 12/31/2014)
• 
"I'm a pawn in someone else's agenda, and I'm sick of it.  I know what bias looks like in my life.  I'm tired of being represented by two petty criminals who died resisting arrest."
• 
A few days ago, people were marching in the streets, literally calling for the execution of police.  ('What do we want?  Dead Cops!') Others are standing by today, waiting to lionize the assassins who answer the call.  These are not the champions of justice; these are the enemies of civilization, and it's up to sensible people on both sides of the aisle to close ranks and shout them down.  If we want to live in a nation of laws, we need to support the humans sworn to uphold them.
• 
I don't care if you're white, black, red, periwinkle, burnt umber, or chartreuse — resisting arrest is not a right, it's a crime.  And it's never a good idea.
      The wisdom of peace through strength  (JWR 12/31/2014)
• 
The response should go far beyond proportionality, and an example should be made of the perpetrators by using a host of available options to inflict the kind of punishment that will not be easily forgotten.  If we use proportionality as our standard, future adversaries will need only to consider certain consequences for encroaching on our rights.  If, on the other hand, they realize that the only accurate prediction they can make is that they will suffer enormous consequences, I believe their adventurism would be tempered.
• 
... strength is a quality that is respected by all cultures, regardless of their ideological bent.
• 
There was a time when American citizens were relatively safe, no matter where they traveled in the world.  Everyone knew that there would be significant consequences for harming Americans.
• 
Many will remember the Iran hostage crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  During that time, we had a president who was not feared or respected.  On the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president, the hostages were released.
• 
It is imperative that as a nation, we say what we mean and we mean what we say.  This contributes to the safety and stability of the world and, in the long run, will cost us much less money and fewer lives.  Our friends around the world should have no better friend and our enemies should have no fiercer foe.  We certainly do not need to make everyone conform to our values, but we must protect and defend those values, including freedom of expression, and we should never yield to evil nor should we ignore it at our own peril.
      Are Facts Obsolete?  (JWR 12/31/2014)
• 
What matters today is how well you can concoct a story that fits people's preconceptions and arouses their emotions.  Politicians like New York mayor Bill de Blasio, professional demagogues like Al Sharpton and innumerable irresponsible people in the media have shown that they have great talent in promoting a lynch mob atmosphere toward the police.
• 
Grand juries that examine hard facts live in a different world from mobs who listen to rhetoric and politicians who cater to the mobs.
• 
The fact is that Zimmerman did not have to track down Trayvon Martin, who was sitting right on top of him, punching him till his face was bloody.
• 
What was decisive was not what either set of witnesses said, but what the autopsy revealed, an autopsy involving three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Michael Brown's family.  Witnesses can lie but the physical facts don't lie, even if politicians, mobs and the media prefer to take lies seriously.
• 
But Garner did not die with a policeman choking him.  He died later, in an ambulance where his heart stopped.  He had a long medical history of various diseases, as well as a long criminal history.  No doubt the stress of his capture did not do him any good, and he might well still be alive if he had not resisted arrest.  But that was his choice.
• 
Despite people who say blithely that the police need more "training," there is no "kinder and gentler" way to capture a 350-pound man, who is capable of inflicting grievous harm, and perhaps even death, on any of his would-be captors.  The magic word "unarmed" means nothing in practice, however much the word may hype emotions.
• 
If you are killed by an unarmed man, you are just as dead as if you had been annihilated by a nuclear bomb.  But you don't even know who is armed or unarmed until after it is all over, and you can search him.
• 
Incidentally, did you know that, during this same period when riots, looting and arson have been raging, a black policeman in Alabama shot and killed an unarmed white teenager — and was cleared by a grand jury?  Probably not, if you depend on the mainstream media for your news.
• 
Television viewers did not get to see the other black men in the same vehicle that Rodney King was driving recklessly.  Those other black men were not beaten.  And the grand jury got to see the whole video, after which they acquitted the police — and the media then published the jurors' home addresses.
• 
Such media retribution against people they don't like is part of a growing lynch mob mentality.
• 
Is this what we want?  Grand juries responding to mobs and the media, instead of to the facts?
      Ringing out the year with liberal double standards  (JWR 12/31/2014)
• 
When Republicans are in power, "dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
• 
When Democrats are in power, dissent is the racist fuming of "angry white men."
• 
Peaceful, law-abiding tea party groups who cleaned up after their protests — and got legal permits for them — were signs of nascent fascism lurking in the American soul.  Violent, anarchic and illegal protests by Occupy Wall Street a few years ago or, more recently, in Ferguson, Missouri, were proof that a new idealistic generation was renewing its commitment to idealism.
• 
When Republicans invoke God or religious faith as an inspiration for their political views, it's threatening and creepy.  When Democrats do it, it's a sign they believe in social justice.
• 
"Behind every apparent double standard lies an unconfessed single standard."
      Brandeis University's latest moment of shame  (JWR 12/31/2014 )
• 
... what our universities have become, a corruption where leftist activism and ideology triumph over any pretense of reason.  Identity departments do not teach, they preach.  Serious students try to avoid these programs.  Consequently, universities have instituted diversity requirements, making these courses compulsory, and also creating an artificial need for people to teach them.
      America interrupted  (JWR 12/30/2014)
• 
It was that generation that promoted cohabitation, no-fault divorce, hatred of the police (they called them "pigs" then, too) and disdain for the military and America, spawned not just by the Vietnam War but a life of relative ease unknown to their parents.
• 
Glubb noted the average age of empires since the time of ancient Assyria (859-612 B.C.) is 250 years.
• 
All empires begin, writes Glubb, with the age of pioneers, followed by ages of conquest, commerce, affluence, intellect and decadence.  America appears to have reached the age of decadence, which Glubb defines as marked by "defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, an influx of foreigners, the welfare state, (and) a weakening of religion."
• 
Decadence, he writes, "is due to: Too long a period of wealth and power, selfishness, love of money (and) the loss of a sense of duty."
• 
It will take more than a new Congress in 2015 and a new president in 2017 to save us from the fate of other empires.  It will take a revival of the American spirit, and that can only come through changed attitudes towards our institutions and each other.
      Dems running on stolen valor?  (JWR 12/30/2014)
• 
"Torture to me is an American Citizen on a cell phone making a call to his four young daughters shortly before he burnt to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York on 9/11."
• 
As Rob O'Neill, the man who used KSM's knowledge to put three bullets in Osama bin-Laden's head said, "If you can walk away from it, it's not torture.
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 12/30/2014)
• 
Every society has some people who don't respect the law.  But, when it is the people in charge of the law — like the President of the United States and his Attorney General — who don't respect it, that is when we are in big trouble.
• 
Has anyone asked the question, "How could so many people across the country spend so much time at night marching, rioting and looting, if they had to get up and go to work the next morning?"
• 
Back in 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said, "I have realized vividly how Herr Hitler feels." Ronald Reagan, however, made sure our adversaries understood how we felt.  Reagan's approach turned out a lot better than Chamberlain's.
• 
There are few modest talents so richly rewarded — especially in politics and the media — as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights.
• 
President Obama's establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba was not due to what the American public wanted or even what his own party wanted.  It was a decision in defiance of both, just as his decisions about military matters ignore what generals say and his decisions about medical matters ignore what doctors have said.
• 
When the political left wants to help the black community, they usually want to help the worst elements in that community — thugs they portray as martyrs, for example — without the slightest regard for the negative effect this can have on the lives of the majority of decent black people.
      Before it's too late: Another Orwellian idea re-emergeing from its musty cave  (JWR 12/30/2014)
• 
As local, state and the federal government get bigger and, consequently, more incompetent, they see the average citizen as more of a threat.  There are two ways to control that threat: eliminate disposable income, which funds your personal freedom, including political activities.  The other is to condition you into accepting a complete elimination of your personal privacy and allowing the government to know when and where you go at all times.
• 
One of the more silly claims is a mileage fee would replace the gas tax.  Jonathan Gruber must have assured someone that we're stupid.  We all know, once a tax is implemented, it is never removed.
• 
It also seems, once politicians get their hands on our money, there is no restriction or common sense used on how to spend it.
• 
At the top of our "to do" list should be a reminder to make sure our state and federal representatives know tracking and taxing us like a government-owned beast of burden is unequivocally unacceptable.
      Barack and Michelle Obama Victims of Racism???  Ha ha  (JWR 12/30/2014)
• 
Who can forget what she said in 2008 "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Nothing to be proud of a country like ours unless she and her husband are glorified as saviors?
• 
What a joke.  Barack Hussein Obama and Michelle Obama are the two luckiest people on earth, black or white.  They have about as much in common with the poor blacks in the ghetto on Uncle Sam's plantation as I have with the Queen of England.
• 
He has never wanted for any material goods and went to Ivy League institutions.  How Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown is that?
• 
About the only connection Barack Obama has with them is a fondness for smoking marijuana.  Yet he continually tries to connect with a ghetto base for the sole purpose of political opportunism.
• 
Obamas are probably the most divisive and polarizing of all White House occupants.
      It's Not an Either-Or Question  (JWR 12/29/2014)
• 
In fact, there's less hard evidence for any mental illness than there is for "radicalization", at least to the extent that Brinsley appears to have posted on his Facebook page the Koranic soundbite about "striking fear into the enemies of Allah".  Nevertheless, the preferred explanation is that Brinsley was mentally ill, just like the guy who beheaded a coworker in Oklahoma was mentally ill, and the Sydney bloke who took those hostages at the coffee shop was mentally ill, and the son of the Canadian Refugee Board honcho who killed a soldier at the Canadian War Memorial was mentally ill.  They were also all Muslim.  Oh, and the fellow in France who ran down 11 people with his car while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" only yesterday has already been pronounced mentally ill.  By sheer coincidence, he was Muslim, too.
• 
To get people to march in the streets shouting "What do we want?  Dead cops!  When do we want them?  Now!" is relatively easy.  To persuade Al Sharpton's swaggering halfwit goons to act on their slogans is another matter.  A person has to be suggestible, and there's an accumulation of evidence that in today's world disaffected young Muslim men are the most easily suggestible of all.  Whether they're suggestible because they're Muslim or they're Muslim because they're suggestible is one of those chicken-or-egg conundrums.
      White Libs and the New Racism  (JWR 12/29/2014)
• 
I attended a forum the other night at a liberal synagogue about "the tragic trend of police shootings of unarmed black men." Let's set aside that there is no "trend" and that the "unarmed" black men were also resisting arrest, and in the case of Michael Brown was trying to take the gun away from the police officer who felt he had to shoot him in order to save his own life.
• 
They talked about how cops had to change their behavior in order to stop the "trend" that was killing off "unarmed" black men.  But during their presentations, not one of them uttered even one word about what criminal suspects needed to do to avoid being shot by police.
• 
I told the libs I found it troubling that no one was holding criminal suspects responsible for their actions.  Then I offered up a list of three things people needed to do to avoid trouble with the police.
• 
1.  Obey the law.
• 
2.  Don't resist arrest.
• 
3.  Never — NEVER!  — try to take a cop's gun away from him.
• 
Then I dropped a statistic on them.  Black police officers account for a little more than 10 percent of all fatal police shootings (according to the most current government statistics).  But of those they kill, 78 percent were black.
• 
That leads us to one of two conclusions I told the lefties: Either black cops are just as racist as they believe white cops are — or — a lot of black criminal suspects do things that bring about their own demise.
• 
I must have said something about how liberals would never tell 15-year old black girls to stop having babies because one of the libs told me that it's not up to white people to tell black people how to raise their families.
• 
A few days later, with their liberal rubbish still clogging my thoughts, I remembered that old observation by Winston Churchill.  "Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart.  Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."
      Tortured Discussion about Torture  (JWR 12/29/2014)
• 
... it is easy for those who never have to confront evil to demand that we here in the United States should play by a different rulebook than the murderous enemies that challenge civilization.
• 
... for us to completely abandon techniques to extract essential information from combatants would be unilaterally disarming.
• 
What seems to be forgotten is that we are at war.  We have been at war with Islamic terrorists for at least two decades if not longer.  The way things are going, we will be at war with these malcontents for a long time.  Until they are wiped out, this conflict will continue because groups like the Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram and Hamas will not relent until totally defeated.  We are reminded of that whenever they show us another beheaded American, but we seem to forget about it when it is over "there," in Afghanistan or Israel.
• 
... you will never convince me that solely using conversation and positive encouragement will elicit information from our enemies.
• 
The same people decrying the actions of the CIA are not marching in the streets demanding President Obama stop using unmanned drones from annihilating terrorists and anyone hanging with them.  Personally I think that anyone hanging out with well-established terrorists get what they deserve and are not actually collateral damage or innocent.  If you don't believe we should be using torture or drones then you ignore the dangers in this worldthat have existed for millenniums and I would not want you in a position of power.
• 
The current danger principally comes from maniacal Islamic terrorists.  There will be another danger after that challenging our country and our allies.  They hate us not because of what we do, but because of who we are and what we stand for as they attempt to impose their will on us.  We need brave souls willing to protect us and I am glad we have them.
      Generation gap: Renewed ties expose painful Cuban-American rift  (CNN 12/27/2014)
• 
Among those most traumatized by the Cuban revolution were the 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children airlifted to the United States in a U.S.-sponsored operation called Pedro Pan, a reference to Peter Pan.  Parents sent their children to U.S.  soil out of fear that communism would usurp parental authority.
• 
"To see my government that is the United States would do such a thing, it does not value what they say about freedom of expression and the human rights."
• 
"It's a betrayal to the memory of many Cubans who have died and who have died in the ocean or that they've killed just because they didn't agree with the communist government."
• 
"I always thought that sooner or later we would have an agreement, between the U.S.  government and Cuba, but not a government under the Castro brothers."
• 
"I think in five years we will be here and we are going to look at this day and say nothing has changed.  Remember, the same promises that (Raul) Castro is telling Obama, (Fidel Castro) said 15 to 20 years ago to the Pope, and nothing changed in the 20 years since the Pope went to Cuba."
      Outraged at paying $80 million to torture teachers  (JWR 12/26/2014)
• 
The cumulative effect of Obama's feckless "foreign policy" is weakness.  His loathing of America and divisive second-guessing feed our enemies' resolve, betray our allies, are politically motivated — and unnecessary.
• 
The fake moral outrage that is the trademark of liberals continues.  Somehow it is awful to slap around a mass-murdering 9/11 mastermind, but it's OK for Obama to kill many innocent bystanders at family weddings with drone attacks.
• 
The CIA was also accused of giving terrorists "rectal hydration." Democrats call it torture, but liberals in Beverly Hills pay good money for colonics like that.  Nancy Pelosi said such methods do not reflect our country's values – this from a woman whose district in San Francisco would like to see the same thing covered under Obamacare.
• 
Either way, the information extracted from KSM helped us get bin Laden, for which, hypocritically, Obama eagerly took credit.
• 
After 9/11, Bush felt we had two choices.  The first was to grab the guys who helped those who did it and interrogate them to get to the leaders, and then light up terrorist training camps with bombs.  That was the right choice.  The other choice was to invade, occupy and bomb Afghanistan and Iraq back to the Stone Age, which set those countries back only about a month.  That was the wrong decision.
• 
The only outrages from this report are that the Democrats saw fit to release it and that our government paid two ex-government employees more than $80 million so that the U.S.  could torture terrorists for information.
      Stop lying about the police  (JWR 12/25/2014)
• 
The "national conversation" about race and policing we've been having ever since Michael Brown was shot by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., last summer has been based on lies.  The lie that Officer Wilson shot Brown while he had his hands up and was pleading "Don't shoot." The lie that New York City policemen targeted Eric Garner for a violent arrest because he was black.  The lie, peddled especially by the progressive prince of New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, that the police are racist.
• 
"Criminologists have spent decades trying to prove that the overrepresentation of blacks and Hispanic in prison demonstrates that the criminal justice system is racist.  And each time they fail.  Even the most left-wing academics have been forced to admit that crime, not race, determines criminal justice outcomes."
• 
Police go where the crime is, and at considerable risk to themselves.
• 
"Everyone says they hate cops but they are the people that they call for help."
      Reagan's big lesson for America  (CNN 12/26/2014)
• 
"The remarkable thing is that although basic research does not begin with a particular practical goal, when you look at the results over the years, it ends up being one of the most practical things government does.  This is why I've urged Congress to devote more money to research.  It is an indispensable investment in America's future."
      Black Progression and Retrogression  (JWR 12/24/2014)
• 
There is no question, though it's not acknowledged enough, that black Americans have made greater gains, over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short span of time, than any other racial group in mankind's history.  What's the evidence?  If black Americans were thought of as a nation with their own gross domestic product, they'd rank among the 20 wealthiest nations.
• 
The significance of all this is that in 1865, neither an ex-slave nor an ex-slave owner would have believed that such progress would be possible in less than a century and a half.  As such, it speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people.  Just as importantly, it speaks to the greatness of a nation within which such progress was possible.  That progress would have been impossible anywhere except in the United States of America.
• 
Older black people, who were raised in an era when there was far greater discrimination and who faced far fewer opportunities, need to speak out against behavior and excuses that their parents would have never accepted.  Otherwise, the race hustlers, poverty pimps and white liberals will continue with the narrative that black problems are a result of racism and racist cops and condemn future generations of blacks to a lifetime of mediocrity.
      Who's Responsible?  (JWR 12/23/2014)
• 
The cold-blooded murder of two New York City policemen as they sat in their car is not only an outrage but also a wake-up call.  It shows, in the most painful way, the high cost of having demagogues, politicians, mobs and the media constantly taking cheap shots at the police.
• 
Someone once said that civilization is a thin crust over a volcano.  The police are part of that thin crust.  We have seen before our own eyes, first in Ferguson, Missouri and then in other communities, what happens when there is just a small crack in that crust, and barbarism and arson burst out.
• 
It is a painful irony that, on the eve of the murders of these two police officers in New York, some of the city's police were already saying that, in the event of their deaths, they did not want Mayor Bill de Blasio to attend their funerals.
• 
We can only hope that Mayor de Blasio has some residual decency, so that he will not defile these two officers' memorial services with his presence.  No politician in the country has done more to play the race card against the police and spread the notion that cops are the big problem in minority communities.
• 
"What can we say to our sons?" some demagogues ask.  They can say, "Don't go around punching strangers, because it is only a matter of time before you punch the wrong stranger."
• 
Mayor de Blasio has made anti-police comments with Al Sharpton seated at his side.  This is the same Al Sharpton with a trail of slime going back more than a quarter of a century, during which he has whipped up mobs and fomented race hatred.
• 
Make no mistake about it.  There is political mileage to be made siding with demagogues like Al Sharpton who, as demagogue-in-chief, has been invited to the White House dozens of times by its commander-in-chief.
      Must make the 'militants' comfy: Dems fret about terrorist rights  (JWR 12/23/2014)
• 
"By attempting at this late date to vilify the men and women who did the hard, dangerous and unpleasant work of keeping the rest of us safe, [committee Democrats] create, gratuitously, a real and present danger.  They have placed a higher value on the exaggerated ‘suffering' of barely human monsters than on the safety of our diplomats, our troops, our citizens abroad and our closest allies."
• 
Democrats will regret positioning themselves as the party that puts the comfort of terrorists ahead of the safety of Americans.
      When Jihad Johnny "Comes Marching Home Again"  (INN 12/23/2014 )
• 
The Western alliance led by the United States supported Islamic terrorist groups in Afghanistan under the assumption that "the enemy of my enemy - is my friend" and that short-term assumption turned out to be a long term strategic blunder.
• 
After the war in Afghanistan ended, Western countries absorbed thousands of returning "unemployed" Jihadist fighters as a mark of thanks for fighting and beating the Soviets.
• 
In the near future, when Islamic State falls apart or ceases to be attractive, thousands of Western born and bred Muslims– all steeped in Jihadist ideology, with comprehensive guerrilla warfare training and extensive combat experience – will neatly pack away their black flags and return home to mom.
• 
Due to the clear and present danger posed by returning Islamic terrorists to their home countries, this seemingly unpopular legislation can be an effective rallying call to support those legislators in both houses of Congress in limiting the unrestricted amnesty proposed by President Obama.
      High Noon in Hollywood  (JWR 12/23/2014)
• 
"This is not just an attack on Sony.  It involves every studio, every network, every business and every individual in this country.  That is why we fully support Sony's decision not to submit to these hackers' demands.  We know that to give in to these criminals now will open the door for any group that would threaten freedom of expression, privacy and personal liberty.  We hope these hackers are brought to justice but until they are, we will not stand in fear.  We will stand together."
• 
"We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.  Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don't like or news reports that they don't like or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self censorship because they don't want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.  That's not who we are.  That's not what America is about."
      Obama's Cuban olive branch  (JWR 12/22/2014)
• 
Candidate Barack Obama said that, as president, he would talk to anti-American dictators without precondition.  He didn't mention that he would also give them historic policy concessions without precondition.
• 
Every dictator around the world must be waiting anxiously for a call or a postcard from Obama.  The leader of the free world comes bearing gifts and understanding.  He is willing to overlook human-rights abuses.  And his idea of burnishing his legacy is to clinch deals with his country's enemies.
• 
It is true, of course, that the embargo — which Obama can't lift on his own — hasn't ended the Castro regime.  On the other hand, there is little reason to believe that lifting the embargo will end it, either.  Our vast trade with China hasn't yet made Beijing any less repressive.
• 
The Cuba embargo is condemned as a relic of the Cold War, but it is the regime itself that is a relic, an inhuman jackboot left over from the era when people actually professed to believe in workers' paradises.
      A happy Christmas for the Castro regime  (JWR 12/22/2014)
• 
There is no freedom of speech or religion in Cuba, no due process of law, no right to criticize the government.  Nor is there any right to leave, which is why so many Cubans have lost their lives at sea, drowning in desperate attempts to escape.  If the president's abrupt shift of policy were part of an American strategy to topple such an odious dictatorship, it might be defensible.  Unfortunately, it is hard to see this as anything but one more iteration of the Obama administration's idea of statecraft: Accommodate the world's worst actors and consciously reduce America's clout in shaping international opinion.
• 
"Don't be confused about this," Obama told voters in Florida.  "I will maintain the embargo.  It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: If you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations.  That's the way to bring about real change in Cuba."
• 
There have always been reasonable arguments on both sides of America's fraught Cuba policy.  But there is nothing reasonable about Obama's drastic shift of policy.  It amounts to an invaluable gift to the worst regime in the Americas, in exchange for no lasting gain in human rights, democracy, or libertad.
      No superheroes in 'The Interview' capitulation  (JWR 12/22/2014)
• 
During the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein was raining scud missiles on Israel, the Israelis refused to bend, even though they reasonably feared the missiles were tipped with nerve gas.  A long-planned symphony concert went ahead as scheduled.  The only accommodation they made to the assault: Everyone in the audience wore gas masks.  (ABC News cast this heroic defiance in anti-Semitic terms, reporting that the concertgoers were determined to get their money's worth.)
• 
In America, when faced with less credible threats, we flew the white flag.
• 
The point is it did.  And America is effectively giving one of the most evil regimes in human history a veto on our First Amendment.
      Sony and How the West Was Lost  (INN 12/21/2014 )
• 
If you're cheering the decline of the Unites States, who are you going to turn to if there's trouble — Sweden?
• 
We woke up one morning to find that we put the wrong man in the White House.  Then four years later, oops, we did it again, only to prove Jonathan Gruber's point that "American voters are stupid."
At the threat of physical and further digital harm, Sony immediately caved in to a North Korean demand that it cancel the showing of "The Interview," a movie that lampoons that country's supreme leader.
• 
We did it to ourselves, and we keep doing it, like bowing to autocrats and pretty tyrants.
• 
When rabble-rousers like Sharpton run our most precious cultural assets, and when cop-hating Mayor Bill de Blasio runs our biggest city, New York, it's tough luck all around.  But we have no one to blame but ourselves.  We have made some awful choices.  Now we walk streets where mobs rule and where the police refuse to go.
      Why New York is wrong about fracking  (CNN 12/19/2014)
• 
Fracking injects sand water and small amounts of chemicals into deep oil- and gas-containing formations, cracking the rocks and allowing the trapped gas and oil to be recovered.  Hydraulic fracturing has saved Americans billions of dollars, contributed to reduced U.S.  carbon dioxide emissions and greatly bolstered the U.S.  geopolitical position and America's energy security.
• 
The United States has seen dramatic reductions in national carbon dioxide emissions largely as a result of hydraulic fracturing, which allowed natural gas to become cheap and abundant, and mostly displacing dirtier, higher-emission coal in the generation mix.  Hydraulic fracturing, and the similar techniques used for "tight oil" drilling, have actually allowed the United States to become the world's leading oil producer in 2014.
• 
The boom in hydraulic fracturing and tight oil production in the United States has helped undermine Russia's international standing by contributing to plummeting global oil prices.  America's ability to produce and potentially export more natural gas could similarly reduce Russia's ability to leverage natural gas exports to Europe.
      America lost the cyberwar over Sony: Now what?  (CNN 12/18/2014)
• 
This was not some amusing pop culture event in which a few "hackers" played games with celebrities.
This was not an entertaining series of embarrassing leaks that allowed us to learn how viciously and nastily some senior Hollywood bosses write about famous movie stars in internal emails.
This was a deliberate assault on sovereign American soil against an American company, costing it millions of dollars in direct damages and hundreds of millions in reputational damages while blocking most of its employees from using their internal systems to get routine work done.
This was a threatened physical assault against moviegoers and movie theaters nationwide if they ignored the cyberattack and dared to laugh at the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Defending America against foreign enemies is the duty of the United States government.  To "provide for the common defense" is one of the reasons given in the preamble to the Constitution for forming a government.
The real danger is that this incident will become a precedent.  Other countries and other terrorist groups will conclude that it is open season on American interests and even American lives.  American companies will begin (in fact have already begun) self-censoring to avoid offending dictators and terrorists.  The enemies of our freedoms will have won.
First, we have to go on the offense in this campaign and refuse to accept that the fight is over.  North Korea must be made to pay an extraordinary price for this attack.  One step might be to simply confiscate North Korean ships until the dictatorship pays triple damages to Sony and the theaters for the cost of its attack.
Second, we should develop an immediate response capability to defend American interests and crush cyberopponents immediately.
Third, we must develop vastly better defensive and offensive capabilities.
We have now entered the age of cyberwar and we lost a major round in that war.  The longer it takes us to confront this fact and take the necessary corrective actions, the greater our vulnerability to another defeat will be.
      Hollywood's complete moral surrender  (CNN 12/18/2014)
• 
It opens a new and insidious chapter in artistic censorship that raises the question of whether any work that lampoons or derides a powerful public figure or institution can now be made in today's entertainment industry.
What Sony's capitulation shows, however, is that in our postmodern era, shutting down the arts no longer requires jackbooted soldiers, raging mobs — or even manifest physical danger.
...  after Sony's decision, the mere threat of attack by shadowy digital forces may now be enough to forestall interest in depicting "controversial" public figures — or subjects.
Sony has given saboteurs a virtual veto over its productions, and Hollywood seems likely to follow suit.  In short, at least in this battle, the terrorists have won.
      Racial' Cop Stories That Didn't Make the Cut  (JWR 12/18/2014)
      Dems' Wasteful Torture Report  (JWR 12/17/2014)
• 
The high-profile release of this information at a time when we are engaged in war with various terrorist groups demonstrates a profound lack of wisdom because this information will undoubtedly be used as an effective recruitment tool by our enemies.
If we allow our enemies to do anything they want to do, including beheading our citizens, but we feel that we must accord them every courtesy and comfort, our days of winning wars will be over.  We should not put our military forces, our intelligence-gathering forces or any of our defensive or offensive personnel in a position of questioning whether we will back them up when a problem arises if they are using their best judgment on behalf of their fellow citizens.  This will only cause them to be fearful and tentative at times when definitive and aggressive action is warranted.
      Should Profiling Be Banned?  (JWR 12/17/2014)
• 
The reality is that race and other behavioral characteristics are correlated, including criminal behavior.  That fact does not dispel the insult, embarrassment, anger and hurt a law-abiding black person might feel when being stopped by police, being watched in stores, being passed up by taxi drivers, standing at traffic lights and hearing car door locks activated, or being refused delivery by merchants who fear for their safety in his neighborhood.  It is easy to direct one's anger at the taxi driver or the merchant.  However, the behavior of taxi drivers and owners of pizza restaurants cannot be explained by a dislike of dollars from black hands.  A better explanation is they might fear for their lives.  The true villains, to whom anger should be directed, are the tiny percentage of people in the black community who prey on both blacks and whites and have made black synonymous with crime.
      Where's the outrage over the Sony hack?  (CNN 12/16/2014)
      Tortured Reasoning  (JWR 12/16/2014)
• 
The ease with which politicians are willing to pull the rug out from under people whose job is to safeguard our lives — whether they are CIA agents, the police or the military — is not only a betrayal of those people but a danger to us all.
People who are constantly denouncing the police, including with demonstrable lies, may think they are showing solidarity with people in the ghettos.  But, when police hesitate to go beyond "kinder and gentler" policing, that leaves decent people in black communities at the mercy of hoodlums and thugs who have no mercy.
When conscientious young people, of any race, who would like to help maintain peace and order see that being a policeman means having race hustlers constantly whipping up mob hostility against you — and having opportunistic politicians and the media joining the race hustlers — those young people may well decide that some other line of work would be better for them.
      Emasculated and Enkindled  (JWR 12/15/2014)
• 
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small.  In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.  When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.  To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself.  One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed.  A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.  I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
      The Truth IS out There — but it's only Online  (JWR 12/15/2014)
• 
Those ongoing national protests that resulted from two deaths of blacks by white police officers have been the direct result of media lies.  In the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo, the reports repeated the, "Hands up.  Don't shoot" canard that the media knew was a lie instigated by dubious witnesses who were later forced to tell the truth to the grand jury.  The truth mattered not because the violence that followed the grand jury decision not to indict the officer was premeditated and encouraged by race-baiters — attorney general Eric Holder and Al Sharpton.  The other media negligence was in failing to report that the death of Eric Garner was not a race issue but a tragedy by omitting the fact that Garner's arrest in Staten Island was supervised by a black female sergeant, Kizzy Adoni, in charge of the fatal incident.  You will, however, never read about that sergeant or her race in the mainstream media because she doesn't fit the racist hype that it sells in place of bona fide journalistic investigation.
All this discord and violence has been generated by the false reporting by a complicit and irresponsible media.
      On So-Called Torture: 'Never Again' Is Not A Policy  (JWR 12/15/2014)
• 
Critics of the CIA program believe they have taken the moral high ground, a place liberals like to call home whether the issue is enhanced interrogation, race, income inequality or just about anything else.  But if this really is about American values, as they like to tell us, then the burden is on them — to explain why America should "never" resort to "torture" no matter how many lives it would save.  The burden is on them to explain what great American values they'd be preserving if a few thousand more Americans were killed — when their deaths might have been avoided.
      One challenge for Ferguson grand jury: Some witnesses' credibility  (CNN 12/14/2014)
• 
The chief prosecutor's goal was "to avoid the argument that he customized the presentation for a particular result — even though he had to presume, as it turned out, that he would still be criticized for that."
"Cop shooting cases are always highly controversial and there is an awareness that the omission of any evidence may subject the prosecutor to future public criticism by either the family of the victim or by the police officers involved."
      Scalia on torture morality: 'I don't think it's so clear at all'  (CNN 12/12/2014)
• 
"I don't think it's so clear at all.  I think it is very facile for people to say 'Oh, torture is terrible.' You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people."
"You think it's an easy question?  You think it's clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?"
"...  each society's perception of what it believes human rights should be ought to be up to that society, and I think it's very foolish to yield that determinations not only to a foreign body but to a foreign body of judges.  I don't know why anyone would want to do that."
"...  the amount of money that is spent on all elections — state, local and federal — in the United States, is less than what women spend on cosmetics for a year, OK?"
"If you think that a fair system of election speech is going to be devised by the incumbent senators and congressmen, you are naive.  They will for sure, as they have in the past, devise a system that favors the incumbent.  If that's the choice of evils — have a system that always favors the incumbent or, you know, let people speak as much as they want with as much money as they want — I choose the latter.  I don't even regard the latter as an evil."
He said if people really believe "the masses are so ignorant that they are swayed by television ads," then "let's have a king.  Right?  Let's have a king."
      CIA chief John Brennan, more credible than Senate torture report?  (CNN 12/12/2014)
• 
The attacks that morning of 9/11 terrified the country and we quickly looked to the CIA to track down those responsible and ensure they never attacked us again.
We didn't want those agents — as the phrase goes — to bring a baguette to a knife fight; both the White House and Congress wanted them to do whatever it took.
CIA was not prepared to run a detention and interrogation program — who would have thought they needed one?
John Brennan...  admits that the CIA made many mistakes, that the interrogation program was deeply flawed, and that it was properly stopped — but he insists that overall, CIA agents deserve respect for bravely putting their lives on the line for the country — some 20 have died — and very importantly, for helping to prevent a new 9/11.
Given this background, isn't John Brennan at least as credible as the Committee, if not more so?  Aren't his views more balanced — and thus deserving of respect?  Shouldn't his views help us to moderate the red hot coverage in the press and the monotonous partisan attacks among politicians?
No other country to my knowledge has been so transparent about its paramilitary techniques in the midst of a dangerous war.  Indeed, we all know what the terrorists would have done had they captured a bunch of Americans: They would have butchered every last one.
      A travesty of a report: The authors have forgotten our history  (JWR 12/12/2014)
• 
To produce a prosecutorial brief so entirely and relentlessly one-sided, the committee report (written solely by Democrats) excluded any testimony from the people involved and variously accused.  None.  No interviews, no hearings, no statements.
So what was the Bush administration to do?  Amid the smoking ruins of Ground Zero, conduct a controlled experiment in gentle interrogation and wait to see if we'd be hit again?
A nation attacked is not a laboratory for exquisite moral experiments.  It's a trust to be protected, by whatever means meet and fit the threat.
Accordingly, under the direction of the Bush administration and with the acquiescence of congressional leadership, the CIA conducted an uncontrolled experiment.  It did everything it could, sometimes clumsily, sometimes cruelly, indeed, sometimes wrongly.
But successfully.  It kept us safe.
      Dianne Feinstein's travesty  (JWR 12/12/2014)
• 
The overall contention of the report is that we would have been just fine and achieved the same results in the war on terror with less information, rather than more.  Not only does that defy common sense, it is a bet no one would have been willing to make in 2002.
Nor would anyone have guessed 10 years ago that it would be considered more in keeping with American values to assassinate people from drones rather than capture them and ask them questions under duress.
      The other America  (JWR 12/11/2014)
• 
Germany's first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, supposedly once said that there was "a special providence for drunkards, fools and the United States of America."
• 
Apparently, late 19th century observers could not quite explain how the U.S. thrived when by logic it should not.  That paradox has never been more true than today.
• 
In such a depressing American landscape, why is the United States doing pretty well?
• 
Put simply, millions of quiet, determined Americans get up every morning and tune out the incompetence and corruption of their government.  They simply ignore destructive fads of popular culture.  They have no time for the demagoguery of their politicians and the divisive rhetoric of social activists.  Instead, these quiet Americans simply go to work, pursue their own talents, excel at what they do, and seek to take care of their families.
• 
The result of their singular expertise is that even in America's current illness, the nation still soars above the global competition.
• 
America is not saved by our elected officials, bureaucrats, celebrities and partisan activists.  Instead, just a few million hardworking Americans in key areas — a natural meritocracy of all races, classes and backgrounds — ignore the daily hype and chaos, remain innovative and productive, and dazzle the world.
• 
The silent few of a forgotten America have given the entire country an astonishing standard of living that is quite inexplicable.
      Why release a report on the CIA in wartime?  (JWR 12/11/2014)
• 
There is one enhanced tactic most people might agree should be used — winning this long war.  We should commit ourselves to that, defeating those who wish to obliterate us, instead of worrying about whether or not we feel good about ourselves while we're doing it.
      What's Rule of Law?  (JWR 12/10/2014)
• 
Rule of law means that laws are certain and known in advance.  Laws envision no particular outcome except that of allowing people to peaceably pursue their own objectives.  Finally, and most importantly, laws are equally applied to everyone, including government officials.
      Is Law Optional?  (JWR 12/09/2014)
• 
Many years ago, the late William F.  Buckley said that he would rather be ruled by people with the first hundred names in the Boston phone book than by a hundred Harvard professors.  Having spent more than half a century on academic campuses across the country, I would likewise rather have my fate decided by a hundred Americans chosen at random than by a hundred academics.
• 
The law is not the place for amateurs.  We do not need legal issues to be determined by academics, the media or mobs in the streets.
• 
Every society has orders and rules, but not every society has the rule of law — "a government of laws and not of men." Nor was it easy to achieve even an approximation of the rule of law.  It took centuries of struggle — and lives risked and sacrificed — to achieve it in those countries which have some approximation of it today.
• 
To just throw all of that overboard because of mobs, the media or racial demagoguery is staggering.
• 
A generation that jumps to conclusions on the basis of its own emotions, or succumbs to the passions or rhetoric of others, deserves to lose the freedom that depends on the rule of law.  Unfortunately, what they say and what they do can lose everyone's freedom, including the freedom of generations yet unborn.
• 
If grand juries are supposed to vote on the basis of what mobs want, instead of on the basis of the evidence that they see — and which the mob doesn't even want to see — then we forfeit the rule of law and our freedom that depends on it.
For people who have never tried to take into custody someone resisting arrest, to sit back in the safety and comfort of their homes or offices and second-guess people who face the dangers inherent in that process — dangers for both the police and the person under arrest — is yet another example of the irresponsible self-indulgences of our time.
• 
Force cannot be measured out by the teaspoon, and there are going to be incalculable risks every time force is resorted to, because no one can predict what is going to happen in the next moment.  Anyone involved can end up in the hospital or the morgue.  Let the responsibility lie with whoever forces a resort to force.
      Brooklyn Stabbing: A Knife Is Not A Conversation  (INN 12/09/2014 )
• 
Last night, at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn, a male described by authorities as African-American, Calvin Peters, stabbed an Israeli student, Levi Rosenblat.
The New York Daily News reports that Peters kept yelling, "I want to kill a Jew."
The vandalism, looting and burning in Ferguson USA – is this what Obama means by having a discussion?  Is this the conversation he has in mind when he says that he "understands" the "frustration" among blacks?  Among the lawless, this can be taken as an open-ended signal to pursue lawlessness.  The president has your back.
But upon our heads Obama, and Holder, and the Congressional Black Caucus – upon our souls they place their own prejudices and obsessions with race.
They kindle the fire and judge us all as racist – and this they call a conversation.
      The nanny state killed Eric Garner  (JWR 12/08/2014)
• 
It's important to remember that every violation of the law could conceivably result in a violent confrontation with police that gets the lawbreaker killed.  If a cop approaches someone for jaywalking, and that person gets belligerent, attacks the cop, and is shot dead, then he wasn't "killed for jaywalking."
If you want a big government, you're going to have to accept big law enforcement.  If you decide to protest the enforcement of dumb laws by fighting the cops, it could be hazardous to your health.
• 
See related More... (Glenn McCoy, 12/06/2014) cartoon from USA picture album
      Memo to Libs: We've Had Enough!  (JWR 12/08/2014)
      Why police body cameras would work  (CNN 12/05/2014)
• 
People act better when they know they're being watched — or recorded.  Cops act better, and the people they encounter on the street are more cooperative.
And, taking a broader perspective, the transparency inherent in such a program has also helped instill more trust among residents of the city.
We should also be careful not to draw too many conclusions about the ineffectiveness about video cameras simply because there was no indictment in New York.  Remember, the 23-person grand jury in the Garner case saw more than just the video; they reportedly heard from 50 witnesses and pored through 60 exhibits (including other video) that the rest of us haven't seen.  It's very possible, therefore, that while Pantaleo's actions were improper, they weren't technically illegal in this case.
But we cannot correct injustice if we cannot see it.  Gandhi said that we "must make the injustice visible," and that may be the real value of body cameras in policing.
...  a point that is often lost when we are debating the actions of individual officers — cops are not a gang of miscreants, waiting to murder and scheming to deny civil rights.  Police officers have taken on one of the most dangerous jobs in our society.  They protect citizens from other citizens, and they face the delicate task of balancing the rights of the aggrieved with the rights of the accused.
...  we can tell our police officers never to draw their weapon unless drawn upon.  Yet then we would be telling them to put their lives at even greater risk even as they are out there trying to protect ours.  Constrain police too much, and remove their ability to exercise good judgment, and the about a dozen cops left willing to do the job will be ineffective — and every criminal will know it.
Ultimately, we must be willing to dig deep, because if we want a free and safe society, we have to be willing to pay for it.
      Can Racial Discrimination Explain Much?  (JWR 12/04/2014)
      Was a New York police officer's chokehold on Eric Garner necessary?  (CNN 12/04/2014)
      Opinions Versus Facts  (JWR 12/02/2014)
• 
Soon after the shooting death of Michael Brown, this 285-pound young man was depicted as a "gentle giant." But, after a video was leaked, showing him bullying the owner of a store from which he had stolen some merchandise, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed displeasure that the video was leaked.  In other words, to Holder the truth was offensive, but the lie it exposed was not.
Why some people insist on believing whatever they want to believe is a question that is hard to answer.  But a more important question is: What are the consequences to be expected from an orgy of anarchy that started in Ferguson, Missouri and has spread around the country?
      Will Body Cameras Solve the Ferguson Problem?  (JWR 12/02/2014)
• 
There was video evidence in this case: the convenience store robbery and strong-arming of the owner.  Any fair-minded person would concede that while the footage didn't prove that Brown attacked Wilson a few minutes later, it did severely undermine the legend that was being spun of Brown as a "gentle giant." Yet most commentators on the left either ignored the store footage or suggested it was irrelevant.  Missouri's governor denounced the release of the video as a form of character assassination.
      The inconvenient heroism of Witness No.  10: Holder could learn respect for the law...  (JWR 12/02/2014)
• 
The case was like catnip to President Obama, a man who, six years into his term, has yet to show any understanding that he is the president of the United States, not president of the Democratic Party.
Mr.  Obama turned the matter over to Eric Holder, who, similarly, has never understood that he is the chief law enforcement officer for the nation rather than the personal consigliere for Mr.  Obama.
Ultimately, we learned what Mr.  Obama and Mr.  Holder had known for weeks: Forensic evidence refuted much of the most provocative claims against Officer Wilson by some of the "eyewitnesses."
      How to prevent Ferguson rioters — and their, ahem, ideological, brothers...  (JWR 12/02/2014)
• 
We've gotten away from personal responsibility and accountability, preferring instead to cast lawbreakers as "victims," when the true victims are often ignored.  Too often many blame others for their circumstances.  Too often many feel entitled to what others have achieved through hard work and dedication.  Too often too many feel justified in taking and destroying the property of others instead of working and building for themselves.
      Obama Empowers Enemies and Imperils Friends  (INN 12/02/2014 )
• 
Whether promoting Islamists, enabling Iran's nuclear ambitions, or chastising the way Israel defended herself in Gaza, the administration has pursued policies that have empowered America's enemies and imperiled its allies.  Furthermore, by drawing meaningless redlines that it refuses to enforce and unilaterally disarming in Europe, it has signaled to the world that it is no longer willing to defend its own interests or those of its allies, but instead will stand aside while Russia, China and other geopolitical rivals assert themselves within traditional U.S.  spheres of influence.
      As two-parent families decline, income inequality grows  (JWR 12/02/2014)
      We must know what motivates our enemies  (JWR 12/01/2014)
• 
"Islamist fanaticism offers the powerless, bitter and hopeless license on earth and luxury in paradise."
      When the enemy of the state is the state  (JWR 11/28/2014)
• 
With incendiary talk of anger "rooted in reality," as the president put it, the need for protests, the specter of federal charges and "change," Barack Obama and an army of "racial arsonists" agitate not for justice, not for peace, but for power.
Did you hear even a word from Washington about the two sheriff's deputies gunned down in California last month by a twice-deported illegal alien?  No, you heard amnesty instead.
      The Ferguson fraud  (JWR 11/28/2014)
• 
There is good reason for a police officer to be in mortal fear in the situation Officer Wilson faced, though.  In upstate New York last March, a police officer responded to a disturbance call at an office when suddenly a disturbed man pummeled the officer as he was attempting to exit his vehicle, and then grabbed his gun and shot him dead.  The case didn't become a national metaphor for anything.
      In My Opinion...  (JWR 11/28/2014)
• 
The thing of it all is this.  No matter what color you are, the chances are you won't be shot and killed if you: (a) don't rob a store, (b) don't rough up the store owner, (c) don't punch a police officer in the face, (d) don't attempt to take the officer's gun away from him, and (e) don't run from the law.
      Ferguson Obscures Much Bigger Problems in the 'Black Community'  (JWR 11/27/2014)
• 
McCulloch explained why more information wasn't released in a "timely" fashion: "Those closely guarded details, especially about the physical evidence, give law enforcement a yardstick for measuring the truthfulness of witnesses." McCulloch explained that a trail of Brown's blood led from the police car, and was found 25 feet farther away from where Brown's body lay — suggesting Brown turned and came toward Wilson, as the officer said.
"Physical evidence," said McCulloch, "does not change because of public pressure or personal agenda."
      Libs willing to fight to the last drop of black blood  (JWR 11/27/2014)
• 
There's nothing to protest! A cop shot a thug who was trying to kill him. The grand jury documents make perfectly clear that Big Mike was entirely responsible for his own death. Can't the peaceful protesters read?
      Torching due process: From Bill Cosby to Ferguson  (JWR 11/26/2014)
• 
We see in Ferguson, Mo., what happens when respect for our legal process is lost: Arsonists and looters expressed their outrage that a grand jury didn't act as they thought it should.  Yet we hear people trying to defend these actions as somehow acceptable, or at least non-criminal, because of historical injustice.
Nonsense.  Ferguson is what you get when mob rule overwhelms the rule of law, which was created as the defense of civilized people against the mob.
• 
See related Due Process (Mike Lester, 08/16/2014) cartoon from Media picture album
      Elite Contempt for Ordinary Americans  (JWR 11/26/2014)
• 
"The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses.  The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind."
Focusing only on Professor Gruber's arrogance, we ignore the more important fact that he is highly representative of the academic mindset — the people who are brainwashing our youngsters.
      What Obama's Ferguson Sermon Left Out  (JWR 11/26/2014)
• 
In his 967-word statement to the nation about the Ferguson grand jury decision on Tuesday night, President Obama devoted precisely one sentence to the risks and sacrifices police officers make to keep the peace.
Only after expending 756 words on the need to "understand" the "problem" that "communities of color" have with police did Obama address the thugs of color "throwing bottles" and "smashing car windows" and "using this as an excuse to vandalize property" in the name of social justice.
      Giuliani on Ferguson: Right decision, prosecution could 'never have won'  (CNN 11/25/2014)
• 
"If you can't prove probable cause, how are you going to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt when the witnesses are contradicting themselves?"
"You have every right to protest, you have every right to scream, you have every right to yell.  The first time you throw something at a police officer, you get handcuffed arrested and taken away."
      Six points: How Ferguson prosecutor defended grand jury's decision  (CNN 11/25/2014)
• 
"Physical evidence does not change because of public pressure or personal agenda.  Physical evidence does not look away as events unfold, nor does it block out or add to memory.  Physical evidence remains constant and as such is a solid foundation upon which cases are built."
      Beware of Our Betters  (JWR 11/25/2014)
      Obama's immigration policy: How about putting Americans first?  (JWR 11/25/2014)
      President Obama, Emperor-in-Chief  (JWR 11/24/2014)
• 
I suspect Barack Obama is about to find out how most Americans feel about a president who behaves like the emperor he said he wasn't.  And I suspect he won't like what he finds out.
      Pushing out Hagel not shake-up Obama needs  (CNN 11/24/2014)
      President Obama's 'Gruber speech'  (CNN 11/21/2014)
• 
"With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that's just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed," he said in 2011.  "...  We've got three branches of government.  Congress passes the law.  The executive branch's job is to enforce and implement those laws...  There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President."
      Obama's dangerous move on immigration  (CNN 11/20/2014)
      The legal battle over Obama's immigration plan  (CNN 11/20/2014)
• 
No one has made the case against the course of action Obama is taking better than the former constitutional law professor who now sits in the Oval Office...  "This notion that somehow, I can just change the laws unilaterally is not true...  The fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce," he said in 2011.  Obama has pointed out that he is not a "king" or an "emperor".
• 
See related Evolution (Chip Bok, 11/22/2014) cartoon from Government picture album
      Obama vs.  Us  (JWR 11/19/2014)
• 
... we've reached the post-Constitution stage of our history.  Washington politicians are not to blame.  It's the American people who've lost their love and respect for our Constitution.  Washington's politicians are simply the agents for that contempt.
      Racial Quota Punishment  (JWR 11/19/2014)
      Why Ferguson grand jury is taking so long  (CNN 11/18/2014)
      A Legacy of Liberalism  (JWR 11/18/2014)
      Cupp: On guns, let's focus on facts, not fear  (CNN 11/17/2014)
      If You Put Obama's Narcissism Aside — What Do You Have?  (JWR 11/18/2014)
      Poverty Causes Crime?  (JWR 11/18/2014)
      Take Cosby allegations seriously  (CNN 11/18/2014)
      The guy who thinks voters are 'stupid'  (CNN 11/13/2014)
• 
Obamacare wasn't a cleverly concealed mystery package that Democrats slipped under the noses of an otherwise bumbling idiocracy.  It was passed by a Democratic majority that controlled both houses, without a single Republican vote, pushed through by a White House that cared more about scoring a political victory than if the law would ever work as intended or if Americans would like it.
      Voting 'no' on Obama's immigration policies  (JWR 11/13/2014)
      Presidential candidates: Don't apply if you're over 60  (CNN 11/13/2014)
      Gingrich: Obama, you won't win a war with Congress  (CNN 11/12/2014)
      We do need a continual flow of immigrants, but choosers need not be beggars  (JWR 11/12/2014)
      The fix is in  (JWR 11/12/2014)
      The high academic failure rate among blacks  (JWR 11/12/2014)
      What Happened?  (JWR 11/11/2014)
• 
People who are increasingly questioning Barack Obama's competence are continuing to ignore the alternative possibility that his fundamental values and imperatives are different from theirs.  You cannot tell whether someone is failing or succeeding without knowing what they are trying to do.
      Why London McCabe's death matters  (CNN 11/10/2014)
      American Voters Shot The Messenger  (INN 11/09/2014 )
      Suing the Met  (INN 11/08/2014 )
      America's Brand on the Chopping Block  (INN 11/07/2014 )
      The first steps Republicans should take  (JWR 11/06/2014)
      Gingrich: Can Obama, GOP really work together?  (CNN 11/06/2014)
      Now what?  What Obama can  (and can't) do with a GOP Senate (CNN 11/05/2014)
      America faces most dangerous two years in last 150  (JWR 11/05/2014)
      How Obama and the Democrats lost the election  (CNN 11/05/2014)
      Voter Fraud and Voter I.D.  (JWR 11/04/2014)
      10 things to look for in the elections  (CNN 11/04/2014)
      7 things that will almost definitely happen on election night  (CNN 11/03/2014)
      Test pilot's workplace a cold, harsh environment  (CNN 11/03/2014)
      Dems deal race card  (JWR 11/03/2014)
      US Elections: What Happened to the Stiff Necked People?  (INN 11/03/2014 )
      Should Americans be forced to vote?  (CNN 11/03/2014)
      Were cops out of line in trooper-killing arrest?  (CNN 10/31/2014)
      Analysis: Will space accidents deter pioneer tourists?  (CNN 11/01/2014)
      Time to judge presidents and generals on Afghanistan  (JWR 10/31/2014)
      What does justice mean for Ferguson?  (CNN 10/31/2014)
      What Obama could learn from Bush  (CNN 10/28/2014)
      Death wish Americans: Empowering a wholly destructive force  (JWR 10/28/2014)
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 10/28/2014)
      Ease up on the boy who shot albino deer  (CNN 10/28/2014)
      Random Thoughts on Ebola, Islam and Hillary  (JWR 10/27/2014)
      Taking back America  (JWR 10/27/2014)
      Why Ebola quarantine is legal  (CNN 10/27/2014)
      Daylight Saving Time: Keep it year round  (CNN 10/24/2014)
      Gun violence isn't somebody else's problem  (CNN 10/24/2014)
      Profile, or Die  (JWR 10/24/2014)
      Why narratives are more powerful than ideas  (JWR 10/24/2014)
      OOPS!  You mean he wasn't some harmless passerby?  Michael Brown and Race Hoaxes  (JWR 10/24/2014)
      Ferguson grand jury: protector of liberty or of police abuse?  (CNN 10/22/2014)
      Shame on Monica Lewinsky  (CNN 10/21/2014)
      Why the real battle for America is over culture, not elections  (JWR 10/20/2014)
      Time To Believe The Worst?  (INN 10/19/2014 )
      An Ebola travel ban would be completely unprecedented — Here's why  (CNN 10/17/2014)
      Columbus Discovered America In 1942  (INN 10/17/2014 )
      Irresponsible 'Education'  (JWR 10/15/2014)
      Ted Olson's Evasions  (JWR 10/14/2014)
      Defining the threat and offering the patriotic solution  (JWR 10/13/2014)
      Liberalism — be nice to others — or else  (JWR 10/09/2014)
      White House blames Panetta, not its own faults  (CNN 10/10/2014)
      Obama administration must answer Ebola questions  (CNN 10/09/2014)
      Why the safety of the American people takes second place to the goal of helping people overseas  (JWR 10/07/2014)
      Viewing the world through the wrong end of the telescope  (JWR 10/07/2014)
      A Teachable Moment  (JWR 10/06/2014)
      Why strong defense is critical to America  (CNN 10/06/2014)
      Ebola quarantine is perfectly legal  (CNN 10/06/2014)
      Protecting against Ebola trumps personal liberty  (CNN 10/05/2014)
      We live in a global world — take cover  (JWR 10/03/2014)
      God, Woman And Free Speech At Yale  (JWR 10/03/2014)
      Dr.  Ezekiel Emanuel: 'Why I hope to die at 75' — why wait?  (JWR 10/03/2014)
      Forgive Me for Voting for Our Current President  (INN 10/02/2014 )
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 09/30/2014)
      Do Statistical Disparities Mean Injustice?  (JWR 09/24/2014)
      Who Wants War?  (JWR 09/23/2014)
      Why has Immigration Shifted?  (JWR 09/23/2014)
      Poking the hornet's nest: Half measures won't defeat the Islamic State  (JWR 09/22/2014)
      Starving children?  Blame the parents  (JWR 09/22/2014)
      Why prosecutor is retrying 'loud music' murder case  (CNN 09/22/2014)
      When lawmakers forget the American interest  (JWR 09/19/2014)
      Why do Americans hate America?  (JWR 09/18/2014)
      The Anti-Terrorism Bloviators  (JWR 09/18/2014)
      NASA misses chance to revitalize space program  (CNN 09/17/2014)
      Ted Cruz's Speech to Arab Christians  (JWR 09/15/2014)
      Calling It Like It Is  (JWR 09/12/2014)
      Uncle Sam needs to protect American, not Islamic interests  (JWR 09/12/2014)
      Of politicians and moral courage  (JWR 09/12/2014)
      13 Years to 9/11: President Obama, Are You There?  (INN 09/12/2014 )
      Success or Failure?  (JWR 09/11/2014)
      Ted Cruz: How U.S.  can stop ISIS  (CNN 09/10/2014)
      10 questions for Obama on ISIS  (CNN 09/10/2014)
      Why it's time for drug regulation  (CNN 09/08/2014)
      A 'right' to be a jerk?  (JWR 09/04/2014)
      Is free speech at risk at our universities?  (CNN 09/04/2014)
      Why is a 9-year-old firing an Uzi?  (CNN 08/27/2014)
      Facts vs.  Visions  (JWR 08/27/2014)
      A Problem Bigger than FerGuson  (JWR 08/27/2014)
      What Ferguson lamentably teaches black youth  (JWR 08/27/2014)
      Blacks Must Confront Reality  (JWR 08/27/2014)
      What would Reagan do?  (CNN 08/19/2014)
      Why keep prosecutor on Brown case?  (CNN 08/23/2014)
      Sometimes race is thicker than logic  (JWR 08/22/2014)
      The Media and the Mob  (JWR 08/21/2014)
      Opportunists fan the flames of racial unrest  (JWR 08/21/2014)
      Media Clueless About the Inner City  (JWR 08/20/2014)
      Why did Ferguson cop need 6 bullets?  (CNN 08/19/2014)
      10 reasons religious education belongs in school  (JWR 08/18/2014)
      Suicide doesn't set you free  (CNN 08/13/2014)
      Poisoned relationship between police and minorities  (CNN 08/13/2014)
      Is Thinking Obsolete?  (JWR 08/26/2014)
      Heroic Americans with Ebola should be welcomed home  (CNN 08/05/2014)
      Confederate flag doesn't belong on license plates  (CNN 08/05/2014)
      Americans Never Want to Go to War  (JWR 08/04/2014)
      Israel, Gaza and the Repulsive Moralists  (JWR 07/31/2014)
      America needs a conservative internationalist as president  (JWR 07/31/2014)
      Can a murderer's execution be 'botched'?  (JWR 07/31/2014)
      Should 80-year-old homeowner be charged with murder?  (CNN 07/31/2014)
      Israel and the U.S.: Whose survival instinct is stronger?  (JWR 07/25/2014)
      Answering a different call: Americans who fight for Israel  (CNN 07/23/2014)
      Teen pilot killed at sea in quest to set world record  (CNN 07/23/2014)
      The deadly enemy within  (JWR 07/22/2014)
      Bordering on Madness  (JWR 07/22/2014)
      Moral Equivalence Is Usually Moral Negligence  (JWR 07/22/2014)
      What Needs Resetting  (JWR 07/22/2014)
      Our Unwillingness to Defend Ourselves  (JWR 07/16/2014)
      Corrupting citizens for fun and profit  (JWR 07/15/2014)
      Border crisis could last a long time  (CNN 07/15/2014)
      McCain: Stopping child immigrant nightmare must include returning children, securing border  (CNN 07/14/2014)
      Hypocrites take a selfish stance on border crisis  (JWR 07/10/2014)
      Better Than Obamacare: Health Savings Accounts Would Be Free From Government Control  (JWR 07/09/2014)
      Obama hasn't hit rock bottom yet  (CNN 07/08/2014)
      A Primer on Race  (JWR 07/03/2014)
      Boehner: Why we must now sue the President  (CNN 07/06/2014)
      Obama seeks an escape from the Middle East  (JWR 07/03/2014)
      En route to a Third World USA  (JWR 07/04/2014)
      The man who would be king  (CNN 07/01/2014)
      Hold off on judging dad who left son in car  (CNN 07/01/2014)
      The Education Establishment's Success  (JWR 06/25/2014)
      A Lame Duck Country?  (JWR 06/24/2014)
      Right wing dementia on Iraq in full swing  (JWR 06/23/2014)
      The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA  (CNN 06/24/2014)
      Why Redskins decision is wrong  (CNN 06/20/2014)
      Is paid family leave bad for business?  (CNN, 06/18/2014)
      The naked self-interest of the bureaucratic class  (JWR 06/20/2014)
      Why Benghazi issue won't go away  (CNN 06/18/2014)
      The immigration problem that Obama  (and Congress) created (CNN 06/18/2014)
      There is No 'Deal'  (JWR 06/16/2014)
      Amnesty Lite Is Still Amnesty  (JWR 06/13/2014)
      Universities Listen When Alumni Protest  (INN 06/12/2014)
      The journos' view of America — and ours  (JWR 06/11/2014)
      Gun debate?  What gun debate?  (CNN 06/11/2014)
      The Prisoner Swap Deal  (JWR 06/10/2014)
      Why we leave no man behind  (CNN 06/09/2014)
      Bergdahl release: An ugly decision, but the right call  (CNN 06/06/2014)
      America addicted to the other porn  (CNN 06/06/2014)
      Saving Sgt.  Bergdahl: Allah in the Rose Garden  (INN 06/04/2014)
      Ben Stein: The truth about Nixon  (CNN 06/04/2014)
      Bergdahl, Boko Haram and Benghazi  (CNN 06/04/2014)
      Five tough ethics issues in Bergdahl swap  (CNN 06/04/2014)
      Bergdahl's release: Motives, mistakes and excuses  (CNN 06/04/2014)
      Celebrated at first, Bergdahl's release raises questions  (CNN 06/04/2014)
      Slenderman stabbing case: When can kids understand reality vs.  fantasy?  (CNN 06/04/2014)
      Saving Sgt.  Bergdahl  (JWR 06/03/2014)
      Sentiment, politics and a bad bargain  (JWR 06/03/2014)
      Negotiating with terrorists  (JWR 06/03/2014)
      Hillary is No Hemingway  (INN 06/03/2014)
      It's time to outlaw bullying  (CNN 06/03/2014)
      Israel's Perceived Weakness Fuels the Terror Machine  (JWR 06/02/2014)
      Morality $uperiority  (JWR 05/30/2014)
      Posting Elliot Rodger's video is legal, but is it right?  (CNN 05/29/2014)
      Fix mental health care or expect more shootings  (CNN 05/28/2014)
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 05/27/2014)
      Recalls and near misses: Who's protecting us?  (CNN 05/24/2014)
      Adhesive Mesh Tape  (JWR 05/25/2014)
      Liberal Authoritarians on Campus  (JWR 05/22/2014)
      What will happen if the bees disappear?  (CNN 05/17/2014)
      Awaken, citizens of America  (JWR 05/14/2014)
      Gingrich: The VA's real problem  (CNN 05/14/2014)
      Thin skins and prayer: Irritable Americans show their intolerance  (JWR 05/09/2014)
      Rutgers...  and More Evidence of Liberal Intolerance  (JWR 05/08/2014)
      Supreme Court rules 5-4 on public prayer  (JWR 05/08/2014)
      Rethinking America's decline  (JWR 05/07/2014)
      Moral Bankruptcy  (JWR 05/07/2014)
      Homeowner deserves blame for setting deadly trap  (CNN 05/07/2014)
      The more passionate the opponents of capital punishment are, the colder their hearts  (JWR 05/06/2014)
      What a non-minority won't dare say about racism, bigotry  (JWR 05/06/2014)
      The prison door keeps revolving  (JWR 05/05/2014)
      Bring Back Firing Squads  (JWR 05/05/2014)
      Why I’ll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege  (Time, 05/02/2014)
      I'm a gun owner and I want gun control  (CNN 05/02/2014)
      Sterling, Media and the Race Card — a Confederacy of Dunces  (JWR 05/01/2014)
      Sterling's words were vulgar and bigoted, but private  (JWR 05/01/2014)
      Finally, the end of affirmative action  (JWR 05/01/2014)
      John Kerry's Jewish best friends  (JWR 04/29/2014)
      What happened to Sterling was morally wrong  (CNN 04/30/2014)
      What Have You Said in Private?  (JWR 04/29/2014)
      Changes in media pose a risk for America  (CNN 04/29/2014)
      Why U.S.  desperately needs affordable homes  (CNN 04/28/2014)
      Is American democracy dead?  (CNN 04/27/2014)
      Wage Discrimination  (JWR 04/23/2014)
      Why middle class can't afford rents  (CNN 04/23/2014)
      How much are college students learning?  (CNN 04/18/2014)
      Recovering America's Exceptionalism  (JWR 04/17/2014)
      Progressives don't grasp the Constitution  (JWR 04/17/2014)
      Who are the real saboteurs of immigration reform?  (JWR 04/17/2014)
      Brandeis Feminists Fail the Historic Moment  (INN 04/16/2014)
      Statistical Frauds  (JWR 04/15/2014)
      On Ayaan Hirsi Ali — Where Is Your Chivalry, Brandeis?  (INN 04/10/2014)
      How to Assist Evil  (JWR 04/09/2014)
      How America is rigged for the rich  (CNN 04/09/2014)
      Uninstall Firefox  (JWR 04/08/2014)
      The new conformity  (JWR 04/08/2014)
      Leftist Thought-Gangsters Strike Again  (JWR 04/08/2014)
      Catastrophic Washington landslide: Plenty of blame to go around?  (CNN 04/02/2014)
      How Foreign Is Our Policy?  (JWR 04/01/2014)
      Las Vegas made a big, bad bet on casinos  (CNN 04/01/2014)
      Want a job?  Deliver, or protect  (CNN 03/30/2014)
      Lobbyists and lawmakers, one big family  (CNN 03/29/2014)
      Obama's school discipline plan is overkill  (CNN 03/28/2014)
      Massaging of critical data undermines our society  (JWR 03/27/2014)
      Success is about more than money and power  (CNN 03/25/2014)
      Opposing Voter ID Laws in the Name of Race Is Insulting to Minorities  (JWR 03/21/2014)
      The emptiness of the right side of history  (JWR 03/21/2014)
      Technology is not wisdom  (JWR 03/20/2014)
      On Ukraine, more must be done  (CNN 03/20/2014)
      The Insidious Effect of Political Correctness  (JWR 03/19/2014)
      If GOP wins the Senate, then what?  (CNN 03/18/2014)
      Obama's Ukraine policy: Scream loudly, carry no stick  (CNN 03/15/2014)
      Obama in denial on Russia  (JWR 03/06/2014)
      Black People Duped  (JWR 03/05/2014)
      Obama's Voter Base: What the Left Hath Wrought  (INN 03/03/2014)
      Arizona guv's Foolish Veto  (JWR 02/28/2014)
      Spike Lee missed the point  (CNN 02/28/2014)
      I'm embarrassed by Ted Nugent  (CNN 02/24/2014)
      The 'Fairness' Fraud  (JWR 02/25/2014)
      A military budget of delusion  (JWR 02/25/2014)
      She survived a standoff with a gunman — could you?  (CNN 02/22/2014)
      Blame Facebook for drinking game?  (CNN 02/21/2014)
      Killing swans is a bad idea  (CNN 02/21/2014)
      Cruz Control?  Part II  (JWR 02/20/2014)
      The outdated business model of Diversity Inc.  (JWR 02/20/2014)
      Cruz Control?  (JWR 02/19/2014)
      Beyond Affirmative Action  (JWR 02/19/2014)
      It's not about 'stand your ground,' it's about race  (CNN 02/19/2014)
      Judges, Hubris, and Same-Sex Marriage  (JWR 02/18/2014)
      Fix the post office, help the poor and nail a vulture, in one stop  (JWR 02/18/2014)
      The rich already have more votes than you  (CNN 02/18/2014)
      Why retailers aren't protecting you from hackers  (CNN 02/18/2014)
      Keep cell phone calls off planes  (CNN 02/16/2014)
      Clarence Thomas is right about race  (CNN 02/14/2014)
      Do you hate your Internet provider?  (CNN 02/14/2014)
      An Orwellian nation of Obamathink  (JWR 02/13/2014)
      Analysis: Justice Thomas comments spark fresh debate on race  (CNN 02/12/2014)
      Dependency, Not Poverty  (JWR 02/12/2014)
      Was Putin correct about our godlessness?  (JWR 02/12/2014)
      Why Do Progressives Want the Boston Bomber to Live?  (JWR 02/11/2014)
      The Secular Religion of the Left  (INN 02/11/2014)
      Books to read before you die  (CNN 02/11/2014)
      Forget Christie; there's a real bridge problem that could ruin your day  (CNN 02/10/2014)
      Can dealers face murder charges in Hoffman's death?  (CNN 02/07/2014)
      If you work hard, will you get into the one percent?  (CNN 02/06/2014)
      Let's leave Bob Dylan alone  (CNN 02/05/2014)
      America's Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Are Not 'Ended'  (JWR 02/04/2014)
      The poison of postmodern lying  (JWR 01/30/2014)
      What other cities can learn from Atlanta's ice debacle  (CNN 01/30/2014)
      The Inequality Bogeyman  (JWR 01/28/2014)
      Immigration simplification  (JWR 01/28/2014)
      A Physician's View on the Sanctity of Life  (JWR 01/22/2014)
      Fact-Free Liberals: Part II  (JWR 01/22/2014)
      Fact-Free Liberals  (JWR 01/21/2014)
      Allowing American Creativity To Flourish  (JWR 01/17/2014)
      The question that haunts the West  (JWR 01/17/2014)
      Income Inequality  (JWR 01/15/2014)
      The War on Poverty's secret weapon  (JWR 01/15/2014)
      The great inequality debate  (JWR 01/09/2014)
      Define income inequality  (JWR 01/09/2014)
      Equality Versus Liberty  (JWR 01/08/2014)
      Will states' rights go to pot?  (JWR 01/03/2014)
      Four New Year's resolutions for the press  (JWR 01/02/2014)
      Parting Company  (JWR 01/01/2014)
      Myths to ditch in 2014  (JWR 01/01/2014)
 2013  (12/31/2013)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/31/2014) | Next sect (01/03/2012) | List bot 
      ObamaCare Revealed Obama For What He Was, But What Will GOP Do?  (JWR 12/31/2013)
      The war on common sense  (JWR 12/27/2013)
      The orphaned middle class  (JWR 12/26/2013)
      A Duck Dynasty checklist  (JWR 12/26/2013)
      Taking Tolerance Too Far  (JWR 12/26/2013)
      'Duck Dynasty' and a free society  (JWR 12/25/2013)
      The cure for 'affluenza' is prison  (CNN 12/14/2013)
      All the injustice money can buy  (CNN 12/14/2013)
      'Affluenza': Is it real?  (CNN 12/12/2013)
      Keep your guns, but take responsibility  (CNN 12/11/2013)
      It's the Family, Stupid  (JWR 12/06/2013)
      Inequality threatens the rich  (CNN 12/06/2013)
      How to fight 'bad apple' prosecutors who abuse the justice system  (CNN 12/04/2013)
      The wrong people decide who goes to prison  (CNN 12/03/2013)
      Can high technology make trains safer?  (CNN 12/03/2013)
      A Challenge to Our Beliefs  (JWR 12/02/2013)
      Frum: Beware Russia's power play in Ukraine  (CNN 12/02/2013)
      The fatal conceit of Obamacare  (JWR 11/25/2013)
      When a society's first line of defense fails  (JWR 11/25/2013)
      Obamacare's self-inflicted wound  (CNN 11/21/2013)
      Do Americans Prefer Deception?  (JWR 11/20/2013)
      A Very Dangerous Game  (JWR 11/20/2013)
      The War Against Achievement  (JWR 11/19/2013)
      The Midas Touch and the Leftist Touch  (JWR 11/19/2013)
      Does Washington Know Best?  (JWR 11/13/2013)
      If You Want a Conservative Child  (JWR 11/12/2013)
      EMP Blackout Could Be Closer than You Think  (INN 11/07/2013)
      Bush [Iraq War] Vs.  Obama [Obamacare]: Who 'Lied'?  (JWR 11/07/2013)
      Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children  (JWR 11/05/2013)
      Is There a Way Out?  (JWR 10/30/2013)
      Throw the Rascals Out?: Part II  (JWR 10/30/2013)
      Throw the Rascals Out?  (JWR 10/29/2013)
      The President Who Has Done the Most Damage  (JWR 10/29/2013)
      US Law Requires Obama to Halt Money to Abbas and PA  (INN 10/26/2013)
      U.S.  needs to get spying under control  (CNN 10/25/2013)
      Race-Hustling Results: Part III  (JWR 10/24/2013)
      Loving and Hating America  (JWR 10/23/2013)
      Race-Hustling Results: Part II  (JWR 10/23/2013)
      Race-Hustling Results  (JWR 10/22/2013)
      Shutdown deal: A 15-yard punt  (CNN 10/18/2013)
      Where Do Public School Teachers Send Own Kids?  (JWR 10/17/2013)
      Washington [George] got it right  (CNN 10/16/2013)
      Budget crisis has its roots in erosion of values  (JWR 10/14/2013)
      Is racial preference unconsitutional?  (JWR 10/14/2013)
      America's problem: We're too dumb  (CNN 10/14/2013)
      Don't mock Scalia about the devil  (CNN 10/10/2013)
      Racial Trade-offs  (JWR 10/09/2013)
      Why the Left Hates the Old  (JWR 10/08/2013)
      Shutdown mess?  No, it's democracy  (CNN 10/07/2013)
      A cup of civility: The lesson in the Starbucks non-backlash  (JWR 10/07/2013)
      Did cops have to shoot to kill?  (CNN 10/04/2013)
      Legalized pot would mean more addiction  (CNN 10/02/2013)
      The late, great middle class  (JWR 09/25/2013)
      Honesty and Trust  (JWR 09/25/2013)
      The harm that casinos do  (CNN 09/24/2013)
      Obama Calls Congress 'Banana Republic' — He Should Know  (JWR 09/23/2013)
      No Restraints  (JWR 09/23/2013)
      The real Navy Yard scandal  (JWR 09/23/2013)
      Where America became exceptional  (CNN 09/22/2013)
      Do violent video games play a role in shootings?  (CNN 09/18/2013)
      Deadly Combination: Political Correctness in a Gun-Free Zone  (JWR 09/18/2013)
      Crazier than libs  (JWR 09/18/2013)
      Off-target: After a shooting, the same myopic debate  (JWR 09/18/2013)
      Gun control is not the answer  (CNN 09/17/2013)
      Should we vilify the rich?  (CNN 09/17/2013)
      Obama's Greatest Asset: Clueless Americans  (JWR 09/16/2013)
      What could have prevented Navy Yard carnage?  (CNN 09/16/2013)
      Gingrich: Remember, Vladimir Putin is not an American  (CNN 09/16/2013)
      Gingrich: Putin is a dictator and a thug  (CNN 09/13/2013)
      Putin a hypocrite with blood on his hands  (CNN 09/12/2013)
      The grand myth of live-and-let-live liberalism  (JWR 09/11/2013)
      Syria and Obama: Part II  (JWR 09/11/2013)
      Syria and Obama  (JWR 09/10/2013)
      The United States already has lost credibility  (JWR 09/10/2013)
      Be afraid of Big Marijuana  (CNN 09/10/2013)
      A legacy for Barack Obama  (JWR 09/09/2013)
      Obama administration confused, conflicted over Syria  (CNN 09/09/2013)
      U.S.  likes to periodically rotate dictators  (JWR 09/05/2013)
      Same old, same old in Syria  (JWR 09/05/2013)
      Touchy Topics  (JWR 09/04/2013)
      Syria a distraction from real U.S.  challenges  (CNN 09/03/2013)
      Unintended Consequences  (JWR 09/03/2013)
      A Vanity War  (JWR 09/02/2013)
      How Many More Nidal Hasans in Our Ranks?  (JWR 08/30/2013)
      Degrading the dream  (JWR 08/30/2013)
      A game of teenage violence and insanity...  (JWR 08/29/2013)
      Going beyond the headlines on the NSA  (CNN 08/27/2013)
      Tolerance, Health and Fascism  (JWR 08/27/2013)
      A teaching moment for Barack Obama  (JWR 08/27/2013)
      If President Obama Had a Son He Might Look Like...  (JWR 08/27/2013)
      Let's have the conversation about race  (CNN 08/26/2013)
      Say 'no' to extreme work culture  (CNN 08/26/2013)
      Al Jazeera America is da bomb?  (JWR 08/22/2013)
      With death penalty, let punishment truly fit the crime  (CNN 08/22/2013)
      Negligent parents, lawbreaking kids  (CNN 08/22/2013)
      AOL boss blew it in public firing  (CNN 08/12/2013)
      Fort Hood jihadist shrink came clean about himself; why can't we?  (JWR 08/12/2013)
      Obama's foreign policy in a tailspin  (CNN 08/11/2013)
      Legalizing pot isn't about medicine, it's about getting high  (CNN 08/09/2013)
      Parents, you don't need to buy more stuff  (CNN 08/08/2013)
      Media make our enemies seem friendly  (JWR 08/06/2013)
      Yes, There Are Monsters  (JWR 08/06/2013)
      Castro a psychopath who will never feel remorse  (CNN 08/05/2013)
      Weiner Watch  (JWR 08/02/2013)
      Bradley Manning betrayed America  (CNN 07/31/2013)
      Black Self-Sabotage  (JWR 07/31/2013)
      Jefferson and Ho  (JWR 07/30/2013)
      Their revolution and ours  (JWR 07/29/2013)
      Snowden — facts, fictions and fears  (CNN 07/24/2013)
      Profiling  (JWR 07/24/2013)
      What President Obama Left Out of His Talk on Race  (JWR 07/23/2013)
      Fire Created and Stoked by the Left  (JWR 07/23/2013)
      The profiling of George Zimmerman  (JWR 07/17/2013)
      The road to bedlam: Unanswered questions in Trayvon Martin case  (JWR 07/17/2013)
      Is This Still America?  (JWR 07/16/2013)
      The Election of a Black President Has Meant Nothing  (JWR 07/16/2013)
      Zimmerman verdict and double standards  (JWR 07/16/2013)
      What are the odds of a Snowden getaway?  (CNN 07/12/2013)
      Zimmerman, a morality play that failed  (JWR 07/12/2013)
      The Zimmerman trial's racists  (JWR 07/11/2013)
      Did Zimmerman Profile Martin — or the Other Way Around?  (JWR 07/11/2013)
      Civil libertarians' hypocrisy  (JWR 07/11/2013)
      Black Education Tragedy  (JWR 07/10/2013)
      Egypt's Coup ...  and Ours  (JWR 07/09/2013)
      Who Is Racist?  (JWR 07/08/2013)
      Do our children know how to be citizens?  (CNN 07/04/2013)
      The Mindset of the Left: Part III  (JWR 07/04/2013)
      The press and Dr.  Faustus  (JWR 07/04/2013)
      Gratitude  (JWR 07/02/2013)
      How will America hold together?  (JWR 07/07/2013)
      A murk called law  (JWR 07/02/2013)
      'Comprehensive marriage reform'  (JWR 07/01/2013)
      Same-sex marriage is war on religion  (JWR 07/01/2013)
      Learning from the past, and the Next Big Trend  (JWR 07/01/2013)
      The Mindset of the Left  (JWR 06/25/2013)
      Re-Defining Racial Discrimination in America  (JWR 06/25/2013)
      MP3, Camera Phones and the Price of Convenience  (JWR 06/25/2013)
      Border security push is a joke  (CNN 06/21/2013)
      The Loss of Trust  (JWR 06/18/2013)
      Freedom in an Age of Terrorism  (JWR 06/18/2013)
      Just follow the numbers  (JWR 06/12/2013)
      Why Obama became a snoop  (JWR 06/11/2013)
      Economics vs.  'Need'  (JWR 06/11/2013)
      Your biggest secrets are up for grabs  (CNN 06/11/2013)
      NSA secrets just a keystroke away  (JWR 06/10/2013)
      Kill Social Security before it kills our seniors  (JWR 06/10/2013)
      What was that he said?  (JWR 05/30/2013)
      For Class of 2013, a cold shower  (CNN 05/28/2013)
      Liberty, Where Have You Gone?  (JWR 05/24/2013)
      Wimps Versus Barbarians  (JWR 05/21/2013)
      On Using Parents of Murdered Children  (JWR 05/21/2013)
      Big Government is erecting a panopticon state...  (JWR 05/20/2013)
      Obama and the 'official truth'  (JWR 05/17/2013)
      IRS scandal is about donors, not tax  (CNN 05/17/2013)
      For Obama, it's no more Mr.  Nice Media  (CNN 05/17/2013)
      With IRS defanged, politics can run rampant  (CNN 05/16/2013)
      IRS scandal needs more than a scapegoat  (CNN 05/16/2013)
      Don't lower threshold on drunken driving  (CNN 05/16/2013)
      A reality check on Tesla  (CNN 05/15/2013)
      Obama's second-term curse?  Not so fast  (CNN 05/14/2013)
      Did political spin hide the truth of Benghazi?  (CNN 05/13/2013)
      Controversial immigration report may be right  (CNN 05/13/2013)
      Washington: We have a problem  (JWR 05/10/2013)
      Evil  (JWR 05/10/2013)
      Why We Should Mistrust the Government  (JWR 05/09/2013)
      Words That Replace Thought  (JWR 05/08/2013)
      Honest Examination of Race  (JWR 05/08/2013)
      Lessons from 'America's Most Wanted': Never give up  (CNN 05/08/2013)
      What's wrong with Internet sales tax  (CNN 05/07/2013)
      3-D printed guns are a boon for criminals  (CNN 05/07/2013)
      The silence of the lambs  (JWR 05/06/2013)
      Washington abandons America's jobless  (CNN 05/06/2013)
      Too Heavy to go Light  (JWR 05/03/2013)
      Is Thinking Obsolete?  (JWR 05/01/2013)
      Did we all fail the Tsarnaevs?  (JWR 04/29/2013)
      Americanized — 21st Century Style  (JWR 04/26/2013)
      No boundaries, big problem  (JWR 04/25/2013)
      Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: A Product of an All-American Left-wing Education?  (JWR 04/25/2013)
      The problem isn't just illegal immigration, it's legal immigration, too  (JWR 04/25/2013)
      The D-word  (JWR 04/25/2013)
      Immigration Gambles  (JWR 04/24/2013)
      'Right wing' doesn't equal 'terrorist'  (JWR 04/24/2013)
      Treat Chicago gangs as terrorists  (CNN 04/24/2013)
      How strong, really, is America?  (CNN 04/24/2013)
      B.S.  from Boston — and Chechnya  (JWR 04/23/2013)
      After Boston, nothing will change  (CNN 04/23/2013)
      Killer instincts: Seniors beware  (JWR 04/19/2013)
      Vengeance shouldn't guide prosecution  (CNN 04/22/2013)
      Obama Doesn't Care About Dead Children  (JWR 04/19/2013)
      When violence seems the only answer  (JWR 04/18/2013)
      From Boston to Haymarket to Bill Ayers  (JWR 04/18/2013)
      Immigration Sophistry  (JWR 04/17/2013)
      Fact-Free Crusades  (JWR 04/16/2013)
      Why terrorist bombings have been rare in U.S.  in past decade  (CNN 04/16/2013)
      It can happen anywhere  (CNN 04/15/2013)
      Media Ignore Mass Murder Trial  (JWR 04/15/2013)
      Sympathy for the Devil  (JWR 04/13/2013)
      Why North Korea worries Dick Cheney  (CNN 04/11/2013)
      Tests and Tiger Moms  (JWR 04/1o/2013)
      An impotent gun solution  (JWR 04/1o/2013)
      A background check even the NRA could love?  (CNN 04/11/2013)
      The government wants your gun rights  (CNN 04/10/2013)
      Gun laws and human nature  (JWR 04/09/2013)
      Taking great pleasure in the death penalty  (JWR 04/08/2013)
      Why Washington is corrupt  (CNN 04/07/2013)
      Guns Save Lives  (JWR 04/04/2013)
      Time, the best judge  (JWR 04/03/2013)
      What's killing the bees  (CNN 04/02/2013)
      Real 'modern family' not so funny  (JWR 03/29/2013)
      Ending the enforcement of government-funded brainwashing  (JWR 03/29/2013)
      Jurisprudence by the Polls  (JWR 03/29/2013)
      Street People  (JWR 03/29/2013)
      Beware public opinion  (JWR 03/28/2013)
      Are We Equal?  (JWR 03/26/2013)
      Straight marriage is the real issue  (CNN 03/25/2013)
      Nondiscrimination laws threaten free markets  (CNN 03/22/2013)
      Court shouldn't rewrite law on gay marriage  (CNN 03/22/2013)
      America's big fat advantage  (JWR 03/21/2013)
      A Real Term Limit  (JWR 03/20/2013)
      Gay marriage, then group marriage?  (CNN 03/20/2013)
      Don't give medals for drone attacks  (CNN 03/19/2013)
      Who would follow our example on Keystone?  (JWR 03/15/2013)
      From affirmative action to diversity  (JWR 03/14/2013)
      Lives purpo$ely being crippled  (JWR 03/13/2013)
      Men don't have it all either  (CNN 03/13/2013)
      The sound of inevitability  (CNN 03/12/2013)
      For some employers, 'immigration reform' means cheap labor  (CNN 03/11/2013)
      The Right to Self-Defense  (JWR 03/04/2013)
      'Peak oil' doomsayers proved wrong  (CNN 03/04/2013)
      Rotten to the Core, Part III: Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt  (JWR 03/01/2013)
      Shepherds and Sheep  (JWR 02/26/2013)
      Gilded class warriors  (JWR 02/21/2013)
      Guns and Pensions  (JWR 02/19/2013)
      Have the courage to deal with cyber war  (CNN 02/19/2013)
      Cultural Deviancy, Not Guns  (JWR 02/13/2013)
      Don't focus on Chris Dorner's politics  (CNN 02/13/2013)
      Support for Dorner is Troubling  (JWR 02/12/2013)
      Let's face it: I'm just not 'subtle' enough to understand Obama  (JWR 02/08/2013)
      Incoherent immigration reform  (JWR 02/07/2013)
      No letters on Saturday won't save Postal Service  (CNN 02/06/2013)
      A Morally-Confused Marine  (JWR 02/04/2013)
      What the Babies Would Say  (JWR 02/04/2013)
      Push for gun control misplaces blame  (JWR 02/04/2013)
      Obama, Gore, stop whining about right-wing media  (CNN 02/04/2013)
      Doctored Videotapes Are Peanuts  (JWR 02/01/2013)
      Dems 'Never Let a Good Tragedy Go To Waste'  (JWR 01/31/2013)
      Of sermons and soda water  (JWR 01/31/2013)
      NRA chief: Why we fight for gun rights  (CNN 01/31/2013)
      Loaded language poisons gun debate  (CNN 01/31/2013)
      Conservatives must master the lessons of prez's inaugural address  (JWR 01/29/2013)
      The New Normal of Rampant Dim-Bulbism  (JWR 01/28/2013)
      Combat puts women at unique risk  (JWR 01/28/2013)
      Women in combat a dangerous experiment  (CNN 01/26/2013)
      The craven retreat of the generals  (JWR 01/25/2013)
      What Doesn't Matter to Hillary Clinton  (JWR 01/24/2013)
      Hillary Clinton's legacy: Congress has duty to ask tough, parting questions  (JWR 01/23/2013)
      Gun crime facilitators are the ones pointing fingers  (JWR 01/23/2013)
      GOP, play offense in Obama's second term  (CNN 01/23/2013)
      Obama's historic speech deepens divisions  (CNN 01/23/2013)
      Are MLK's Christian values welcome today?  (JWR 01/21/2012)
      Just Say Yes  (JWR 01/21/2012)
      Why inaugural speeches mostly fail  (CNN 01/20/2012)
      'Gun Culture' — What About the 'Fatherless Culture'?  (JWR 01/17/2013)
      The war between the amendments  (JWR 01/17/2013)
      Guns don't kill people, the mentally ill do  (JWR 01/17/2013)
      Reduce poverty by promoting schools, families  (CNN 01/17/2012)
      Obama's gun violence measures: Would they work?  (CNN 01/16/2012)
      Are Guns the Problem?  (JWR 01/16/2013)
      Despite Newtown, we crave violent movies  (CNN 01/15/2013)
      Do Gun Control Laws Control Guns?  (JWR 01/15/2013)
      Of course Biden is right about control and morality  (JWR 01/14/2013)
      America, the Saudi Arabia of tomorrow  (CNN 01/14/2013)
      Hagel's wrong on why U.S.  supports Israel  (CNN 01/13/2013)
      Obama's spending problem  (CNN 01/10/2013)
      Cornyn: Why I can't support Hagel  (CNN 01/10/2013)
      Guns and Freedom  (JWR 01/10/2013)
      The Role of 'Educators'  (JWR 01/08/2013)
      Get ready for real crisis  (JWR 01/08/2013)
      Peering Into the Abyss  (JWR 01/08/2013)
      Don't get blown away by the 'facts'  (JWR 01/07/2013)
      Why Al Gore's Al Jazeera deal doesn't seem right  (CNN 01/07/2013)
      Marijuana use is too risky a choice  (CNN 01/07/2013)
 2012  (01/03/2012)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/31/2013) | Next sect (12/29/2011) | List bot 
      Fiscal cliff was bound to collapse  (CNN 01/03/2012)
      The ever-greater absurdity of America's non-lax laws  (JWR 12/31/2012)
      Taking aim on the easy target  (JWR 12/28/2012)
      Random Thoughts  (JWR 12/25/2012)
      Guns endanger more than they protect  (CNN 12/25/2012)
      Vain search for meaning in massacre  (JWR 12/24/2012)
      The lesson of Newtown isn't guns.  It's that there are social truths as well as individual truths  (JWR 12/24/2012)
      Look to MADD in changing our gun culture  (CNN 12/24/2012)
      Gun Violence — Let's Shift the Odds in Favor of the Good Guys!  (JWR 12/20/2012)
      The new racial derangement syndrome  (JWR 12/20/2012)
      How a boy becomes a killer  (CNN 12/19/2012)
      Predicting mass killings impossible  (CNN 12/18/2012)
      'Forward' to the Past?  (JWR 12/19/2012)
      The Post-Newtown Witch Hunt  (JWR 12/19/2012)
      The case for gun rights is stronger than you think  (CNN 12/19/2012)
      Save a kid, arm a teacher  (JWR 12/18/2012)
      Entertainment Control  (JWR 12/18/2012)
      Conscience, Not Guns  (JWR 12/18/2012)
      Invincible Ignorance  (JWR 12/18/2012)
      More security isn't the only answer  (CNN 12/18/2012)
      On gun control, two places to start  (CNN 12/18/2012)
      Why Obama shouldn't lead fight against gun violence  (CNN 12/17/2012)
      Honor the victims — with action  (CNN 12/17/2012)
      In school shootings, patterns and warning signs  (CNN 12/17/2012)
      Parents' promise: I will keep you safe  (CNN 12/16/2012)
      A victory for right-to-work laws  (CNN 12/12/2012)
      Will 401  (k) plans keep getting worse? (CNN 12/12/2012)
      Analysis: Why America's unions are losing power  (CNN 12/11/2012)
      The looming crisis of student loan debt  (CNN 12/06/2012)
      Obama's dismantling of American might has worldwide repercussions  (JWR 12/04/2012)
      Freedom spawns prosperity  (JWR 12/04/2012)
      Fighting the Good Conservative Fight  (JWR 12/03/2012)
      America not paying its fair share  (JWR 12/03/2012)
      Will President Obama push us over the cliff?  (CNN 12/01/2012)
      The war on men  (Fox, 11/24/2012)
      Beware the Goodists  (JWR 11/28/2012)
      Five reasons America won't fall off the 'fiscal cliff'  (JWR 11/28/2012)
      Why liberalism will ultimately fail  (CNN 11/28/2012)
      Cuban-American vote explains why America is in decline  (JWR 11/27/2012)
      How U.S.  can once again define the future  (CNN 11/27/2012)
      Crushing Ambition  (JWR 11/26/2012)
      A society in decline: Our definition of marriage should follow process, not principle?  (JWR 11/26/2012)
      We're living the dream; we just don't realize it  (CNN 11/24/2012)
      Will the American people allow themselves to be diverted and deceived?  (JWR 11/23/2012)
      Is Black Friday edging out Thanksgiving?  (CNN 11/22/2012)
      Democracy and Majority Rule  (JWR 11/21/2012)
      Legalize pot?  No, reform laws  (CNN 11/20/2012)
      Is secession bid more than a cry of rage?  (CNN 11/19/2012)
      Petraeus betrayed his country before he betrayed his wife  (JWR 11/16/2012)
      Republicans lost the culture war  (CNN 11/14/2012)
      Our Deviant Society  (JWR 11/07/2012)
      Waiving Freedom  (JWR 11/07/2012)
      A Vote For Obama-Biden Is A Vote For National Collapse  (JWR 11/05/2012)
      Obama and the politics of contempt  (JWR 11/02/2012)
      What really happened in Benghazi?  (CNN 11/01/2012)
      Cool Obama vs.  square Romney  (CNN 10/25/2012)
      Deserving of answers, not excuses  (JWR 10/23/2012)
      The real reason behind Benghazigate: Was Obama gun-walking arms to jihadists?  (JWR 10/23/2012)
      Why debt is a threat to national security  (CNN 10/22/2012)
      Banish Big Bird?  Why not just bail out everything?  (JWR 10/08/2012)
      America is Not a Democracy  (JWR 10/05/2012)
      Left wants multiculturalism to trump free speech  (JWR 10/04/2012)
      The ultimate undecided voter is in the White House  (CNN 10/02/2012)
      Obama a better president of the future  (JWR 10/01/2012)
      10 questions for Obama to answer  (CNN 10/01/2012)
      My Take: 'I'm spiritual but not religious' is a cop-out  (CNN 09/29/2012)
      Why you shouldn't vote for Obama  (CNN 09/27/2012)
      Can Romney get back on track?  (CNN 09/26/2012)
      Romney's tax rate would be lowest since Nixon  (CNN 09/26/2012)
      The true difference between Obama, Romney  (CNN 09/24/2012)
      Why do the Romneys pay so little in taxes?  (CNN 09/24/2012)
      The ghosts of Jimmy Carter  (JWR 09/24/2012)
      Why the U.S.  has a culture of dependency  (CNN 09/21/2012)
      Bipartisan Middle East policy insanity  (CNN 09/18/2012)
      Don't blame the video; defend free speech  (CNN 09/17/2012)
      Chicago teachers strike a Democratic feud  (CNN 09/14/2012)
      Ex-ambassador: No time for accusers, apologists or political gamesters  (CNN 09/13/2012)
      Chicago teachers' strike is a test for Democrats  (CNN 09/13/2012)
      Chicago teachers strike hurts our kids  (CNN 09/11/2012)
      Slurs only bolster Sandra Fluke's cause  (CNN 09/10/2012)
      Decline of middle class not Obama's fault  (CNN 09/04/2012)
      Can Obama convince voters to turn to him again?  (CNN 09/04/2012)
      Greedy geezers?  That's a myth  (CNN 08/26/2012)
      Election a stark choice on America's future  (CNN 08/24/2012)
      Will Romney and Ryan take America to war?  (CNN 08/15/2012)
      Why America doesn't like Mitt Romney  (CNN 08/14/2012)
      Why Paul Ryan?  (CNN 08/13/2012)
      U.S.  Olympic athlete, Mexican flag?  (CNN 08/10/2012)
      Will Obamacare raise the price of your pizza?  (CNN 08/10/2012)
      Clock ticking to disastrous defense cuts  (CNN 08/09/2012)
      Why do school sports start before classes do?  (CNN 08/08/2012)
      Vidal, Buckley, and Anti-Semitism  (JWR 08/06/2012)
      Chick-fil-A and free speech  (CNN 07/30/2012)
      Has image overtaken music?  (CNN 07/28/2012)
      The Muslim Brotherhood's American defenders  (JWR 07/27/2012)
      Warning signs of violence: What to do  (CNN 07/26/2012)
      Aurora heroes: Three who gave their lives  (CNN 07/25/2012)
      Looking into the minds of killers  (CNN 07/24/2012)
      Fear drives opposition to gun control  (CNN 07/23/2012)
      Gun control or carry permits won't stop mass murder  (CNN 07/20/2012)
      Before taking on Syria, U.S.  should heed lesson of the past  (CNN 07/20/2012)
      Paterno statue needs to stay  (CNN 07/19/2012)
      The company they keep: Team Obama has welcomed Islamists in their midst  (CNN 07/17/2012)
      Is optimism really good for you?  (CNN 07/09/2012)
      Heat wave lesson: We take comfort for granted  (CNN 07/08/2012)
      We're No.  1!  We're No.  1!  We're...  uh...  not?  (CNN 07/02/2012)
      Bill Nye: U.S.  risks losing its space edge  (CNN 07/02/2012)
      Health care ruling can help Romney  (CNN 06/29/2012)
      Tax power: The little argument that could  (CNN 06/29/2012)
      Don't be nosy about Fast and Furious  (CNN 06/26/2012)
      The truth about Jonathan Pollard  (CNN 06/22/2012)
      Why should the press be polite to presidents?  (CNN 06/22/2012)
      So Much For Stopping the Leaks  (JWR 06/20/2012)
      Did politics drive prosecution in Trayvon Martin case?  (CNN 06/19/2012)
      The only swing state that really matters in 2012  (CNN 06/11/2012)
      Liberals want Obama to be a king, not a president  (CNN 06/08/2012)
      Poor and fat: The real class war  (CNN 06/05/2012)
      Bloomberg's visionary move against obesity  (CNN 06/04/2012)
      Edwards jury got it exactly right  (CNN 06/01/2012)
      Opinion: Facebook threatens to 'Zuck up' the human race  (CNN 05/30/2012)
      The cost of peace  (CNN 05/27/2012)
      'The thing about remembering is that you don't forget'  (CNN 05/27/2012)
      Hard lessons for U.S.  nuclear safety from Fukushima meltdown  (CNN 05/24/2012)
      The Foggiest War  (JWR 05/03/2012)
      Wanted: A competent commander in chief  (JWR 05/01/2012)
      What really kills family values  (CNN 04/30/2012)
      One answer to Secret Service scandal?  Hire more women  (CNN 04/30/2012)
      Why Obama vs.  Romney is becoming a dogfight  (CNN 04/29/2012)
      What's wrong with American politics  (CNN 04/27/2012)
      Promise of the American Dream is broken  (CNN 04/27/2012)
      Analysis: As Europe goes, so goes Obama  (CNN 04/26/2012)
      Chuck Colson fought for the forgotten  (CNN 04/25/2012)
      Losing the jihadists' war on America  (JWR 04/24/2012)
      What if justices let states make immigration policy?  (CNN 04/24/2012)
      Don't blame the 1% for America's pay gap  (CNN 04/24/2012)
      Why Obama vs.  Romney is becoming a dogfight  (CNN 04/23/2012)
      Are men stupid?  (CNN 04/23/2012)
      If CAIR's Attacking You, You Must be Good  (JWR 04/20/2012)
      Three lessons linger from BP oil spill  (CNN 04/20/2012)
      What Space Shuttle Discovery has inspired in us  (CNN 04/20/2012)
      Secret Service still the best and the brightest  (CNN 04/20/2012)
      Ted Nugent should be in jail  (CNN 04/19/2012)
      Are colleges afraid of Peter Thiel?  (CNN 04/18/2012)
      Shuttle exits and with it America's dreams?  (CNN 04/17/2012)
      Why tax reform talk a dead end  (CNN 04/17/2012)
      The Buffett rule is going nowhere  (CNN 04/16/2012)
      After contraception controversy, Catholic Church announces 'religious freedom' campaign  (CNN 04/12/2012)
      Violence and race: a two-way street  (CNN 04/11/2012)
      Political compromise of our security  (JWR 04/10/2012)
      Prosecutor's quandary: Zimmerman may be indicted, then acquitted  (CNN 04/10/2012)
      Should George Zimmerman be prosecuted?  (CNN 04/10/2012)
      To most Americans, it doesn't feel like an economic recovery  (CNN 04/09/2012)
      'Judicial activism' a convenient bogeyman  (CNN 04/06/2012)
      Truth about Islam or lies?  (JWR 04/03/2012)
      Hookup culture debases women  (CNN 04/04/2012)
      Obama should know better on Supreme Court's role  (CNN 04/03/2012)
      After the mandate, government-run health care would grow  (CNN 04/02/2012)
      Rush to judgment in Trayvon Martin case  (CNN 03/30/2012)
      Justice, not revenge, for Trayvon  (CNN 03/27/2012)
      Health reform could survive loss of individual mandate  (CNN 03/26/2012)
      A national ID card that protects voting rights  (CNN 03/26/2012)
      Stop subsidizing soaring college costs  (CNN 03/22/2012)
      How 'duty to retreat' became 'stand your ground'  (CNN 03/21/2012)
      Florida shooting renews debate over 'stand your ground' laws  (CNN 03/21/2012)
      Rice, Klein: Education keeps America safe  (CNN 03/21/2012)
      Rutgers spying verdict won't end bullying  (CNN 03/14/2012)
      Why Encyclopedia Britannica mattered  (CNN 03/14/2012)
      Pat Robertson is wrong about marijuana  (CNN 03/14/2012)
      It's un-American to silence Limbaugh  (CNN 03/12/2012)
      Why are millions of Americans locked up?  (CNN 03/11/2012)
      Opinion: It’s time for ‘equal’ to mean equal  (CNN 03/10/2012)
      What's wrong with Congress?  It's not big enough  (CNN 03/09/2012)
      Shariah's threat to civil rights  (JWR 02/28/2012)
      Why does America lead the world in school shootings?  (CNN 02/28/2012)
      Is Chris Christie right about Warren Buffett?  (CNN 02/24/2012)
      Obamacare should be a GOP rallying cry  (CNN 02/22/2012)
      When will workers share in Apple's wealth?  (CNN 02/17/2012)
      Iran a threat to U.S.  on many fronts  (CNN 02/16/2012)
      Legalizing drugs won't prevent abuse  (CNN 02/15/2012)
      Michigan to Romney: Go away  (CNN 02/14/2012)
      Mitt Romney's 'severely' bad moves  (CNN 02/13/2012)
      U.S lag in science, math a disaster in the making  (CNN 02/09/2012)
      Newt and Mitt: Two guys with issues  (CNN 02/07/2012)
      'Strip club bill' a no-brainer  (CNN 02/07/2012)
      Why Romney is winning  (CNN 02/06/2012)
      Time to update copyright law?  (CNN 01/31/2012)
      Just read the words: Separation of Church and State works two ways  (JWR 01/31/2012)
      A moon colony is a waste of money  (CNN 01/30/2012)
      Romney's returns show progressive taxes are dead for the superrich  (CNN 01/24/2012)
      What James Carville doesn't get about Republicans  (CNN 01/23/2012)
      Rejecting the Keystone pipeline is an act of insanity  (Washington Post, 01/19/2012)
      In South Carolina, the kids are not alright  (CNN 01/16/2012)
      What kind of capitalist is Romney?  (CNN 01/13/2012)
      Barbour's last-minute rush to pardon  (CNN 01/12/2012)
      The man who could stop Romney  (CNN 01/12/2012)
      Can Santorum show Iowa was no fluke?  (CNN 01/04/2012)
      I want this election over - now  (CNN 01/03/2012)
      Why negative political ads work  (CNN 01/02/2012)
 2011  (12/29/2011)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/03/2012) | Next sect (12/27/2010) | List bot 
      The price of an ad-free digital experience  (CNN 12/29/2011)
      My Take: When Bedford Falls Becomes Pottersville  (CNN 12/24/2011)
      Who's to blame for Washington gridlock?  (CNN 12/23/2011)
      Why the winds are shifting toward Obama  (CNN 12/23/2011)
      The Past and the Present  (JWR 12/20/2011)
      Why Thomas Friedman Abetted Anti-Semitism  (JWR 12/20/2011)
      A game changer on Medicare's future?  (CNN 12/15/2011)
      America the generous  (CNN 12/15/2011)
      Obama and the politics of disappointment  (CNN 12/14/2011)
      Stealth jihad in the Senate  (JWR 12/13/2011)
      Gingrich has it wrong about the poor  (CNN 12/13/2011)
      A good start to reviving the middle class  (CNN 12/12/2011)
      An Administration Ready to Blame Israel for Everything...  Including Anti-Semitism  (JWR 12/05/2011)
      No president since FDR has won re-election with unemployment over 7.2%...  (CNN 12/05/2011)
      U.S.  Postal Service: Back to the future?  (CNN 12/05/2011)
      Why does college cost so much?  (CNN 12/02/2011)
      End welfare for the wealthy  (CNN 12/01/2011)
      Lessons of History?  (11/29/2011)
      Don't repeal Americans' health care lifeline  (CNN 11/29/2011)
      Have they gone nuts in Washington?  (CNN 11/21/2011)
      Walking along Avenue J{ew}  (JWR 11/18/2011)
      Is money's deep role in politics the root of our woes?  (CNN 11/16/2011)
      Why Supreme Court should stop Obama's health care plan  (CNN 11/15/2011)
      America, a nation without heroes  (CNN 11/15/2011)
      My Take: Keep government out of mind-reading business  (CNN 11/12/2011)
      Brave New Transnational Progressive World  (JWR 11/09/2011)
      Why can't Americans vote online?  (CNN 11/09/2011)
      Cain must confront sex harassment issue  (CNN 11/08/2011)
      Occupiers, Tea Partiers, and the Tenth Commandment  (CNN 11/03/2011)
      Short Takes: Are we turning Steve Jobs into a saint?  (CNN 10/26/2011)
      Obama risks Iraq for political expediency  (CNN 10/26/2011)
      The question on everyone's mind  (CNN 10/25/2011)
      What if abortion became a non-issue?  (CNN 10/24/2011)
      Ohio tragedy shows wild animals belong in the wild  (CNN 10/20/2011)
      84% would pay more under Cain's 9-9-9 plan  (CNN 10/19/2011)
      No Justice From Justice  (JWR 10/17/2011)
      How Occupy Wall Street can really change banks  (CNN 10/17/2011)
      Why Herman Cain can't be president  (CNN 10/17/2011)
      My Take: Are evangelicals dangerous?  (CNN 10/15/2011)
      What will victory look like for Occupy Wall Street?  (CNN 10/14/2011)
      How strong is the case against Iran plot suspect?  (CNN 10/13/2011)
      Don't judge candidates by their faith  (CNN 10/11/2011)
      You say you want a revolution?  Run for office  (CNN 10/07/2011)
      40-year low in America's view of Wall Street  (CNN 10/07/2011)
      Is Obama's re-election bid a hostage to Europe?  (CNN 10/06/2011)
      Sarah Palin proves she's no fool  (CNN 10/06/2011)
      Think Occupy Wall St.  is a phase?  You don't get it  (CNN 10/05/2011)
      Why men are in trouble  (CNN 09/30/2011)
      Big cases await U.S.  Supreme Court's 2011-12 term  (CNN 10/03/2011)
      Conflict is a feature of democracy, not a flaw  (CNN 09/30/2011)
      Is America becoming a house divided against itself?  (CNN 09/28/2011)
      America's Al Qaeda Obsession  (CNN 09/27/2011)
      It's good news that government is stalled  (CNN 09/27/2011)
      Stupid voters enable broken government  (CNN 09/27/2011)
      Why our government is broken  (CNN 09/26/2011)
      Lesson of a falling satellite  (CNN 09/22/2011)
      Obama's Dilemma: U.S.  Foreign Policy and Electoral Realities  (JWR 09/22/2011)
      Ruling to execute Troy Davis violates core principles  (CNN 09/20/2011)
      GOP should attack Obama's plans, not Obama the man  (CNN 09/19/2011)
      Rick Perry, rising or shooting star?  (CNN 09/13/2011)
      Is Social Security a 'Ponzi scheme'?  (CNN 09/13/2011)
      The war America fights  (JWR 09/09/2011)
      In an Obama vs.  Obama race, Obama loses  (CNN 09/08/2011)
      National debt: The five-minute primer  (CNN 09/07/2011)
      Lesson for Obama and GOP rivals: Don't play politics with jobs issue  (CNN 09/06/2011)
      Cliche-based foreign policy  (JWR 09/02/2011)
      How Obama could be the leader in the room  (CNN 09/01/2011)
      Obama's three big mistakes  (CNN 08/30/2011)
      Give Obama a break  (CNN 08/22/2011)
      What taxpayers want  (CNN 08/19/2011)
      Immigration reform in August: Why now?  (CNN 08/19/2011)
      Wall Street rating agencies' corrupt system  (CNN 08/19/2011)
      Why Rick Perry is a strong candidate  (CNN 08/18/2011)
      Warren Buffett's Tax Dodge - The billionaire volunteers the middle class for a tax increase  (WSJ, 08/17/2011)
      Rick Perry's strength and weakness: Jobs  (CNN 08/15/2011)
      Warning to GOPers and their presidential aspirants: There are more than two...  (JWR 08/12/2011)
      Global Economic Downturn: A Crisis of Political Economy  (JWR 08/12/2011)
      Borrowing from Communists to pay Jihadis?  (JWR 08/11/2011)
      What if Obama is right about the downgrade?  (CNN 08/09/2011)
      It's ‘crazy’ to ignore Shariah  (JWR 08/09/2011)
      Ugly to compare tea party with terrorists  (CNN 08/08/2011)
      Why companies won't hire  (CNN 08/08/2011)
      Why Congress and S&P Deserve Each Other  (Time, 08/08/2011)
      In economic turmoil, U.S.  needs a leader like Churchill  (CNN 08/07/2011)
      Helpless, as the world gambles your money away  (CNN 08/07/2011)
      Biggest threat to future?  The jobs crisis  (CNN 08/04/2011)
      Wake up GOP: Smashing system doesn't fix it  (CNN 08/01/2011)
      Obama's 5 big mistakes  (CNN 07/25/2011)
      Silent majority fed up with Washington  (CNN 07/23/2011)
      Debt ceiling: What happens if Congress doesn't raise it?  (CNN 07/21/2011)
      Media hypocrisy on Murdoch  (CNN 07/20/2011)
      Balanced-budget amendment or bust  (CNN 07/19/2011)
      Anti-American activities: Congress needs a Cold War-style effort...  (JWR 07/19/2011)
      The Other Face of Tragedy  (JWR 07/19/2011)
      GOP wants Obama's unconditional surrender  (CNN 07/18/2011)
      David Mamet's Tragic Vision  (JWR 07/18/2011)
      Debt debate cheat sheet  (CNN 07/15/2011)
      US debt: how big is it and who owns it?  (Guardian, 07/15/2011)
      The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood  (JWR 07/05/2011)
      Why Barney Frank and Ron Paul are wrong on drug legalization  (CNN 06/30/2011)
      The deficit Americans should think about most: Personal character  (JWR 06/28/2011)
      Common thread present in immigration law challenges  (CNN 06/28/2011)
      Is U.S.  role in Afghan war obsolete?  (CNN 05/09/2011)
      Remembering 9/11 and what's truly important  (CNN 05/06/2011)
      4 reasons to release bin Laden photos  (CNN 05/06/2011)
      CIA officials: Crucial info in bin Laden capture came from interrogation...  (JWR 05/05/2011)
      Rules for Killing Rogues  (JWR 05/03/2011)
      Time to rethink Afghanistan strategy?  (CNN 05/03/2011)
      Administration's initial misstatements raise questions  (CNN 05/03/2011)
      Now, stop questioning Obama's legitimacy  (CNN 05/02/2011)
      The Trump Card  (Townhall, 04/26/2011)
      What the law says about 'birther' bills  (CNN 04/22/2011)
      Don't let ignorant people vote  (CNN 04/12/2011)
      The indispensable freedom of association  (JWR 04/11/2011)
      Obama forgetting the lessons of Iraq  (CNN 03/24/2011)
      Murkowski: This is no Chernobyl  (CNN 03/18/2011)
      The Inevitable Viability of Conservatism  (JWR 03/16/2011)
      Breakthrough for a taboo-buster  (JWR 03/15/2011)
      Is Obama defeatable?  (CNN 03/08/2011)
      King of the Hill  (JWR 03/08/2011)
      For superior teachers, reward excellence  (CNN 03/04/2011)
      Pressure for school reform is building  (CNN 02/23/2011)
      Wisconsin's street theater stalemate obscures real issues  (CNN 02/22/2011)
      FDR's Ghost Is Smiling on Wisconsin's Governor  (RCP, 02/19/2011)
      Charge George W.  Bush with war crimes?  (CNN 02/14/2011)
      Can Obama be beaten in 2012?  (CNN 02/10/2011)
      American Dream, Jewish Nightmare  (INN 02/05/2011)
      Could the U.S.  shut down the internet?  (CNN 02/03/2011)
      Palin should follow Gingrich's advice — and so should Newt  (CNN 01/19/2011)
      Gun control measures don't stop violence  (CNN 01/18/2011)
      National debt: The ugly facts  (CNN 01/17/2011)
      Our Take: Is alleged Arizona shooter evil or mentally ill?  (CNN 01/17/2011)
      We ignore the Jared Loughners among us  (Washington Post, 01/13/2011)
      A real test for our political leaders  (CNN 01/10/2011)
      Could the system have prevented rampage?  (CNN 01/10/2011)
      No time for finger-pointing  (CNN 01/09/2011)
      Commission spreads the blame for Gulf oil disaster in report  (CNN 01/06/2011)
      I Support Hearings on Muslim Radicalization  (NewsMax, 01/03/2011)
      Mexico drug war a nightmare scenario  (CNN 01/03/2011)
 2010  (12/27/2010)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/29/2011) | Next sect (10/19/2009) | List bot 
      The Year of Microterrorism  (CNN 12/27/2010)
      Tax deal makes everyone unhappy — except most Americans  (CNN 12/15/2010)
      U.S.  can't force people to buy stuff  (CNN 12/13/2010)
      Why George W.  Bush must be smiling  (CNN 12/13/2010)
      Who's to blame for damage from WikiLeaks?  (CNN 12/07/2010)
      Who is really stealing your privacy?  (CNN 12/03/2010)
      Toobin: First Amendment may not protect WikiLeaks  (CNN 12/01/2010)
      The Tea Party vs.  the Fed  (CNN 11/03/2010)
      Midterm elections: The morning after  (CNN 11/03/2010)
      Can the CIA still accomplish its mission?  (CNN 10/26/2010)
      Williams comments should spark discussion, not firing  (CNN 10/22/2010)
      Are we ready for new form of terror?  (CNN 10/21/2010)
      Why U.S.  can't find Osama bin Laden  (CNN 10/19/2010)
      Why Democrats are going negative  (CNN 10/06/2010)
      The Sweep: What went wrong for Democrats  (CNN 10/06/2010)
      Obama's lame speeches on economy, Iraq  (INN 09/02/2010)
      Opinion: Is Time a Muslim Magazine?  (INN 08/24/2010)
      The New Racial Mess  (JWR 08/22/2010)
      Please, No More Teachable Moments  (JWR 08/19/2010)
      Why Obama is not first 'imposter' president and won't be the last  (CNN 08/09/2010)
      Islamism Resurgent: A Review of 'The Grand Jihad'  (National Review, 08/09/2010)
      Arizona can prevail on immigration law  (CNN 07/30/2010)
      Why America needs to free itself from oil  (CNN 07/04/2010)
      Guilty Until Proven Guilty  (FP, 06/08/2010)
      Stop the hypocrisy about Israel  (CNN 06/01/2010)
      Wall Street didn't cause crash of '08  (CNN 04/26/2010)
      'Earthshaking' ways to fix U.S.  debt  (CNN 04/12/2010)
      On court, Democrats are the party of no  (CNN 04/12/2010)
      How health care reform will affect you  (CNN 03/23/2010)
      Rove: Bush didn't 'lie us into war'  (CNN 03/06/2010)
 2009  (10/19/2009)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/27/2010) | Next sect (11/2003) | List bot 
      Commentary: Dems Head For Health Care Crackup?  (CNN 10/19/2009)
      Commentary: Obama Wrong to Release Interrogation Memos  (CNN 10/19/2009)
      Best Jobs in America  (CNN 10/09/2009)
      Commentary: Haters of America Are Still Out There  (CNN 09/25/2009)
      Commentary: Who says public schools need more money?  (CNN 09/09/2009)
      Commentary: Why primary care doctors are fed up  (CNN 08/25/2009)
      Obama Rewrites the Cold War  (WSJ 07/13/2009)
• 
There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth.  President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.
• 
"The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight.  The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place.  Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game.  If one person won, then the other person had to lose."
• 
"And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be.  Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation.  The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."
• 
The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime.  The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag.  There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind.
• 
The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. 
• 
The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.
• 
It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. 
• 
He proclaims moral equivalence between the U.S.  and our adversaries, he readily accepts a false historical narrative, and he refuses to stand up against anti-American lies.
• 
... he asserted there was some sort of equivalence between American support for the 1953 coup in Iran and the evil that the Iranian mullahs have done in the world since 1979. 
• 
"I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was 3 months old."
• 
"I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
• 
The Obama administration does seem to believe in another kind of exceptionalism — Obama exceptionalism.  "We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand," one Obama handler has said.
• 
What they don't seem to realize is that once you're president, your brand is America, and the American people expect you to defend us against lies, not embrace or ignore them.  We also expect you to know your history.
• 
Mr.  Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions.
• 
"No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies."
• 
Perhaps Mr.  Obama thinks he is making America inoffensive to our enemies.  In reality, he is emboldening them and weakening us.
• 
We can also be disarmed morally by a president who spreads false narratives about our history or who accepts, even if by his silence, our enemies' lies about us.
      Commentary: Sotomayor pick not based on merit  (CNN 04/27/2009)
      Commentary: Columbine and our numb eyes  (CNN 04/20/2009)
      Commentary: Obama's liked, but is he respected?  (CNN 04/09/2009)
      Commentary: Slow down, Mr.  President  (CNN 03/12/2009)
      Commentary: Can Obama make the tough choices?  (CNN 02/26/2009)
      Commentary: Obama should have told us the whole sad truth  (CNN 02/12/2009)
 2003  (11/2003)  Go to:  List top | Previous section (10/19/2009) | List bottom 
      Long queue at drive-in soup kitchen  (Julian Borger, 11/2003)
      Trading seabiscuit for a rabbit  (Pat Buchanan, 08/2003)
      City of big ideas and tiny minds  (Pat Buchanan, 08/2003)
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