How Can We Have Two Systems of Justice in This Country?

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There should not be two standards of justice in this nation—a slap on the wrist for the politically correct who do wrong, while Gen. Michael Flynn’s whole life has been upended for allegedly lying to the FBI.

Flynn has lost his house, livelihood, and reputation. Meanwhile, in contrast, there is a high ranking FBI attorney who allegedly doctored an email to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant for raw political sabotage, who has yet to be punished.

Last week, Senator Charles Grassley (R) Iowa declassified some footnotes to a Justice Department inspector general report on the whole Russian-Trump collusion allegation.

Of course, this whole mess began with a dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele. He alleged that the Trump campaign secretly received help from Russia, so that Trump might become president. All of this has been investigated ad nauseam and found to be false.

Writing over the weekend an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (April 11-12, 2020), Sen. Ron Johnson, (R) Wisconsin, noted: “The Steele dossier already ranks as one of the dirtiest political tricks of all time.” The falsified Steele dossier became the pretext by which some FBI officials appear to have obtained FISA warrants.

How can this nation continue to have two standards of law and order? Two standards of judgment? Punishment of conservatives for alleged wrong-doing versus wrist-slapping of liberals for woeful violations of the law.

Consider the morality of this and then the legality.

High-ranking FBI officials allegedly lied to try to prevent a political opponent from winning the presidency. Then when he did win, they lied to derail his presidency.

Dr. Frank Wright, the president of D. James Kennedy Ministries, points out, “Lying has become so endemic in our time that many times when some politicians speak, it’s a given that some of what they say is not necessarily the truth—but rather it’s so-called spin. However, we’ve learned recently that there is serious deception among key government leaders—even in the FBI.”

Veteran journalist and author Robert Knight said to me in an interview for Christian television: “When I was growing up the FBI were the heroes….and now the FBI has grown into this enormous organization whose powers are far reaching, and whose powers could be abused if political partisans get a hold of it, which apparently is exactly what has happened.”

The Department of Justice is slowly examining some of the alleged crimes of bad actors, particularly in the FBI, but as of this writing, no concrete charges have been filed. The wheels of justice seem to be grinding awfully slow—and at least so far, in an unfair way—tilted to the ruling class.

Knight added, “I don’t recall anytime in American history where the FBI was used as a blunt political instrument. There’s a pattern of corruption here that’s far and deep. And Americans are wondering if anybody’s ever going to be punished for it.” Bob said these words in the summer of 2018. To my knowledge, no one involved on the left has yet been punished.

Jarrett Stepman of the Heritage Foundation comments: “It’s the idea that some men put themselves above the laws, and I think that’s what a lot of people see. Especially what happened with the FBI. Some agents thinking they had a right to try to overturn, essentially, the election by the American people.”

It’s against the Bible to have two separate standards of justice. And it’s against the Constitution.

In an interview for Christian television on the Judeo-Christian roots of America, Dr. Daniel Dreisbach of American University, outlined some of the ways the Bible influenced the U. S. Constitution. He told me, “Take, for example, something as simple as Article One, Section Eight, which authorizes Congress to ‘fix the standard of weights and measures.’”

Dreisbach continued, “Perhaps the greatest of the English Common Law Jurisprudence was a man by the name of Sir Edward Coke. He wrote a commentary on the Magna Charta. There’s a paragraph in Magna Charta, speaking to the necessity to fix standard weights and measures, and in his commentary, Sir Edward Coke, writing in the seventeenth century said, ‘This is an idea rooted in the Word of God.’”  Indeed, we can read about this in the book of Proverbs

The idea of standard weights and measures implies that you would do the honest thing for all your customers. God is a God of justice, and He hates dishonest dealings—one standard for one person, but a different standard for someone else.

This country cannot have two standards of justice—one for the politically correct ruling class and another for the rest of us “deplorables.” It’s unconstitutional. And more importantly, it’s unbiblical.

© All rights reserved.

Young Boy Groomed via Online Video Game System

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You’ve heard the tragic stories of men, women, and children who have been abused and harmed by the current culture of rampant sexual exploitation.

But did you know that in these uncertain and confusing times of the COVID-19 pandemic gripping our nation and the larger global community, the threat of exploitation looms even larger?

I just heard a tragic story of a young boy who I will call Leo. That is not his real name but he and his story are very real. Leo was just 16-years-old when he was groomed and trafficked through what seemed like an innocent online video game system, one used by millions of American children. He wanted to connect with other players, and when the man who reached out to him acted like his friend, it seemed to both Leo and his parents to be just another way to talk to friends on the Internet.

But the reality was far worse! Men like Leo’s trafficker use and abuse mainstream platforms with children, like video games and other social media, in order to locate and abuse vulnerable victims.

When Leo decided to meet up with his online “friend,” traveling across state lines, he was shocked to discover the person on the other side of the screen was no friend, but rather a group of seven grown men who then trafficked and exploited the young boy.

Leo was used as a sex slave for over a year, trapped in a filthy trailer while the men spent their time trying to lure other victims. It wasn’t until another 17-year-old boy arrived, also groomed and lured through the video game platform, that Leo was finally released from his prison. The men were arrested for sex trafficking, but Leo’s life has been scarred forever from his experience.

It’s no secret or surprise that stories like Leo’s are happening all across the country. And thanks to supporters like you, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has focused on the policies, education, and advocacy to bring awareness and solutions to these very issues.

We’ve even launched campaigns directly against the video game industry with Dirty Dozen List targets like Steam, the ultra-popular online gaming platform. Our wider #NotAGame project also targets sexual exploitation, violence, and abuse rampant in video games across all platforms.

These have been very successful projects in raising awareness, but tragedies like the one that happened to Leo are still occurring.

We know you care about not only helping boys like Leo as they recover from their abuse, but also about preventing future victims.

Our child protection projects urgently need funding right now not only because we are running short of cash for them but, as importantly, because these projects are gaining so much momentum.  We are changing the big companies that rely on our children for their success by convincing them to beef up their child-protection measures. I’m talking about companies like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and others that millions of children access every day.

Will you help us stop this scourge of online danger with a monthly donation?

Every amount can be used to make a big difference right now. We’ll turn your monthly donation, whatever you can afford, into advocacy with legislators and corporate executives as well as a means for getting crucial information and resources into the hands of parents so they can protect their children.

With children online more than ever during this period of social isolation and distance, the threat of online sexual exploitation is more pressing now than ever.

Help prevent further boys like Leo by funding these projects today!

PLEASE GIVE TODAY!

EDITORS NOTE: This National Center on Sexual Exploitation column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

While US Focuses on Corona, New Bill Threatens to End All Encrypted Apps

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With all media eyes focused on the COVID-19 crisis, a bill that threatens to end the era of encrypted messaging is being proposed in the Senate.

The EARN IT Act (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies) is a bipartisan effort to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online.

Introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, the legislation would create a National Commission on Online Child Exploitation Prevention. The duty of the commission would be to set up “best practices” for tech companies to prevent child sexual exploitation.

Those “best practices” are yet to be determined. The commission would be composed of government and law enforcement officials, legal and technology experts, representatives from tech companies and former child exploitation victims.

The term “earn it” comes from the fact that, under the bill, tech companies would have to “earn” their exemption from liability which is now allowed to them under Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act.

Currently, under that exemption, tech companies generally have immunity from legal liability for how people use their platforms.

Under the EARN IT legislation, companies will have to “earn” this exemption by showing the commission that they are following the “best practices” possible to keep CSAM off their platforms.

As Associate Law Professor Alan Z. Rozenshtein explains,

“Because encryption can stymie attempts to prevent, investigate and prosecute child-exploitation offenses—and because Attorney General William Barr has criticized encryption on these grounds—internet-freedom advocates strongly criticized the draft as an attack on encryption.”

Wired Magazine called the legislation a “sneak attack on encryption,” and clarified why:

“Companies might not be able to earn their liability exemption while offering end-to-end encrypted services. This would put them in the position of either having to accept liability, undermine the protection of end-to-end encryption by adding a backdoor for law enforcement access, or avoid end-to-end encryption altogether.”

Proponents of EARN IT claim that the bill is a necessary pathway to fighting child pornography and exploitation online, as Rozenshtein writes,

“This is an issue with serious but uncertain costs and benefits on both sides [however] … the best thing to do is to build a good decision-making process by which to address the issue, and then to trust that this process will lead to the best decision that could reasonably be made amid immense complexity and uncertainty. That’s the most we can ever hope for when addressing hard policy problems in a democracy.” 

Those challenging the EARN IT Act argue that the bill is too far-reaching, and raises serious free speech and privacy concerns.

Others fear EARN IT gives the government broad and undefined powers that might eventually result in scanning the public’s online message — not to mention violate the right to privacy from unreasonable government searches guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

As Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, notes:

“[W]hile it’s certainly a necessary, urgent, and desirable goal to combat the scourge of online child exploitation, there are still limits on what tech companies should do.

“Stepping up to fight CSAM should not mean wholesale converting their services into even more powerful surveillance tools for law enforcement than they already are.”

The New America’s Open Technology Institute, as part of a coalition of 25 civil society organizations, sent a letter to Senators Graham and Blumenthal, along with members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. The letter expressed severe opposition to the EARN IT Act, adding that the legislation could:

  • Raise serious concerns about violation of First Amendment rights
  • Make it more difficult to combat the sexual exploitation of children online by jeopardizing the admissibility of evidence in child sexual abuse material cases, because it raises serious questions under the Fourth Amendment
  • Risk national security and privacy by threatening encryption

Questions to Evaluate the EARN IT Act

  1. Is disrupting pedophile networks worth potentially eliminating all online privacy?
  2. To what extent is privacy already compromised due to the Patriot Act and classified NSA collection programs?
  3. Wouldn’t criminal networks simply adapt, thus devastating the privacy of millions of Americans for nothing?
  4. How could a “back door” to encrypted communications be hacked or leveraged by domestic and foreign government interests?

EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Potential for Fraud Is Why Mail-In Elections Should Be Dead Letter

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Twice the usual number of suspects, including CNN’s combative Jim Acosta, have been criticizing President Donald Trump for the concerns he has raised about elections conducted entirely by mail.

As the president said in a tweet, we do need absentee ballots for “many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day.” But the president is right to be worried about elections conducted entirely by mail.

Absentee ballots are the tools of choice of election fraudsters because they are voted outside the supervision of election officials, making it easier to steal, forge, or alter them, as well as to intimidate voters.

Going entirely to by-mail elections would unwisely endanger the security and integrity of the election process, particularly if officials automatically mail absentee ballots to all registered voters without a signed, authenticated request from each voter.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Voter registration rolls are notoriously inaccurate and out of date, containing the names of voters who are deceased, have moved, or otherwise have become ineligible.

Having thousands of ballots arriving in the mail for individuals who no longer reside at a registered address risks those ballots being stolen and voted.

Yet many liberals are pushing that very process.

The coronavirus bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tried to pass would have forced states to mail absentee ballots to all registered voters, rather than allowing states to require a signed, absentee ballot request form that can be authenticated by election officials before a ballot is sent to the voter.

Opportunity for Fraud

The problem (and opportunity for fraud) this could cause is illustrated by something the president talked about at one of his news conferences; namely, the settlement that Judicial Watch obtained from Los Angeles and the state of California over their failure to maintain the accuracy of their voter registration rolls.

The state and LA agreed to remove from the rolls 1.5 million individuals who remained registered even though they no longer were eligible to vote. Imagine what would have happened if 1.5 million ballots were simply mailed out to all of those individuals to addresses where they no longer live.

Ballots are a valuable commodity. How many would have been voted anyway by fraudsters or vote harvesters collecting absentee ballots in neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles?

Just look at what happened in North Carolina in 2018 in the 9th Congressional District race, in which the result was overturned by the state election board because of illegal vote harvesting that included altering and forging absentee ballots.

All-mail jurisdictions such as Oregon like to brag about the supposed “security” of their systems, which consists of almost nothing other than a rapid, superficial signature comparison.

As Melody Rose, an assistant professor of political science at Portland State University, told the Los Angeles Times: “I don’t have much faith in that process. I can forge my husband’s signature perfectly.”

Rose conducted a survey of one county, Washington County, outside Portland. Five percent of registered voters admitted that other people marked their ballots, and 2.4% said someone else signed their ballots.

Rose suspected the actual number was higher, given that most people would not want to admit to being “party to a crime.” That would mean that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots are being cast in Oregon by individuals other than the registered voter.

Voter ID as Security

Trump was also right when he said we need voter ID laws as a basic security measure in voting. As for those who say there is no election fraud in the U.S. that we need be concerned about, they are wrong and the president is right.

As the U.S. Supreme Court said in 2008 when it upheld Indiana’s voter ID law:

flagrant examples of such fraud … have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists [including] Indiana’s own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayor … demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real, but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.

The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database documents almost 1,300 proven instances of fraud, including numerous cases of absentee ballot fraud. That fraud often targets the most vulnerable voters, including the elderly and the poor.

The most recent batch of cases added to the database emphasize that the president’s concern over election integrity is not misplaced.

For example, Richard Davis was convicted of a felony in California after registering his four dogs to vote as Democrats over a four-year period. Davis said his goal was to draw attention to the flawed voter registration system in his state, and he did notify the local district attorney’s office of what he was doing.

Disregarding several warnings to stop those false registrations, and after registering his deceased father, too, Davis was charged and pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud.

He never submitted a fraudulent vote, but he could have done so easily using absentee ballots if he hadn’t told officials what he was doing, since his “signature” for his dogs would have been a match on all of the forms.

Or take Gustavo Araujo Lerma, an illegal alien from Mexico. He voted multiple times in elections in Sacramento, California, under a false identity.

Protecting the Marginalized

Another case out of California demonstrates how voter fraud often hurts the most marginalized individuals in communities.

Norman Hall was involved in a scheme with eight other individuals involving the homeless on Skid Row. According to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, they “solicited hundreds of false and/or forged signatures on state ballot petitions and voter registration forms by offering homeless people $1 and/or cigarettes for their participation.”

The ballot petitions for which Hall and others gathered fraudulent signatures included calling for reducing jail time, changing the authority of the sheriff’s office, and increasing taxes on millionaires and other business owners.

Two other cases out of California include two individuals, Jentry and Bradley Jasperson, who forged the signatures of voters for a referendum initiative. They were each paid $5 per signature.

Another case from our newest batch features Frank Rabia, a City Council candidate in Hoboken, New Jersey, who bribed voters with $50 payments for mail-in ballots to support his candidacy.

Heritage’s Election Fraud Database has more than 60 instances of vote buying. Attempting to buy votes or signatures is entirely repugnant to the republic that America is so lucky to maintain. But purchasing votes is much easier with absentee or mail-in ballots.

The purchaser—such as Rabia—can see the voter’s absentee ballot in the voter’s home and ensure he is getting what he paid for. A purchaser can’t do that when a voter goes into the privacy of a voting booth.

Another new case we added to our database arises out of Espanola, New Mexico, where Laura Seeds and Dyon Herrera falsified absentee ballots in favor of Seeds’ husband, a Democratic candidate for City Council.

This is the same state where a lawsuit has been filed to require election officials to automatically mail absentee ballots to all registered voters in the upcoming election.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation pointed out in an amicus brief that it found more than 3,000 individuals registered multiple times in New Mexico; almost 1,700 registrants who are dead; 1,500 voters aged 100 or above (64 of whom are over 120 years old); and almost 200 individuals registered at commercial rather than residential addresses. All of these supposed voters would receive ballots automatically if the lawsuit were  successful.

These cases demonstrate that election fraud does occur and can compromise the integrity of the election process.

Not even the coronavirus can stop the upcoming presidential election, with the 2020 primaries already well underway. Soon enough, the general election will be upon us.

States should be doing everything they can to help everyone who is eligible to vote. But that doesn’t mean casting aside the safeguards in place to prevent elections from being stolen or compromised by administrative errors and fraud.

COMMENTARY BY

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research.Twitter: .

Kaitlynn Samalis-Aldrich

Kaitlynn Samalis-Aldrich is an administrative and research assistant at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Serious Questions About Attorney General Bill Barr by J.W. Bryan

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When Mr. Barr’s name first came up for consideration for the position of Attorney General of the United States, I thought at that time that maybe we could begin to bring a little justice for the American people. This meant that we’d finally have a genuine approach to dig into the treacherous and treasonous activities of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in its plot to impeach the President.

It also meant that “Justice for the American People” would bring truth to the surface exposing the diabolical anti-American activities of the traitorous members who now continue to be well entrenched into the operation of the DOJ. I hoped that it would be so completely exposed that the evidence of their guilt would be completely undeniable.

Lack of Justice

The American Dream was not forthcoming, for AG Bill Barr, instead of involving himself in exposing the corruption and many blatant treasonable activities by the democratic socialist forces, he took aim at such trivial subjects like anti-trust issues.

Barr and the DOJ spent time twiddling around with a pretext of something sinister and spurious concerning anti-trust violations, all of which were trivial.  He should have been looking into the concocted scheme to impeach the president.  But the anti-trust game presented an opportunity for a show-biz act to give the appearance that AG Barr was on the job and doing his duty.

The abundance of evidence of collusion between Russia, the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was obvious.  All the false concocted charges against President Trump were simply an effort to impeach him.

According to Kelleigh Nelson in her NewsWithViews article of March 10, 2020, the “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele, on behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, formed an essential part of the Carter Page Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application. Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, which according to her research, never existed, but on the contrary, Russian ties are all on the Democrat side.

She also wrote that Hillary and the DNC hired a foreign spy to concoct the fake dossier on candidate Trump. They gave that fake dossier to the Obama DOJ and FBI, and they knew the dossier was fake and politically motivated, but that didn’t stop them.

And I will add, of course, it didn’t stop them. They (all of them), maybe from Obama on down, knew how the script was to play-out.

They all believed that Donald Trump didn’t have a ghost of a chance of winning the 2016 Presidential election. But just in case he did they would go to plan B. This was the insurance policy spoken of between Strzok and Page just in case the unthinkable happened.

Here is how I think plan B was to be implemented although there is no documented proof that it ever existed. Nevertheless, anyone can put two and two together and see that it did.

Ultimate Goals

First of all, the ultimate goal is The Quest for World Government. We could call it the Agenda for World Government or the Conspiracy for World Government. Both of them are correct. In order to plan for a world government there must be an agenda, and since some of the agenda will be secretive, i.e., unknown to the general populace – this results in a conspiracy.

Since the conspiracy for global government is world-wide, it necessarily follows that certain world powers are going to be involved in the planning and implementation of their ultimate goals.

The Agenda has been in existence for the last 95 to 100 years and has slowly been implemented to near fruition. It was very important to the forces behind it, such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and all other worldly connections to it that nothing should happen to derail its progress.

Trump Seen as Impediment

The world powers viewed the possibility of Donald Trump being elected to the office of President of the United States as upsetting their time-table for the completion of their World Government agenda. To the globalists, someone like Donald Trump is the complete antithesis to the program of globalism instituted throughout government entities by their secret operatives.  Their goals have been temporarily short-circuited. It was imperative that those who support this agenda do their best to stop Trump.

The cabal reasoned that if Trump was elected it could result in the possibility of their Agenda being delayed by as much as 30 years, possibly more. So, just in case, plan B was to go into effect immediately.

Their plan B was involved Russia doing something technologically which could be interpreted as an attempt to give aid to Trump, thereby setting up the planned charge of collusion between Trump and Russia.

About two days before the Inauguration, suddenly Obama announced that the FBI claimed evidence had surfaced regarding Russia’s interference in the election.  Obama ordered the FBI to keep him posted concerning the findings.

Instincts tell us that Obama knew beforehand about this FBI report. This was the beginning of the script of Plan B.  What followed was practically lock-step with my vision of how Plan B’s implementation would play-out, although we didn’t see the inside sources planning impeachment via Russian born Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.

Everything covered by ‘fake news” was followed almost to a tee as to how I thought it would be. Since it is an integral part of the progressive, socialist, communist organizational apparatus, it can be expected to follow the ‘Leninist Principle.” Lenin knew that to the public, what the truth is doesn’t count, rather, what counts is what truth is thought to be. So, lies are parroted over and over as propaganda is reinforced.

A prime example of this would be the tactics used by the media in covering the controversy surrounding both the Senator McCarthy hearings and the Alger Hiss/ Whitaker Chambers issues.  Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy by M. Stanton Evans and Seeds of Treason by Ralph De Toledano are important historical documentations of communist spies and Senator McCarthy’s efforts to overthrow them.

Ignoring True Corruption

There were plenty of issues which AG Bill Barr could have dug into and exposed the truth of the treason and corruption that prevailed in the DOJ, FBI, DNC, and the Clintons hook-up with Russia.

The goal was convincing the public that the false collusion charges against President Trump were true, and he had somehow given aid and comfort to the enemy, and that Russia was paying him back by giving him helping him win the 2016 election.  The problem was how they were going to avoid the perception of guilt regarding the sale of 20 percent of our uranium to Russia by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others.  It was Hillary who was guilty of collusion and probably of treason.

Then there was the case of Lt. General Michael T. Flynn and many others the Special Counsel of Robert Mueller had targeted. They hoped to find something or coerce someone to compose something negative about the president that would aid them in their attack against him. In General Flynn’s case, since he knew as much as he did about what was going on in the military as well as in the intelligence community, their sole purpose was also to remove him from his position in the White House. In short, they didn’t want anyone who knew as much as he did to be close to the President.

Up to this point the globalist cabal inside our government had been successful in surrounding the President with advisors who would falsely advise him on such things as who he should put in various positions.  The transition team was originally headed by Chris Christie, but VP Pence replaced him. These advisors gave him false advice on trade deals like the USMCA.  The one man with knowledge of the corruption within the intelligence community had to be removed, and that was General Flynn.

I don’t believe the President would have ever agreed to the USMCA if he had known what it contained that would incrementally diminish our independence as a free nation.

Justice Fades with Barr

All this and much, much more should have been investigated by AG Barr and would have resulted in exposure which would have cast the light of truth on the corruption within the intel community…that alone would have changed America’s perception of how things are playing out in our country.

But the highly acclaimed AG Barr wasn’t looking for evidence of injustice. For he was put into position to cover-up any evidence that was unfavorable to the forces he represented; which were the same forces represented by Robert Mueller.  His stock-in trade, like that of Barr, was the cover-up and exoneration of villains, and where possible, punishment and prison for the victims. Both Barr and Mueller are good friends who have the same modus operandi which goes back for decades.

And so, alas, our hopes are beginning to fade concerning the possibility of truth and justice once more abounding in America. It reminded me of an old saying, God looked everywhere for justice – but he could find none.

It reminds me of an old poem about England by G. K. Chesterton, Elegy in a Country Courtyard that ends with, “they have no graves as yet.”

And so, it is with us, Alas, alas, for America — we have no justice as yet.

Conclusion

Yet, I cannot give up hope.  We’ve not reached the bottom yet. History is replete with the accounts of men that faced much drearier outlooks. I remember the story of Marine General Oliver P. Smith who saved 15,000 Marines.  He held a staff meeting prior to the First Marine Division’s jump-off from Hagaru, Korea to fight their way to safety and freedom. His statement was, “I want every man to understand that we are out-numbered 10 to 1 – surrounded by 100,000 Chinese – we must not let them escape.”

A famous photographer, David Douglas Duncan, that chose not to fly out with the wounded, but to come out with the Marines, said to a marine while on this epic trek, “If I were God and I asked you what would be your request, what would it be?” He said that the marine looked up at the sky for a few seconds and replied, “Give me tomorrow.”

Can we imagine things being so bad that we would only ask for tomorrow? Cheer up. We have much more to be thankful for than just tomorrow. I am convinced that God does not want us to give up, but that we must continue the fight even when there appears to be no hope.

So, let us be thankful to God that we still have the time to press-on. Together, “Even when the skies grow darker yet – and the sea rises Higher.”

Instagram became young girl’s prison of abuse

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Maria* was 13 years old when she first got Instagram on her phone. She had her parent’s permission because Instagram is rated as appropriate for “Ages 12+.”

She loved sharing photos as well as “liking” and commenting on her friend’s images. She posted about being in Girl Scouts, babysitting her younger brother, and going to the lake with her friends.

It wasn’t long before strange men started reaching out to her in direct messages.

She mostly ignored them. But, one day, a direct message came in from someone who looked young and cute in his profile picture and who he said he went to school in the neighboring town. Maria accepted his direct message request and the two began DMing back and forth every day.

He was interested in learning everything about her, which was flattering, and he soon asked her to be his “girlfriend.” Even though she’d never met him in real life, she agreed because he made her feel loved.

It was shortly after that when he started soliciting her to send him sexually explicit images. At first Maria said no, but he kept asking and began making her feel guilty for saying no. Eventually she relented and sent him some sexually explicit images of herself.

And that day changed everything.

Instagram, the social media app that Maria had been so excited to use and share with her friends, became her virtual prison! 

You see, this “young and cute boy” that Maria had sent her sexually explicit images to was not a boy at all. He was an adult man who promptly used these graphic photos to blackmail Maria.  He threatened to send Maria’s sexually explicit photos to her parents and to all her classmates if she didn’t have sex with him and then with others. Maria felt trapped. Before she knew it she was a victim of sex trafficking and was being sold to one stranger after another.

This went on for three months, while she was still living in her parent’s home, until she finally gathered the courage to tell someone and get help.

No child should ever go through that trauma.

Unfortunately, as more children are spending time online while home from school due to the coronavirus pandemic, many are warning (including the FBI) that children are at increased risk of this kind of online sexual exploitation because there is now more “supply” of children to meet the “demand” of predators.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, law enforcement only had the capacity to rescue a few children at a time and safe houses only had a limited number of beds to help those children recover. Meanwhile exploiters have nearly limitless access to children through social media apps and are therefore able to abuse more girls like Maria than we’ll ever know.

But the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has an aggressive strategy to fight this scourge.

Our strategy is to prevent the abuse of girls like Maria in the first place by demanding and getting critical changes to corporate policies as well as advocating for legislation and best business practices that favor safety above mere profits. We have a long history of success with efforts like these thanks to your generous support, but the rapid advance of technology means our efforts and resources need to expand in kind.

This is your invitation to prevent the abuse and exploitation of a child who is just logging into Instagram for the first time today.

In light of this increased danger for children, we feel emboldened to ask you:

Can you afford a small monthly donation?

Every amount can be used to make a big difference right now. We’ll turn your monthly donation, whatever you can afford, into advocacy with legislators and corporate executives as well as a means for getting crucial information and resources into the hands of parents so they can protect their children.

Will you help children like Maria to survive this crisis?

*Name changed to protect the innocent.

© All rights reserved.

Notre Dame prof hails Islamic law, asks international law judges to consider “referring to parts of Sharia”

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“Notre Dame’s Emilia Justyna Powell, an associate professor of political science and concurrent associate professor of law, an expert in both international law and the Islamic legal tradition, traveled to many Muslim-majority nations to research how the two systems work together in practice.”

Now Powell is on a mission to teach Westerners that Sharia is similar to international law and in some ways superior. For this dubious endeavor she is lavishly featured in the Notre Dame University newspaper. Powell’s canvassing for Sharia has led her to ask “some international court judges” if they “would ever consider referring to parts of the Sharia.”

Powell’s interest in researching Islamic law further is driven, in part, by the bias she sees toward Western law to the point of absolute exclusion of any facets of Islamic law in international law. In fact, some international court judges she interviewed were irritated when she asked if they would ever consider referring to parts of Sharia. “Out of all the religions of the world, we’ve contributed to a large-scale misunderstanding of their legal tradition,” Powell said. “Islamic law and international law share many more similarities than they are given credit for.”

Powell’s skewed view of the Sharia is deceptive, propagandistic and dangerous. There is no comparison between international law (which is democracy-based) and Sharia (which is authoritarian and discriminatory). The violence, human rights abuses and murders committed throughout history in the name of Islam are not an aberration. They are reflections of normative Islam, fully backed by Islamic jurisprudence, which teaches the murder of apostates and gays, the conquest and subjugation of infidels, and the inferiority of women, including the head coverings (Quran 24:31, Quran 33:59) about which Powell fallaciously rambles.  The arrogance displayed by Powell is also an affront to Muslim dissidents who face (and experience) imprisonment (and worse) for opposing the human rights abuses sanctioned by Islamic law. Powell’s potential influence on the young minds who must listen to her propaganda in the classroom is concerning. And she is not unique; in fact, in many colleges and universities today, she is the norm.

“Islamic law and international law share many similarities, Notre Dame Professor says,” by Colleen Sharkey, Notre Dame News, April 8, 2020:

The very term Sharia conjures negative images in the minds of many Westerners, in part due to its association with extremist groups. However, an in-depth look at Islamic law, as practiced in the vast majority of Muslim-majority countries, reveals that it is interpreted in different ways depending on the country, its culture and the very people conducting the interpretation.

Notre Dame’s Emilia Justyna Powell, an associate professor of political science and concurrent associate professor of law, an expert in both international law and the Islamic legal tradition, traveled to many Muslim-majority nations to research how the two systems work together in practice. Her findings were published earlier this year in the volume Islamic Law and International Law: Peaceful Resolution of Disputes.

Powell uses the differences in how women dress in various Muslim-majority countries as an analogy for the various interpretations of Sharia.

“A perfect visualization is women’s head coverings. The Taliban encourages women to cover top to bottom, not even showing the eyes. In Saudi Arabia, sometimes eyes are visible but not much else,” she said. “I was recently in Bahrain where I witnessed a new trend: Women are unzipping their abayas and you can see Western-influenced clothing underneath like jeans, ruffles and lace. Many women don’t wear the hijab scarf there and some only wear it halfway on. But who’s to say which is correct? Bahrain is no less Islamic than Saudi Arabia, for example, just different. People in all Muslim-majority countries interpret and, thus, practice the Muslim faith differently.”

International law itself is based on a broad set of norms agreed upon by people from many different nations and cultures. It is also heavily based on Western law which, itself, has deep roots in Christianity — a religion that originated at a time when Roman law was already well established. “Islam, on the other hand, had no a priori legal system to work with other than unwritten tribal customs,” Powell writes. And, while international law has moved to a more secular model, Islamic law remains based in the writings of the Quran and the sunna as well as ijma (judicial consensus) and qiyas (analogical reasoning).

“However, disconcerting the dissonance between the Islamic legal tradition and international law may appear, there are more similarities between these two legal systems than the policy world and the scholarship take into account,” she writes.

By its broad nature, international law allows for interpretation based on norms in individual countries. And many Muslim-majority states have their own declaration of human rights, she notes.

“Sometimes international law promotes the peaceful resolution of disputes, but does not give specific rules or cite specific laws for how to do so. Countries can mediate, peacefully, via negotiation in compliance with international law. Sometimes Muslim-majority countries will also sign international treaties but place restrictions on them — what are technically called ‘reservations.’”

For example, some Muslim-majority countries use reservations to remove “freedom of religion” clauses, because their religion is inextricably part of their culture, with the assumption (often part of the country’s own understanding of human rights) that many of their citizens are all Muslim. In this way, Powell says, they are complying with some international norms but allowing for their identity to remain intact.

Powell also examines how Muslim-majority nations in different geographical areas use Sharia and work within the international law framework. In general, Powell finds that if an ILS (Islamic Law State) country has a secular court system and their constitution mentions peaceful resolutions of disputes, they possess a more favorable attitude toward international courts.

“The Islamic milieu is not a monolith. In each of the ILS, secular law and Islamic law coalesce to create a unique legal framework. Every one of the ILS is different in how it negotiates the relationship between these two legal forces — the religious and the secular — along with their respective differences in socio-demographic and political characteristics. Historically, every one of the ILS has worked out its own unique answers to the question of the balance of Islamic law and secular law,” she writes.

The examples Powell gathered through interviews shed light on the cultural and religious lenses through which many Muslims view courts….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Iran, Hezbollah Use Mexican Drug Cartels to Infiltrate U.S.

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Iran and its terror proxy Hezbollah are financing Mexican drug cartels, smuggling people into America and recruiting them (for pay) as sleeper jihadist cells.

The recruits are mainly immigrants to Mexico from the Middle East, mostly from Lebanon where Hezbollah is based.

The coordinated operation is part of Iran’s war on America.

While Iran and Hezbollah are known to be active in the drug trade further south in Latin America, many are unaware that Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah, finances money laundering operations and human smuggling through the Mexican drug cartels at the U.S. border.

The operation is founded on the known fact that the U.S.-Mexican border is easy to penetrate, with tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers from Mexico and other Latin American countries coming into the U.S. from Mexico every month.

In southern Chiapas in Mexico, there are Muslim communities. These communities are made up of Syrians and Lebanese who migrated to Mexico decades ago as well as recent Mexican converts to Islam. In addition, Islam is gaining a foothold and in southern Mexico, with indigenous Mayans converting by the hundreds.

These communities are funded in the Diaspora and all contain sleeper cells. With the help of Mexican drug cartels, they finance and traffic extremists to the United States.

Canada has also become their target after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lifted the visa requirement for Mexican citizens.

For example, Ayman Juma, a Lebanese citizen linked to Mexican drug cartels and involved in the drug trade in Latin America and Mexico, is a member of the Hezbollah. He is also associated with al-Qaeda.

Juma has smuggled tons of drugs from Mexico to the United States. The money made is partially used to fund terrorism, especially to prepare terrorist attacks against Israel as well as Hezbollah’s activities in America.

Hezbollah also managed to smuggle 200 illegal Lebanese immigrants through Mexico to America. All of them are part of a network of Iranian and Hezbollah supporters.

After his arrest, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, a Lebanese citizen who infiltrated the United States through the Lebanese-Mexican smuggling network, admitted to the FBI that he spent part of his time in the United States to raise funds to support Hezbollah’s activities. His efforts netted $40,000 for the terror group.

According to what Korani also told the FBI, his brother is the head of Hezbollah’s military division.

The smuggling network is a clear example of the symbiotic relationship between the Mexican drug cartels and Hezbollah. Salim Bougader, for example, ran a Lebanese smuggling network in Mexico where he successfully brought in many enemies of the U.S. into the country.

For example, one of the many smuggled in by Bougader worked for a Hezbollah-funded television station that glorified suicide bombers and was part of an anti-American propaganda machine during the time when U.S. soldiers were dying while serving in the Middle East.

Hezbollah, in cooperation with Mexican drug cartels, also smuggles drugs to Europe and the Middle East, as well as to the United States. According to the U.S. Justice Department, it is obvious that Hezbollah views America as a source of funds for its operations.

Due to their partnership, it would be reasonable to assume that Hezbollah is also complicit with the Mexican drug cartels that are responsible for killing tens of thousands in Mexico every year in drug-related violence.

Although the United States has one of the most powerful intelligence services in the world and is not located in the Middle East, radical Islamic terrorism continues to threaten America — especially through Mexico, which has the largest border with America and one that is relatively easily to penetrate.

This leads one to the conclusion that, at the very least, a border wall is needed to protect the U.S.’ national security interests from the likes of Iran and Hezbollah.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Idaho Becomes First State to Protect Women’s Sports From Transgender Agenda

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Idaho Gov. Brad Little has given women athletes renewed hope. Faced with a politically correct culture that is denying women the right to a fair playing field in sports, the Republican governor signed into law new protections for them.

Recognizing “inherent differences between men and women,” Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act provides that “athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex.”

The measure, which Little signed into law Monday, applies to all of the state’s interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, and club teams at the high school and college levels.

Idaho is the first state to prevail against forces working to stop similar bills across the country that seek to right the wrong girls face when state policies force them to compete in women’s sports against athletes who are biological males.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Getting this bill across the finish line wasn’t easy.

Proponents led by state Rep. Barbara Ehardt, a former Division 1 athlete and coach, bucked powerful activists in the business community, including Chobani, Clif Bar & Co., HP Inc., and Micron Technology Inc. But legislators overwhelmingly sided with female athletes and all who support them—moms, dads, coaches, fans, and Idaho citizens, including my parents and extended family.

Little and state legislators rejected the threats of corporate activists who, in the name of “diversity and inclusion,” claim without proof that laws recognizing birth sex as a biological fact will cost the state business.

What big business ignores is the opportunities lost in sports for women and girls. Its social justice agenda drowns out the voices of women who should be protected under sex discrimination laws, not exploited by them.

To their enormous credit, Idaho leaders withstood the pressure and have paved the way for other states to follow.

Proponents should be emboldened by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who recently intervened in a related federal court case to state emphatically that Title IX prohibits the injustice in women’s sports condoned by corporate activists.

On March 24, the Justice Department filed a Statement of Interest in a Connecticut lawsuit challenging that state’s participation rules in sports.

High school athletes Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, and Alanna Smith have faced the sting of defeat and been denied state titles in girls track because they had to compete with biological males. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference requires schools to allow athletes to participate in sports according to the “gender” with which they publicly identify.

For the past several seasons, Connecticut has allowed male runners to compete and win as transgender athletes in girls track. In fact, female athletes in every state in the Northeast region have been forced to compete under the same circumstances and under similar rules. Many also have lost their rightful place across the finish line and on the podium.

Congress passed Title IX in 1972 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, in large part to ensure equal opportunities in athletics and education for female students. It extends to programs operated or sponsored by schools receiving federal funding, which includes every K-12 public school and virtually all colleges and universities in the country.

In evaluating the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s policy, the Justice Department concluded:

CIAC’s construction of Title IX as requiring the participation of students on athletic teams that reflect their gender identity would turn the statute on its head. One of Title IX’s core purposes is to ensure that women have an ‘equal athletic opportunity’ to participate in school athletic programs. … Reading Title IX to compel schools to require biological males to compete against biological females in athletic competitions is precisely the type of interpretation that this Court should reject.

The Justice Department’s instruction to the Connecticut federal court carries a warning for all states to heed. Inherent, physiological differences between the sexes still matter. Title IX expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and is being violated by schools and state policies that allow male athletes to compete in women’s sports.

The Justice Department’s action has dignified Little’s bold action to enact the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which will protect equal opportunity in sports for female athletes in Idaho.

Other states have the opportunity, and responsibility, to get on track.

COMMENTARY BY

Doreen Denny

Doreen Denny is vice president of government relations for the Legislative Action Committee of Concerned Women for America.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Dozens of GUN CONTROL Bills Died In Florida During the 2020 Session

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It was another very tough Legislative Session in Florida this year.  Anti-gun Democrats were emboldened by Michael Bloomberg’s money.  His money had been strategically placed to help pass another major gun control bill.

Democrats filed so many gun ban, gun control, ammo and magazine ban bills this year that one had to wonder if they were filing the worst bills they could think of in order to attract some of Bloomberg’s money for themselves.

Thanks to strong Second Amendment supporting legislators, who are true Republicans, and are committed to protecting constitutional rights, none of those bad bills passed.

We look forward to real Republican leadership in the Florida Senate next Session.

Below is a list of some of the worst bills that we worked to keep from passing this past session. In all, we dealt with a list of over 125 bills that could have spelled trouble for gun and hunting rights.  It is worth noting that the Florida House leadership and Governor Ron DeSantis were standing tall to protect Second Amendment rights the whole Session.

FLORIDA HOUSE BILLS

HB-117 CW License/ Requires Psychiatric/Mental Health Exam – by Rep. AI Jacquet (D) Requires a mental health evaluation by a licensed psychiatrist & a letter attesting that the applicant is of sound mind and competent to carry a firearm for CW License Applicants . DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-245 Firearms Prohibited – by Rep. Cindy Polo (D) Prohibits concealed weapon or firearm license holder from openly carrying handgun or carrying concealed weapon or firearm into any
child care facility.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-289 Background Check to Purchase Ammo – by Rep. Dan Daley (D) Requires background checks for sale or transfer of ammunition.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-451 Universal Background Checks – by Rep. Margaret Good (D) Requires a background check on all persons involved with the sale or transfer of any and all firearms. DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-627 Ban of Assault Weapons and Large-Capacity Magazines – by Rep. Carlos G. Smith (D) Bans sale, transfer and possession of a long list of so-called “assault weapons” and bans sale, transfer and possession of any magazine that holds or is capable of holding more than 10 rounds. DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-885 Gun Control by Local Governments – by Rep. Cindy Polo (D) to specifically allow
local governments to regulate firearms and ammunition and impose gun control.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-809 Fingerprint Database of CW License Holders – by Rep. Javier Fernandez (D) Creates a Permanent Fingerprint Database of CW License Holders;  Decreases the number of years that CW Licenses are valid. Requires PROOF of NEW training at every license renewal.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-923 Mandatory Storage of Firearms – by Rep. Joy Goff-Marcil (D) Mandating specific storage requirements for firearms by licensed importers, manufacturers, & dealers. DIED IN COMMITTEE

HB-6009 Repeal of Firearms Preemption – by Rep. Dan Daley (D) Repeals the firearms preemption law to specifically allow citites and counties to regulate firearms and ammunition and impose gun control.   DIED IN COMMITTEE

FLORIDA SENATE BILLS

SB-94 Universal Background Checks by Sen. Lauren Book (D) DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-134 Repeal of Firearms Preemption / Sen. Annette Taddeo (D) DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-266 Mandatory Firearms Storage by Sen. Gary Farmer (D)   DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-270 Universal Background Checks by Sen. Gary Farmer (D) DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-310 Ban of Three-dimensional (3-D) Printed Firearms – by Sen.
Linda Stewart (D) Prohibits a person from printing, transferring, importing into this state, distributing, selling, possessing, or giving to another person certain 3D-printed firearms; requires persons in possession of a 3-D firearms to turn them in to a law enforcement agency or to FDLE or to destroy them before a deadline.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-398 Firearms Prohibited by Sen. Lori Berman (D) (Identical to HB-245)  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-428 Prohibited Places for Firearms by Sen. Oscar Braynon II (D) Prohibits CW license holders from carrying a firearms into any performing arts center or legitimate theater.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-460 Background Checks on Ammo by Sen. Lauren Book (D) Requires a background check on the sale or transfer of  ammunition.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-548 Excessive Data Collection on Firearms Purchasers by Sen. Jose Rodriguez (D) Requires the Department of Law Enforcement to create  a standard form to collect additional data on firearms purchasers. DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-558 Ban of “Large-capacity” Magazines by Sen. Randolph Bracy (D) Defining the term “large-capacity magazine” as more than 10 rounds.  Prohibits the sale, transfer, or possession of
large-capacity magazines.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

S8-586 Private Sales of Firearms by Sen. Jose Rodriguez (D) Prohibits private sale or transfer of firearms EXCEPT sales or transfers between two CW License holders. Requires such a seller or transferor to retain a copy of the buyer’s or transferee’s concealed weapons or firearms license and the serial number of the firearm sold, etc.   DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-634 Prohibiting the Lawful Ownership, Possession, and Use of Firearms – by Sen. Bobby Powell (D) Prohibiting a person from owning, possessing, and lawfully using firearms and other weapons, ammunition, and supplies for hunting, fishing, or camping within 1,500 feet of the real property which comprises any school, any house of worship, any government building, or any guarded beach.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-794 Bans Large-capacity Magazines by Sen. Linda Stewart (D) Prohibits POSSESSION or the importing, distributing, transporting, transferring, selling, or giving of large-capacity magazines (1more than 10)  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-1208 Ban of Assault Weapons and Large-capacity Magazines by Sen. Gary Farmer, Jr. (D) Bans the sale, transfer, possession of any assault weapon or large-capacity ammunition magazine .  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-1248 Mandatory Firearms Storage by Sen. Vic Torres, Jr .(D)  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-1300 Assault Weapons Ban by Sen. Linda Stewart (D) Bans sale, transfer, possession of semi-automatic firearms.  DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-1566 Fingerprint Database of CW License Holders by Sen. Oscar Braynon (D) DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-1622 Confiscation of Firearms and Ammunition by Sen.Lauren Book (D). Authorizes Law Enforcement and the Courts to confiscate firearms and ammunition under certain circumstances.   DIED IN COMMITTEE

SB-7028 by Sen. Bill Galvano (R) Massive Gun Control Regulations.   DIED IN COMMITTEE

EDITORS NOTE: This NRA-ILA column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Will the Supremes Hear Ultimate States Rights Case?

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Editor:  Sorry I haven’t been posting much here lately, I’ve been busy at RRW (as well as being distracted as I assume many of you are as well by of demands of just living these days!), but this is very important and I’m not sure how many of you read RRW.

Cross-posted this morning in an effort to find groups that could support the Thomas More Law Center’s legal petition to the Supreme Court.

I know it’s a little hard to believe that there are other things going on in America besides the virus crisis, but here is important news I should have mentioned sooner.

The Thomas Moore Law Center has filed a petition to attempt to get the Supreme Court to review the Tenth Amendment case that has been working its way through the legal system.

The heart of the case is the Tenth Amendment argument that the federal government has no Constitutional power to shift the cost of refugee resettlement onto state governments as it has been doing for decades.

TMLC is looking for other like-minded organizations to file amicus briefs in support of their argument which has far-reaching implications beyond just the refugee program!

Here is their press release from earlier this month.

Thomas More Law Center Petitions U.S. Supreme Court to Review Tennessee’s Challenge to Federal Refugee Resettlement Program

ANN ARBOR, MI – In what could have far reaching implications for all states seeking to withdraw from the federal refugee resettlement program, the Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”) collaborating with attorney John Bursch, filed a certiorari petition Monday, March 16 in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The petition asks the Court to hold that the Tennessee General Assembly has standing to challenge the constitutionality of the federal government’s forced state funding of the federal refugee resettlement program. ​

The Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”) is a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Both TMLC and Mr. Bursch are representing Tennessee without charge.

John Bursch, a former Michigan state solicitor general, nationally prominent appellate lawyer and past chair of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers, authored the petition for certiorari.

The petition argues that the issues presented in the Tennessee case cut to the core of the Constitution’s protection of states against overreach by the federal government. The Constitution does not give Congress the authority to appropriate state funds, contrary to the wishes of the state, to fund a federal program.

According to the petition: “If a state legislature cannot vindicate its rights in court when the federal government picks the state’s pocket and threatens the state if it dare stop providing funds, then federalism is a dead letter.”

The petition seeks to overturn a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision which ruled that the General Assembly does not have institutional standing to challenge the constitutionality of the resettlement program. The cert petition does not challenge the federal government’s right to resettle refugees in Tennessee. What it objects to is forcing Tennessee taxpayers to pay the costs of the resettlement.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of TMLC, noted: “From the beginning, opposition to the federal refugee resettlement program has been about protecting Tennessee’s state sovereignty from impermissible federal interference. The federal government cannot simply commandeer state tax dollars to fund a purely federal program to extend benefits to noncitizens.”

Tennessee initially agreed to participate in the federal resettlement program because the federal government promised to reimburse 100 percent of the cost. In fact, Congress crafted the 1980 Refugee Act specifically intending that states not be taxed for programs they did not initiate and for which they were not responsible. As is often the case, however, the federal government began shrinking its financial support to the states and by 1991 eliminated it entirely. Due to the mounting costs the federal government was not covering as promised, Tennessee withdrew from the program effective June 30, 2008. But that didn’t stop the federal financial burden on Tennessee taxpayers. The federal government simply designated Catholic Charities of Tennessee, a non-governmental private organization, to continue the program with state dollars.

Between 2007 and the end of 2019, resettlement agencies pumped more than 15,000 refugees into Tennessee cities and towns. They came from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burma, Central African Republic, Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan 3 and many other countries. They often arrive from United Nations camps in poor health, with no job skills or English-language abilities.

The resulting cost to state taxpayers amounted to tens of millions of dollars. In 2015 alone, the refugee-related Medicaid costs paid by Tennessee tax dollars topped $30 million.

Instead of resolving the merits of Tennessee’s claim, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sidestepped the pivotal constitutional issue concerning federalism by ruling that the Tennessee General Assembly lacked standing to bring its lawsuit.

The petition filed on March 16, 2020, argues that this was in error:

“The General Assembly is an institutional plaintiff asserting an institutional injury; the federal government has co-opted the General Assembly’s appropriation power and impaired its obligation to enact a balanced state budget. That is because the federal government can siphon state funds—to help pay for a federal program from which Tennessee has withdrawn.”

TMLC originally filed the federal lawsuit in March 2017 on behalf of the State of Tennessee, the Tennessee General Assembly, and state legislators Terri Lynn Weaver and John Stevens challenging the commandeering of millions in state taxpayer dollars for a purely federal program.

A U.S. district court judge dismissed the case on the federal government’s motion. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s dismissal on the sole grounds that the General Assembly lacked standing. It never reached the merits of the case.

The Supreme Court now has a chance to shed light on the proper role of the states relative to the federal government—which is the bedrock constitutional principle of federalism.

The petition states: “The (Tennessee) General Assembly does not object to the federal resettlement program. It does not even object to the federal government resettling 4 refugees in Tennessee. The General Assembly does object to the federal government reaching its hand into Tennessee’s pocket to pay for the cost of such a program, particularly when the enabling legislation was enacted with the promise to reimburse states for all expenses incurred in this program.”

The federal government mandates that states provide Medicaid to otherwise eligible refugees, or face termination of federal benefits.

Accordingly, the federal government forces Tennessee to continue funding the refugee program by threatening to pull $7 billion in federal Medicaid funding, which represents 20 percent of the state’s total budget.

The argument in favor of the General Assembly’s standing is bolstered by the fact that both chambers of the Tennessee General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in 2016 in favor of filing a civil lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal refugee resettlement program. The State Senate passed Senate Joint Resolution 467, by a vote of 27-5 while the House voted 69-25 to pass the same resolution.

And without any waiting period they can automatically apply for all welfare programs provided by the State of Tennessee.

Read TMLC’s Petition for Certiorari here. 

If you know any organization that is in agreement with the broad-reaching tenets of the case, please have them contact the Thomas Moore Law Center immediately.  Time is short!

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Can Trump Use Coronavirus to Delay 2020 Election?

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With Congress, the Supreme Court, sports leagues, schools, and many businesses and companies across America shutting down, only time will tell if we are being appropriately cautious or engaging in a hysterical overreaction to coronavirus.

But for those imaginative reporters who see a Russian lurking behind every tree and keep asking me if President Donald Trump can use this pandemic as an excuse to delay the 2020 presidential election, the answer is “no.”

Under our Constitution, the executive branch has no authority whatsoever to delay, reschedule, or otherwise change the federal election in November, much less any of the remaining state primaries. On the other hand, Congress and the states do have that authority.

Congress has no authority over state elections or party primaries other than the requirements under federal statutes like the Voting Rights Act and various constitutional amendments that prohibit states from discriminating or limiting access to the voting process.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

But when it comes to setting the dates for political party primaries or general elections for state officials, including presidential primaries, or how you are able to vote (in-person or by mail), the federal government has no power to dictate the time, place, or manner of those state elections.

State governments can certainly change the dates of their presidential primaries or whatever other state primaries they are holding. In some states such as Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, governors are provided with emergency authority to take such actions without the approval of their state legislatures.

In Florida, for example, the governor has the power under state law to suspend or delay an election by issuing an executive order declaring a state of emergency, although a new election must then be held within 10 days or as soon as practicable thereafter.

That actually happened in New York because of the 9/11 attacks. New York was holding a primary on Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, a political unknown named Michael Bloomberg was running in the GOP primary for mayor of New York City. Polls opened at 6 a.m. but voting was suspended statewide by Gov. George Pataki after the attacks. A new election was held two weeks later.

But the federal government cannot change the date of such state primaries. Given that all 50 states and the District of Columbia allow voters to vote with absentee ballots, which can be easily obtained, completed, and mailed without anyone ever leaving their house, there seems little reason to do so.

The cancellation and delay in the New York primary because of the 9/11 attacks on Election Day itself was an extraordinary event necessitated by unique and tragic circumstances. That is not the current situation.

Congress does have the authority under Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution to step in and change state laws and rules when it wants to with regard to the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections.

Congress has set the date for election of all members of the House of Representatives on the “Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year.” Federal law sets the same day for the election of U.S. senators whose terms are expiring.

Similarly, under Article II, Section 1, Congress has the authority to set the “Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes, which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

Since it is the Electoral College that selects our president, Congress has the power to determine when our general federal election occurs where voters vote for slates of presidential electors in their respective states.

Congress has set the date for that vote on the same day as congressional elections, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Those electors chosen by voters then cast their votes for president on the “first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.”

None of these federal statutes have any provision allowing the president or any other executive branch official or agency to change the date of the election even in an emergency, whether it is the threat of a disease like coronavirus or a terrorist attack.

On the other hand, Congress does have the authority to do so if both the House and the Senate pass an amendment to these laws and the president signs it into law.

That amendment could either change the date of the election or delegate to the president the ability to change the date under certain emergency conditions, similar to the authority some governors are given under state laws.

But without that happening—and it is highly unlikely given the fact that neither party controls both houses of Congress—we are having a federal election on Nov. 3 no matter what happens with coronavirus.

Originally published by Fox News

COMMENTARY BY

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

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Moving Against China’s Military for Hacking U.S. Company

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As if identity theft alone isn’t enough of a concern for Americans, the Equifax hacking indicates that China’s military wants to weaponize sensitive personal information to undermine U.S. national security.

Three members of China’s People’s Liberation Army have been indicted by the Justice Department in the 2017 data breach of Atlanta-based Equifax Inc., one of the nation’s largest credit reporting agencies.

The charges include conspiracy to commit computer fraud, economic espionage, and wire fraud.

This was a data breach—a “release of personally sensitive, protected, and/or confidential data”—rather than a security breach, which refers only to the hacking of websites and applications without theft.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

And it was a large one, with the names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers of 145 million Americans.

These are not ordinary criminal hackers with a motive to sign up for credit cards using another person’s name. The accused are members of a foreign military branch—the People’s Liberation Army’s 54th Research Institute, which falls under the scrutiny of the Chinese army’s Strategic Support Force.

The Strategic Support Force works on information operations, such as cyberspying, to conduct a form of hybrid warfare that uses diverse elements such as propaganda, economics, and cyberattacks against its adversaries.

The Equifax hack provides the unit with personal financial information that can help the Chinese recruit spies within our national security sector, as well as influence key business and media figures.

Financial information can help intelligence operatives identify those who are susceptible to bribery or other economic pressure, such as former CIA officer Kevin Patrick Mallory, who provided secrets to the Chinese in exchange for money to pay off his mortgage and other debts.

The Chinese have used human intelligence—targets include military forces, defense industrial companies, national security decision-makers, and critical infrastructure entities—to undermine the U.S. strategically and economically.

The Equifax breach could have implications beyond identity theft. The information could be used to target individuals for espionage, bribe, or blackmail.

U.S. national security matters are at stake here. Both the U.S. government and private businesses must take stronger security measures against these acts of theft and espionage.

COMMENTARY BY

Lizandro Pieper

Lizandro Pieper is part of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

Riley Walters

Riley Walters is a policy analyst in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Who Defines Fundamental Human Rights?

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David Carlin wonders if fundamental human rights really can be “discovered” by a majority vote of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

People who (like me and, I suppose, most readers of The Catholic Thing) object to the Roe v. Wade ruling made by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 – the ruling that declared that the U.S. Constitution contains a right to abortion – often point out that despite reading the Constitution very carefully, often with a magnifying glass, we can find no mention in it of a right to abortion.

We find rights to freedom of speech and freedom of press and freedom of religion; we find a right to bear arms; we find a right to trial by jury; we find a right to vote; we find a right not to be a slave; we find a right to purchase alcoholic beverages; and so on.  But we find no right to abortion.

Therefore, we conclude that there is no such Constitutional right.  We conclude that the Court invented this “right.”  The Court, by a 7-2 margin, made it up.  It didn’t make it up exactly out of thin air.  No, it made it up out of the very thick air of sexual revolution that was characteristic of the cultural atmosphere of the sixties and seventies.

The younger generation had discovered sexual freedom, which to be complete required freedom of abortion; and so seven of the nine old men of the Court (no women in those days) decided to show that they too, despite their advanced corporeal age, were young in spirit.

We conclude also that once the Court decided it has the authority to make up a right to abortion, thereby amending the Constitution in a manner that bypasses the amendment process spelled out in the Constitution itself (Article V), it could make further illicit amendments by “finding” other nonexistent rights.  For instance, it could find a right to homosexual practice (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003; a 6-3 ruling).  And it could find a right to same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015; a 5-4 ruling).

Unless the Court changes its ways (which it might if it has a stable conservative or “originalist” majority), we expect that in the not-too-distant future it will “find” in the Constitution a “right” to polygamy, a right to be euthanized, and a right to be transgender.

Those on the other side, the liberal side, however, who deplore our literal and narrow-minded reading of the Constitution, those who hold that we have a “living” Constitution – enthusiasts for abortion and homosexuality and transgenderism and euthanasia – can argue that un-Constitutional “rights” we object to actually are alluded to in the Constitution.

Where?  In the Ninth Amendment, which says: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  Without question, this sentence implies that there are at least a few other rights, perhaps many, besides those enumerated.

So there you have it.  All human rights (or “fundamental human rights” as we are now in the habit of calling them) are protected by the Ninth Amendment.  If abortion or same-sex “marriage,” or euthanasia is a human right, then these rights are implicitly contained in the U.S. Constitution.

Now, I agree that all human rights are protected by the Ninth Amendment.  For example, if there is a fundamental human right to ride a horse down Main Street while totally naked, then this right (let us call it the Lady Godiva rrght) is protected by the Ninth Amendment.

But who decides what is, and what is not, a fundamental human right?  Judicial liberals seem to believe that this decision should be made by the Supreme Court – or more exactly by five or more members of the Court.

In 2015 the Court decided by a 5-4 margin that same-sex marriage is a fundamental human right.  This seems awfully odd.  I would have supposed that X would count as a fundamental human right only if mankind generally had so decided, or at least the American portion of mankind.  And it would not be enough for all Americans to decide that X is a fundamental right by a narrow margin; an overwhelming margin would be required.

And not merely an overwhelming margin on this or that particular day or year, but an overwhelming margin for a long, long time, perhaps for centuries.  Or so it seems to me.

But judicial liberals tell me I’m wrong.  They think a 5-4 Supreme Court majority is sufficient to establish X or Y or Z as a fundamental human right.  And then they appeal to the principle of stare decisis to argue that, once X or Y or Z has been established as a fundamental human right, it can never be dis-established.

This gives liberals a great tool for enacting whatever may be their public policy agenda – not through legislatures but through courts.  Would you like America to have a $100 per hour minimum wage?  Well, if you can get a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court to declare that workers have a fundamental human right to be paid $100 per hour, then everybody will have to be paid at least $100 per hour.

This is a far-fetched example, I admit.  But there are many other potential examples that are not at all far-fetched.  In fact they are waiting just around the corner.  Like polygamy.  Like euthanasia.  Like transgenderism.

I’m an old man, and I’ve been living in the USA for a long, long time.  I should feel at home here by now.  But I feel on some days that I’m a stranger in a strange land.  On those days, I find it hard to believe that a majority, probably a large majority, of my compatriots seem to agree that fundamental human rights can be discovered by a 5 to 4 vote of a panel of judges – something that seems to me to be an utter absurdity.

Ah well.  This is perhaps one more bit of evidence that I have lived past my expiration date.  Take me off the shelf.

COLUMN BY

David Carlin

David Carlin is a professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

VIDEO: The Vortex — The Last Chance

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TRANSCRIPT

No one in America who really, deeply cares about the future of the United States misses the point that what people on both sides are actually voting on is the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.

For decades, and largely while political conservatives — including a hefty number of Catholics — were asleep at the switch, the Marxist Left was implementing a takeover of the country through judicial fiat. The Left resorted to the courts because they could not get done what they wanted through state legislatures. So, in an effort to usurp the will of the people, they populated the nation’s elite law schools with social radicals, some of whom, after decades, were able to rise high in positions within the federal judiciary.

By the time political conservatives caught on to the plan, it was too late. The Left sufficiently controlled the courts, including the Supreme Court, to force its will on the people. Once something becomes legal, in people’s minds, it tends to be more readily viewed as acceptable, even moral. Even formerly controversial issues take on an air of respectability, and opposition to them now becomes seen as narrow-mindedness.

But the composition of the High Court — the ages of various justices — brought the issue to a head in the 2016 presidential election. It was almost a certainty that the court could shift to the right, even marginally, if Trump was elected. So while the Left was alarmed, the Right was ecstatic at the possibility. After decades and decades of hard, grinding, thankless work, the possibility was coming into focus that Donald Trump in the White House might finally hand the brass ring to the cause of political conservatism.

And the issue was abortion. If Hillary were to win, it would be game over, potentially forever. And recall, during the 2016 race, there was already one vacancy on the court — the seat of Antonin Scalia — a conservative seat. Securing that seat with a liberal, as Obama had nominated in the person of Merrick Garland, would have been the death-knell.

Fast forward to 2020 and a rapidly aging, in-poor-health Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. As one expert told Church Militant, “The old gal will last one year. She isn’t going to last five.” If Trump wins re-election it is virtually guaranteed that he will replace Ginsburg, one of the most Marxist-minded, pro-abortion, anti-God justices ever to sit on the bench.

But here’s a question — something to consider: If the court tips from its current 5–4 to 6–3 conservative bent — or even possibly 7–2 — before Trump’s second term is over, and then would overturn Roe v. Wade, what would happen?

Pondering that possibility, and even planning for it to some degree, the Left is arming itself and speaking openly of rebellion. It seems not that far-fetched that the same crowd that starts fires on college campuses when conservative speakers arrive and violently riots in the streets under the banner of Antifa would have little compunction about making blood run in those same streets if the Court toppled abortion. Current whispers of civil war might become louder than just whispers.

If that happens, if something like that — even on a somewhat limited scale — were to occur, it would, by definition, become a noble cause: the defense of innocent life.

There is not an honest man or woman walking who does not know that the Left supports child-murder. That is the central motivating issue around which all of American politics have evolved since the days of Ronald Reagan. That has been the central issue of the attempt to unseat Donald Trump for going on three years now, even up to the relative Marxist-media hype surrounding the coronavirus scare.

This is relative to what, you may ask? It’s relative to the swine flu epidemic that went on for more than a year under Obama and killed thousands of Americans. Nothing was done by the media giants in that case like is being done now. They have seized on a serious issue and are perfectly happy to use it to try and destabilize Trump — they’ll try anything to destabilize him — and it’s all because abortion is always playing in the background.

Abortion is and has been the topic that has been responsible for shaping the national debate for more than 40 years. It caused the bedlam surrounding the Brett Kavanaugh hearings — even the pounding on the doors of the High Court once he was confirmed. It was the admitted issue when New York Sen. Chuck Schumer hurled his invective and threats against both Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch — actually threatening them —for which he never apologized. The case he was talking about? Abortion.

But this is what pro-lifers need to note, and note hard: Given the rapidly changing demographics of the country — an essentially morally rudderless young population, opposed to religion and unfamiliar with natural law, this election is the last chance to secure and lock down a pro-life court. Pro-life voters will simply be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of the socialist-loving lefties by 2024.

In the midst of all this — with everything on the table — do not look to the U.S. bishops to make this point. Too many of them are registered Democrats themselves and do not possess supernatural faith. They are enamored with the Party of Death — even child-killers who are baptized Catholics they love schmoozing with.

The marriage between political conservatives and theologically orthodox Catholics has brought this moment to reality. It has been a gigantic, uphill struggle — a fight for the ages — and is now the last great clash over the future direction of the nation we will see in our lifetime. The Right has arrived at a point of equal footing, or at least as equal as it’s ever going to get. The victory must be secured and it must be secured now, because the moment will never arrive again as long as any of us are breathing.

In 233 days, we will know our future.

Pray, fast and act like you’ve never done before.

It is your solemn duty before the Lord of Life.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.