This Impeachment Effort About Ideology, Not Constitution

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Two American women of color.

Two diametrically opposed views about America.

This clash of worldviews helps us to understand that what is going on in our nation is not a legitimate impeachment process but an attempt to wipe out a sitting president for personal and ideological reasons.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib was sworn in as a freshman Democratic congresswoman from Michigan on Jan. 3, 2019.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

At a reception following the event, Tlaib, speaking about the president of the United States, said: “We’re gonna impeach the [expletive].”

It had to be unprecedented that a newly elected representative publicly used that kind of language about the nation’s president and expressed an intent to impeach him, with no support from leadership of her own party.

Were there grounds for impeachment? No.

The alleged basis was the Mueller investigation, which subsequently found that allegations that President Donald Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia to interfere with the presidential election were false.

What happened to the sacred principle of innocent until proven guilty?

Tlaib had already convicted Trump. He’s guilty for being Donald Trump and for what he stands for. The law is irrelevant.

Months later, she held a press conference calling Trump a racist and again calling for his impeachment. She noted: “I represent the third-poorest congressional district in this country. … I was elected to fight for them.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics just issued its October jobs report, which The Wall Street Journal called “impressive.”

“The current job market is attracting middle- and working-class workers who have been on the sidelines for years,” reported the Journal.

And, black unemployment ticked down a notch to 5.4%, another new historic low.

But just as legal facts mean nothing to Tlaib, economic facts mean nothing.

Let’s now turn to another American woman of color: Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haley recently spoke at a dinner at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute.

Haley, who as Republican governor of South Carolina had the Confederate flag removed from the grounds of the state Capitol, said at AEI: “When we retreat into identity and grievance politics, we make the choice for victimhood over citizenship. By constantly blaming others, we reject personal responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our communities.”

Are you listening, Congresswoman Tlaib?

Haley spoke about her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from India: “We were different. We stood out. And my family felt the pain of being judged by our difference. … But my parents refused to let it define them. They chose citizenship over victimhood.”

Haley quoted Lincoln, who in 1862, when the country was torn apart by civil war, called America “the last best hope of Earth.”

She added:

President Trump is a disruptor. That makes … some people very mad. But if we are a country that lives by the rule of law, we must all accept that we have one president at a time and that president attained his office by the choice of the American people.

Haley hailed the American freedom and exceptionalism enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and noted how, at the U.N., representatives from despotic countries would approach her in private and express admiration for our country.

Tlaib is a poster child for her party. Despite the Russia conspiracy charges discredited by the Mueller report, Democrats have not given up looking for an excuse to impeach a president they hate.

Now we have the ridiculous claims from a tainted whistleblower about a conversation Trump had with the president of Ukraine.

It’s not about Russia or Ukraine. It’s about Haley or Tlaib; loving our free country or hating it; citizenship or victimhood; rule of law or guilty until proven innocent.

I meet so many wonderful Americans in my travels around the country.

I’m optimistic we’ll make the right choice.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Star Parker

Star Parker is a columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

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

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

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

VIDEO: Police in Sweden speak out

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Posted by Eeyore

One wonders what the long term effects of constant personal intimidation by protected groups are to Swedish police. Its likely that (similar to politics) fewer and fewer decent people will sign up. As the culture drills down to politics and then to policing, often skipping legislation altogether, so policing becomes both hopeless and thankless.

It is almost like the plan is to dismantle centuries of jurisprudence and rule of law based on individual rights and property rights and replace all enforcement with compliant ‘A Clockwork Orange’ type Dims, and eventually non-locals who have no allegiance to our history or ways of thinking. Almost like that.

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column with video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Digging In. And they are going nowhere.

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TRANSCRIPT

There is nothing on the table that isn’t being weaponized by the Left — and we are talking about the Left inside the Church who, for the record, really aren’t in the Church because they reject Church teaching on a variety of issues. And they are digging in.

Nonetheless, since they continue to portray themselves as “Catholic,” then they get to be treated as “Catholic,” meaning their propaganda should be exposed on a theological level for the garbage that it is.

One of the leading provocateurs in the lefty Catholic camp is Austen Ivereigh, British author who never misses a chance to foster dissent. For example, just before the infamous Sex Summit began in Rome last February, Ivereigh tweeted, “Why do you say our Lord had no homosexual tendencies? By what signs or gestures do you deduce this?”

He was in a Twitter war with Fr. Jacob Straub, who responded, “This is very scandalous and possibly a heresy. You need to remove this tweet and confess your sin. Lord, have mercy.”

And so it goes with the lefty Catholic crowd, so closely associated with the lefty political crowd so as to be indistinguishable.

Ivereigh, who used to write for the notorious leftist Catholic rag The Tablet, located in the U.K., really came onto the radar for publishing a book on Pope Francis, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, back in 2014, jumping on the bandwagon of Team Francis.

Ivereigh is happy to not just support the so-called reforms of Pope Francis, but he never loses an opportunity to slam other Catholic media who question those reforms. Anyone who questions the pope’s moves gets torn to pieces by Ivereigh and the rest of his gang (although many of those same men had no problem openly criticizing Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul).

Ivereigh, you might recall, is the same fellow at one of the first press conferences of the Amazon Synod who tried to portray the Pachamama statues (really idols) as Our Lady and St. Elizabeth — until he got contradicted by panelists, and eventually the pope himself, who called them Pachamama, not representations of Mary and Elizabeth.

But with this crowd, whatever helps push the narrative is all that matters.

A few days back, America Magazine, the flagship publication of the largely dissident Jesuit order, hosted a book launch party for him for his latest tome titled Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis’ Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church. 

The use of the term “convert” in the title is more than a little telling. Of course, Ivereigh’s book has the full-throated endorsement of homoheretic James Martin, who never met a fellow traveler along the road to overthrowing the Church he hasn’t joined forces with.

Ivereigh and his crowd see this pontificate as a tool, perhaps a willing tool, to talk in generalities about Church teaching and downplay any specificity. So in his book and in his comments at the book launch, he talks about the need to stop talking about dogma or doctrine and start emphasizing personal experience in making moral judgments — meaning, at bottom, whether to commit sin or not.

Problem is Ivereigh and company don’t seem to either know or care anything about the actual concept of sin and its resultant consequence of damnation if a soul were to die in that state. But that doesn’t matter to these guys. They don’t really believe in the Church as She is actually constituted.

It’s much easier for them to think of and present the Church in terms of a giant multinational outfit, whose mission is to create some kind of utopia — Heaven on earth — as opposed to focusing on attaining actual Heaven.

To this end, any moral teaching, especially the ones on sexuality, are free to be passed over because those sins aren’t really sins, their rightness or wrongness being left up to the individual’s “personal experience.” But eat a piece of beef or contribute to so-called man-made climate change — and the fires of Hell await you.

Ivereigh straight up is a liar, who follows the agenda of the Left like the nice, little waterboy he is. For example, the uproar about the Pachamama idols prompted him to say that it grew out of EWTN-fueled panic that never asked indigenous people themselves about the “idols.”

That’s not even in the slightest imagination true. EWTN was not the first to report on the Pachamama. As far as we can tell, Church Militant was the first to identify the statues as symbols of Pachamama and demonstrate their connection to “Mother Earth,” or more specifically, “Earth Mother.”

For the record, it may not have been us, but if it wasn’t, we were certainly among the first, and it was not EWTN.

Secondly, the so-called “indigenous people” didn’t need to be asked specifically when the reports were first issued, because the very telling video moment of them bowing down to them on an earth blanket in the Vatican Gardens said a lot all on its own.

People don’t physically bow down to concepts. They bow down to representations of a concept.

And why didn’t Ivereigh go and ask the “indigenous people” swarming all over Rome, instead of sitting in the Vatican press hall getting shot down by the panel when saying the statues were of Our Lady and St. Elizabeth?

Where did he get his wrong idea? Certainly not from the “indigenous people,” because the statues are a symbol of Mother Earth and fertility and so forth, as they themselves — and the pope and the Vatican — have said.

There are so many ways to dissect the lefty Catholic crowd’s agenda and war on the truth that it’s actually easy. On the sex abuse crisis — proven time and again that its foundational cause is homosexuality, seeing as how four out of every five victims was a teenage boy — Ivereigh simply ignores that truth and says of that assertion: “This leads to terrible diagnoses, best example is their diagnosis of the sex abuse crisis by likes of Viganó and Cdls. Mueller and Burke.”

Of course, Ivereigh is demonstrably wrong, so much so that he seems to require more pity than correction.

In perhaps his most telling quote, demonizing anyone who supports Tradition in the Church (meaning clear doctrine), he says: “Everything is filtered through an ‘ideology of suspicion'” by a party that is trying to undermine him.

“This is a direct attack on his leadership” but “of course they don’t see it that way.” They say it is justified in the name of saving the Church, and in the “name of Tradition.”

Hey, Austen, have you looked around the Church these days? For the past half-century, in fact?

Of course, things have to be viewed in a suspicious manner, just like a fire chief looks at a four-alarm blaze in a suspicious manner, until the objective truth is arrived at. You and your carrying of the water for the Left must also be looked at suspiciously, and eventually denounced — yours and the rest of your elitist-minded “journalist” crowd.

You aren’t journalists. You are little else than mere stenographers for the Left, dutifully repeating their talking points because they excuse any sin you may enjoy. You desire nothing else than to keep the discussion of morality centered on earth as opposed to Heaven.

That is not what the Savior of the world desired. You might recall that loving God is the First Commandment; neighbor comes second. Heaven comes before earth on the priority list.

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

VIDEO: World’s biggest people smuggler busted in Brazil

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Posted by 

Thank you José Atento, blog Lei Islâmica em Ação, for this.

The biggest human smuggler in the world, Saifullah Al Mamun, was arrested in a joint operation between the Brazilian Federal Police and the US Migration Agency.

Eight foreigners were arrested on Thursday (31) in an operation to combat smuggling of immigrants, en route to the United States. Research shows that the gang earned $ 10 million between 2014 and 2019.

Five citizens from Bangladesh and three from Pakistan were temporarily arrested. Among them, leader Saifullah Al Mamun, considered by the US government to be the world’s largest human trafficker. The gang was housed in São Paulo. Illegal migration to the United States was done through travel agencies for the purpose of laundering money. The criminal organization charged up to 10 thousand US$ per person to facilitate the migration.

Since November 2017, 84 people sent by the gang have been arrested on arrival in the United States. The Federal Police confirmed that 395 other migrants passed the Brazilian route with the same destination through two agencies in downtown São Paulo. The victims are mostly young people in their 30s.

Illegal immigrants departed from Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo, bound for Rio Branco, Acre. From there, they crossed the Peruvian border and drove by land to the Mexican border with the United States. Logistics were made in contact with members of the criminal organization in the countries involved.

The accused must be responsible for migrant smuggling crimes qualified by submission to inhuman and degrading conditions, money laundering and criminal organization.

Direct link

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Two former Twitter employees accused of spying on Saudis and ‘thousands of others’ for Saudi Arabia

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“Thousands of other Twitter users”?

What were they looking for? Are the Saudis behind the Orwellian treatment of opposition to jihad terror as if it were “bigotry”?

Twitter is so resolutely opposed to foes of jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women, it’s no wonder that they didn’t catch these guys.

“Two former Twitter employees accused of spying for Saudi Arabia,” by David Shortell, CNN, November 7, 2019:

Washington, DC (CNN Business)Federal prosecutors accused two former Twitter employees of spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi national, and Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen, used their access at the social media giant to gather sensitive and nonpublic information on dissidents of the Saudi regime, the Justice Department alleged in a criminal complaint.

The case, unsealed in San Francisco federal court, underscores allegations the Saudi government tries to control anti-regime voices abroad. It also recalls a move reportedly directed by the country’s controversial leader to weaponize online platforms against critics.

The accusations are certain to renew scrutiny of tech companies’ abilities to protect the privacy of their users.

“The criminal complaint unsealed today alleges that Saudi agents mined Twitter’s internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users,” US Attorney David Anderson said in a statement. “U.S. law protects U.S. companies from such an unlawful foreign intrusion. We will not allow U.S. companies or U.S. technology to become tools of foreign repression in violation of U.S. law.”

A third man, Ahmed Almutairi, also from Saudi Arabia, allegedly acted as a go-between to the two Twitter employees and the Saudi government, which according to the complaint rewarded the men with hundreds of thousands of dollars and, for one man, a luxury Hublo watch.

While no Saudi government officials are named as running the spy operation in the complaint, the Washington Post, citing a person familiar with the case, reports a Saudi national who groomed the two employees is tied into the inner circle of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman….

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

The Left Doesn’t Really Believe ‘No One Is Above the Law’ by Rep. Andy Biggs

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There is a two-tiered system of justice in America, and it isn’t necessarily defined by rich versus poor, or on racial grounds.

Rather, if you’re a Democrat favorite of the deep-state bureaucrats, you will be treated favorably. If you’re a Republican who supports President Donald Trump, or if you’re Trump himself, you will be routed by the institutions of the left.

The inconsistencies of Nancy Pelosi and her followers demonstrate this completely.

“No one is above the law,” the House speaker told late-night TV host Stephen Colbert last week. She said the same thing back in September. Earlier in the year, she punctuated her declaration by saying, “No one is above the law, especially the president of the United States.”

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

She seems to have made no exceptions in her declarative statements. But she is not alone in the wide assortment of those attempting to remove Trump via a procedural coup.

Pelosi is joined by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who said in December of 2018, “No one is above the law, not even the president of the United States.”

Perennial presidential hopeful and unindicted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tweeted in June, “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the president is not above the law.”

Yet, as columnist Marc Thiessen wrote in July, Democrats don’t really believe that.

Take illegal immigration, the prime example of Democrats blatantly disregarding the law with no consequences.

If you are an illegal alien in the United States, Democrats want to give you special treatment. Your first time illegally in the country is a misdemeanor, and an illegal reentry after removal is a felony.

But Democrats don’t think the law applies to illegal aliens. They coddle and receive them with open arms while berating law enforcement officials charged with enforcing the laws passed on a bipartisan basis.

Democrat-run sanctuary cities violate the rule of law daily by releasing criminals into our nation, ignoring when there is a “do not release” instruction from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democrats want to eliminate our immigration enforcement agencies.

For the left, illegal aliens are above the law.

For Democrats, a politician from their own party—like Clinton, who was illegally storing classified information on a private server and who destroyed the evidence, or Joe Biden, who extorted the removal of a Ukrainian official who was investigating corruption that might have implicated his son—is above the law. But only if that person is a liberal.

If a former FBI director takes classified documents to his house or leaks information in order to manipulate the start of a special investigation of Trump, he’ll be in the clear if his intention is to help leftists and to undermine Republicans.

A Republican doing the same would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

And, if you are a leftist in the deep state who is exposed as a liar and a perjurer, don’t be surprised if you get a gig on CNN as a commentator who regularly blasts the president and his supporters.

And, if a Democrat tells a lie for long enough—for instance, “No one is above the law”—you can be sure leftists and some of their media allies will continue it and perpetuate it, no matter how many times they prove they’re holding to a double standard.

COMMENTARY BY

Rep. Andy Biggs

Rep. Andy Biggs a Republican, represents Arizona’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House. He is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and serves on the Judiciary and Science, Space and Technology committees. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

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

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

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

Iranian Agents in US Plead Guilty; Saudi Agents Arrested

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Two Iranians pleaded guilty to acting as illegal agents of the Iranian government in the U.S.

Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, 39, an Iranian with dual U.S. citizenship, and Majid Ghorbani, 60, were caught running surveillance on Jewish facilities and events in the U.S. in support of the Mujahdein-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian resistance group that advocates for the complete overthrow of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his Islamist regime.

According to an FBI affidavit, the two Iranian agents were also preparing “target packages” – i.e., attacks — on individuals who posed threats to the Iranian regime on American soil.

Meanwhile, two former employees of Twitter were charged by the Justice Department with acting as illegal foreign agents of Saudi Arabia in the U.S.

The Saudi men are accused of using their positions at the company to aid Saudi Arabia by acquiring information on American citizens who oppose the policies of the kingdom and its leaders.

The accused were named as Ali Alzabarah, an engineer with the company who had access to personal information, account data and internet protocol addresses of Twitter users, and Ahmad Abouammo, who was a media partnerships manager and had access to email addresses and phone numbers of users.

For an more information about Iran’s espionage and influence ops in the U.S., click here

The Iranian agents, who have been in custody since their arrests, both struck deals with their prosecutors for reduced sentences in exchange for pleading guilty.

According to the original indictment against the Iranians, Doostdar traveled to the United States from Iran in the summer of 2017 to collect intelligence information about entities and individuals considered by the government of Iran to be their enemies — namely, Israeli and Jewish interests.

Doostdar is alleged to have conducted surveillance of the Rohr Chabad House, a Jewish institution in Chicago, including photographing the security features surrounding the facility.

Ghorbani is alleged to have attended a MEK rally in New York City in September 2017, during which he photographed individuals protesting against the Iranian regime.

Later that year, Doostdar returned to the U.S. from Iran, made contact with Ghorbani and paid him close to $2,000 in cash for 28 pictures Ghorbani had taken at the rally. Many of the pictures contained hand-written notes identifying the participants.

The indictment also alleged that Ghorbani traveled to Iran around March 2018 for an “in-person briefing.”  A few months later, Ghorbani attended the MEK-affiliated 2018 Iran Freedom Convention for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., during which it appeared that he photographed speakers and participants.

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The Left Targets Nuns—Again

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The founders of America would be aghast at today’s assault against religious freedom and against what they called “the sacred right of conscience.”

Right now a group of innocent nuns is in the Left’s crosshairs—again. Why? Because the Little Sisters of the Poor do not believe in contraceptives and cannot in good faith and conscience abide by the HHS mandates—left over from the Obama administration—to force them to provide coverage for them.

The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court in 2016, and the high court said the nuns did not have to comply. A further executive order was issued by President Trump to protect the Little Sisters and similar groups from the contraceptive mandate. But the Left has continued to find loopholes—and friendly judges–in their crusade against religious freedom.

A recent adverse ruling from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals now means the nuns must once again appeal their case all the way to the Supreme Court.

First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based group fighting for religious freedom, just submitted a friend of the court brief on behalf of the nuns.

First Liberty noted that the Third Court of Appeals’ ruling “manifests an aggressive effort to compel the religious objector to assimilate with popular secular beliefs.”

Who exactly are the Little Sisters of the Poor? Since 1839, this group of Roman Catholic nuns have been helping the elderly and poor—providing a wonderful service for those in need.

I once asked Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate, about the Little Sisters case (first time around, when Obama was the president). He told me:

“This is the president that has brought the full weight and power of the federal government not against ISIS—on ISIS he’s kind of AWOL—but he’s brought the full weight and power in a threat to crush the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

Dr. Richard Land, the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, comments: “I never thought that I would live to see the day in America, when the federal government would fine people for their religious convictions…..The idea that the federal government would come in and try to force the Little Sisters of the poor, a group of nuns, to pay for contraception and pay for abortifacients and sterilization in their health care insurance is grotesque.”

Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel said about this case: “Never before in the history of America have we told religious organizations like Little Sisters of the Poor you can do what your God-given call and mission is, so long as you participate in human genocide.” Included in the contraceptives mandate are some abortifacients—chemicals that induce abortions.

As a student of American history, I am convinced the founders would be in favor of the nuns and not the Third Court of Appeals’ awful decision:

  • George Washington said, “While we are contending for our own Liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the Rights of Conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men, and to him only in this Case, they are answerable.
  • Thomas Jefferson wrote, after quoting the First Amendment, “Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
  • James Madison, a key contributor to the Constitution, stated, “the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship…nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.”

What a contrast: James Madison, sometimes called “the father of the Constitution,” says the government should infringe on “the civil rights of none.” But the Left in effect says, “the civil rights of nuns” do not count.

At a press conference during the first go around, the Little Sisters of the Poor declared:

“The government forces us to either violate our conscience or to take millions of dollars that we raise by begging for care of the elderly poor and instead pay fines to the IRS.”

The founders were wary of an all-encompassing big state that decides who has rights and who doesn’t. The foundation of American liberty is our God-given rights, as affirmed in our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence.  As John F. Kennedy put it, “the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” Amen.

But in the Year of our Lord 2019, we again find some elements of big government shamefully going after a group of charitable nuns to try to force them to violate their conscience rights.

© All rights reserved.

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JUST CONFIRMED: 158 judges and counting ⚖✓

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As of this afternoon, President Donald J. Trump has appointed—and gotten confirmed—158 life-tenured federal judges who will defend our Constitution, personal freedoms, and the rule of law. A few of the highlights:

  • President Trump’s nominees alone fill one-quarter of the seats on our nation’s Circuit Courts of Appeals.
  • His nominees fill two of the nine powerful seats on America’s Supreme Court.
  • He has seen more Circuit Court judges confirmed by this point in his presidency than any past president in United States history.

“Few legacies will be longer lasting than this judicial one,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote today. “These new judges are principled constitutionalists who have demonstrated excellence and professionalism throughout their legal careers.”

President Trump: More than 150 federal judges—and counting!

Once elected, this President wasted no time fulfilling his pledge to nominate judges who put impartiality and independence above activism from the bench. On day one, the Trump Administration went to work with the Senate to fill crucial vacancies. Fast forward to now, and the result is nothing less than a historic transformation of the judiciary.

The American Founding was built on the idea of separation of powers, President Trump said today. “This system was designed to protect citizens against the unjust concentration of governmental power . . . [but] when judges assume the role of a legislature, the rights of all citizens are threatened.”

What that means today: “The impartial and objective judge, who is a faithful servant of the law, is essential to the survival of American liberty.”

In just three years, President Trump has nominated and had confirmed two Supreme Court justices, 44 Circuit Court judges, and 112 District Court judges. Today, that historic pace is only accelerating: The President is set to have more judges confirmed this year alone than in all of 2017 and 2018 combined.

The average age of these new circuit judges is less than 50 years old—a full 10 years younger than the average age of former President Obama’s circuit nominees. That fact is important. President Trump understands that appointing good, fair judges is one of the most important legacies a President can leave. And thanks to the extraordinary number of young, talented judges he’s selected, that legacy is likely to last for decades to come.

Even more important than how long judges serve, of course, is what they do once they get on the bench. President Trump has always nominated judges who have a proven track record of standing up for the rule of law as written, not as imagined.

This quote from President Trump’s speech today may be the most important:

When judges write policy instead of applying the law, they impose sweeping changes on millions of Americans without the benefit of legislative debate, public rulemaking, or the consent of the governed. As a result, these highly political rulings inflict painful damage on our security, society, and economy—imposing unworkable edicts on businesses, workers, families, and law enforcement.

His promise: “I will do everything in my power to halt judicial activism, and to ensure the law is upheld equally, fairly, and without political prejudice for all of our citizens.”

Ted Cruz: “Trump has achieved historic impact with THIS action.”

Watch and share: The left imposes with judges what it can’t at the ballot box.

When Mexican Cartels Slaughter Americans. Weeks earlier, U.S. Senate declared, ‘No emergency on the border!’

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On November 5, 2019 ABC News reported, Horrific details emerge in killing of 9 US citizens, including 6 children, in ambush in Mexico.

Once again it appears that the violent Mexican drug cartels have committed a horrific mass murder.  Their tactics could have been taken from the playbook of ISIS or al Qaeda.  Initially news reports expressed the possibility that the killers may have mistaken those killed for members of an adversary cartel.  However, the facts don’t support it.  Children, including infants were among those shot and burned while strapped into their car seats.

The crime scene stretched for miles and more than 200 shell casings were recovered.

The November 6th CBS News report,

As CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, the Sonora prosecutor’s office said the person arrested was found in a vehicle with two other people who were bound and gagged. Those unidentified individuals were rescued, and four assault-style weapons, spent magazines and high-caliber ammunition, were seized. Two vehicles were seized separately, including one said to have been armored.

Of course, while all of the facts are not yet known, what cannot be ignored is that there are terror training camps in the Tri-Border Region of Brazil linked to Hezbollah, Hamas and other Middle Eastern terrorist organizations.  It has been widely reported that human trafficking organizations and drug cartels throughout Latin America have been working in close coordination with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist organization.

I addressed several of these worrying connections in my article Jihad At The Border.

Following this most recent slaughter of innocent Americans, in Mexico, President Trump offered to provide Mexico with assistance but the President of Mexico declined the offer.

Violence in Mexico, particularly at the hands of the drug cartels is as commonplace as sunrise and sunset and has been well-documented. Indeed, on February 21, 2018 Forbes published a report Mexico: Where More Americans Are Murdered Than In All Other Foreign Countries Combined that included this cautionary excerpt:

Advisories released last month by the U.S. State Department tell Americans not to set foot in five Mexican states — Sinaloa, Colima, Michoacan, Guerrero and Tamaulipas — because of violent crime. Traveling to those states is as dangerous, according to the State Department’s safety ratings, as traveling to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. And Americans with plans to go to 11 other Mexican states should “reconsider,” the agency says.

Most recent State Department data may also cause travelers to pause before booking a trip to Mexico. In 2016, according to my analysis of the data, more Americans were reported killed by homicide in Mexico than the combined total of Americans killed by homicide in every other country abroad.

Nevertheless, on October 16, 2019 I wrote an article, Senate votes to end border emergency under which Trump redirected military funds to wall construction.

I noted in my article that Hezbollah, ISIS, gangs and the drug cartels hadn’t gotten the memo but had no idea how prescient that point would become in mere days.

It is unfathomable that given all of the available facts, many of which have been provided in numerous Congressional hearings, that our political leaders could possibly conclude that there is no emergency on that dangerous border that undermines national security and public safety and that the construction of a border wall should be a major priority along with other essential measures to imbue the immigration system with meaningful integrity.

On October 17, 2019, one day after my previous article about the Senate vote to end the border emergency was published, The Guardian reported, El Chapo: Mexican police capture then release drug boss’s son after battle with cartel.

On October 18, 2019 the Los Angeles Times reported, Eight killed in Mexico as cartel gunmen force authorities to release El Chapo’s son.

I remind you that El Chapo Guzman was successfully prosecuted for massive drug smuggling crimes in the Eastern District of New York. In my earlier commentary, New York City: Hub For The Deadly Drug Trade, I opined that NYC’s“sanctuary” policies had attracted the cartels to create a major hub for its drug operations in NYC in spite of the fact that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) is one of the largest and most sophisticated, well-equipped and well trained police departments in the United States, if not the world.

Additionally, not all aliens who are smuggled into the United States through Mexico are from Latin America.

On October 31, 2019 the Justice Department issued a press release, Human Smuggler Indicted On U.S. Charges and Arrested as Part of Brazilian Takedown of Significant Alien Smugglers that included this excerpt:

Saifullah Al-Mamun aka Saiful Al-Mamun, 32, was arrested in Brazil. Al-Mamun is charged in a superseding indictment unsealed today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas – Laredo Division, charging him with eight conspiracy and alien smuggling counts. The enforcement operation included the execution of multiple search warrants and the additional arrests of seven Brazil-based human smugglers on Brazilian charges: Saifullah Al-Mamun, 32; Saiful Islam, 32; Tamoor Khalid, 31; Nazrul Islam, 41; Mohammad Ifran Chaudhary, 39; Mohammad Nizam Uddin, 28; and Md Bulbul Hossain, 36.

According to the indictment, Al-Mamun is alleged to have housed the aliens in São Paulo, Brazil and arranged for their travel through a network of smugglers operating out of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico to the United States. In return for smuggling the aliens into the United States, Al-Mumun and his two co-conspirators, are alleged to have arranged to be paid in Mexico, Central America, South America, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.

Mexico stands on the precipice of becoming a failed state. That dysfunctional and extremely violent country shares a two thousand mile border with the United States providing the drug cartels, transnational gangs, human traffickers and others who pose a threat to America and Americans with easy access. Nevertheless, given all of the foregoing, leaders of the radicalized Democratic Party and even their candidates for the Presidency have called for an end to immigration law enforcement and the decriminalization of immigration law violations.

Democrat mayors and governors have implemented “Sanctuary” policies that obstruct immigration law enforcement and resulted in the release of violent aliens in custody even when detainers were filed by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) all too often with deadly consequences.

Republicans have refused to provide President Trump with the funds and backing to not only construct a secure barrier along the border but to take other steps to counter the clear and present dangers we face.

Court decisions have stymied the administration’s efforts to counter these clear and present threats.

These actions have aided and abetted the drug cartels and resulted in the massive loss of life in the United States of Americans and immigrants alike.  Clearly the leaders of the cartels have been embolden by the betrayal of America at the hands of its own “leaders.

As I stated during one of my first Congressional hearings, we only get one opportunity to make a first impression.  Our borders and immigration laws provide that first impression for millions of people around the world.  Today our politicians are sending a clear message, violations of our borders and our laws will not only be tolerated but rewarded.

That is one hell of a dangerous message that should earn them the cartels’ MVP award!

RELATED ARTICLES:

Cartels Are Criminal, National Security, Public Health Threats to United States

It’s Time For The United States To Wage War On Mexican Drug Cartels

Judicial Watch Makes Case to Designate Mexican Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

To Dodge Border Crisis, NY Times Pins Cartel Killings on Religion

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Breaking news coming out of Mexico detailed the horrific cartel killings of an American family, which, astonishingly, The New York Times tried to pin on (get ready for it) fundamentalist religion. Specifically, the Mormon faith.

An American family living in Mexico was ambushed and massacred by a cartel, with three women and six children murdered. The scene as described by surviving family members is horrific:

“They described a terrifying scene in which one child was gunned down while running away, while others were trapped inside a burning car. Two of the children killed were less than a year old, the family members said. The car they were in with their mother was set ablaze.”

In one article, the family is described as being part of a “fundamentalist Mormon community,” while in another the spotlight is on the victims’ faith.

In fact, a quick Google search of the NY Times coverage of the tragedy yielded the following headlines on articles put up at various times during the day by the Times: “9 Members of Mormon Family in Mexico Are Killed in Ambush,” “A Storied Mormon Family Reels After Mexico Murders,” “What We Know About the Killing of 9 Mormon Family” and “US Victims in Mexico Attack From Mormon Offshoot Community.”

In between these headlines, another mainstream media source, NBC chimed in with its own coverage: “Slain U.S. citizens were part of Mormon offshoot with sordid history,” which detailed, well, the “sordid history” of the group which they called a “cult.”

Responses on the Twitter-sphere were fast and furious:

The New York Times

✔@nytimes

 · 

The brutal killing of 9 members of an American family in northern Mexico on Monday highlights the long history of religious fundamentalist settlers in the region. Our religion reporter, Elizabeth Dias, details their history back to the early 20th century. https://nyti.ms/2CeMpyj 

Madelyn Staddon, 15, is embraced on her street in Queen Creek, Ariz., on Tuesday. Madelyn’s aunt Dawna Langford and two of Ms. Langford’s children were killed in a shooting in Mexico.

‘Innocence Is Shattered:’ A Storied Mormon Family Reels After Mexico Murders

Fundamentalist groups that split from the Mormon church have for years navigated life amid the drug war in northern Mexico.

nytimes.com

A.D. \Mikkhi/ Sixx@adfoozsixx

Until someone coughs up evidence that the drug cartel members checked for their victims’ Fundie ID cards before killing them, I’m going to say this is a drug cartel violence problem, not a Fundie problem.

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Matt Walsh

✔@MattWalshBlog

This honestly might be the most disgraceful stunt the New York Times has ever pulled. And that is saying quite a lot. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1191822530727829506 …

The New York Times

✔@nytimes

The brutal killing of 9 members of an American family in northern Mexico on Monday highlights the long history of religious fundamentalist settlers in the region. Our religion reporter, Elizabeth Dias, details their history back to the early 20th century. https://nyti.ms/2CeMpyj 

2,524

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552 people are talking about this

Adam Trahan

✔@AdamTrahan

Thanks @nytimes. For a second there, I thought it was the murderous cartel’s fault that six children were burned alive while their mothers were raped, then shot rather than Mormonism. Silly me. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1191822530727829506 …

The New York Times

✔@nytimes

The brutal killing of 9 members of an American family in northern Mexico on Monday highlights the long history of religious fundamentalist settlers in the region. Our religion reporter, Elizabeth Dias, details their history back to the early 20th century. https://nyti.ms/2CeMpyj 

3,015

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Logan Hall

✔@loganclarkhall

six children were murdered and this is how the new york times chose to cover it. pathetic.

View image on Twitter

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Some parodied The Washington Post’s similarly outrageous coverage of America’s take down of ISIS terror chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last week.

JERRY DUNLEAVY@JerryDunleavy

Austere Drug Cartel https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1191822530727829506 …

The New York Times

✔@nytimes

The brutal killing of 9 members of an American family in northern Mexico on Monday highlights the long history of religious fundamentalist settlers in the region. Our religion reporter, Elizabeth Dias, details their history back to the early 20th century. https://nyti.ms/2CeMpyj 

521

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Яob@robx_d

Austere medicinal supplement supplier’s heroic struggles against religious extremist families. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1191822530727829506 …

The New York Times

✔@nytimes

The brutal killing of 9 members of an American family in northern Mexico on Monday highlights the long history of religious fundamentalist settlers in the region. Our religion reporter, Elizabeth Dias, details their history back to the early 20th century. https://nyti.ms/2CeMpyj 

3

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With its single focused political views (read:anti-Trump), the mainstream media is now more engaged in creative, rather than factual, reporting.

Acknowledging the real issue of cartel killings, violence and terror infiltration on America’s southern border would have given a nod to the wisdom of Trump’s solutions for the border crisis: the need for increased security and more stringent immigrant vetting, and challenging sanctuary cities across America that provide safe havens for criminal and illegal immigrants.

So, instead, the NY Times and other mainstream media outlets decided to make these cartel killings an issue of religious fundamentalism.

Ironically, when it comes to Islam, the mainstream media doesn’t seem to have any problem not blaming religious fundamentalism. In fact, the media narrative since 9/11 has been that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

As Clarion’s National Correspondent Shireen Qudosi wrote following The Washington Post‘s Baghdadi headline gaffe,

“Any message deviating from the this mainstream mantra was punished, including when I challenged what I call ‘fantasy Islam’ (that Islam is only peace) during a congressional hearing on radical Islam [where] I called Islam a religion of peace and war.”

The fact is that how we talk about victims matters just as much as how we talk about oppressors. President Trump got that right. Tweeting the news, he offered Mexico help in fighting the real culprits, the cartels:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

 · 

A wonderful family and friends from Utah got caught between two vicious drug cartels, who were shooting at each other, with the result being many great American people killed, including young children, and some missing. If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these…..

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

….monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively. The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!

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RELATED STORIES:

The Connection Between Gangs, Drug Cartels and Terrorism

Why Hezbollah Is in Argentina 

Iran, Hezbollah Use Mexican Drug Cartels to Inflitrate US

Koch Money Funds Open Borders Agenda: Attempts to Sway Supreme Court!

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Everyone knows that George Soros funds Leftwing causes and is a proponent of open borders, but even as the Koch brothers (David Koch died this year) have been tagged as the conservative movements money bags, not everyone knows the Kochs have pushed the immigration issue on the same side as Soros and his ilk.

Freedom Partners, my foot! The Left paints the Koch family as the boogeymen on the right. But, make no mistake they are on the same side as George Soros on the most important issue of all time for the survival of America—immigration.

Maybe it happened in your state, but about 8 years ago or so, Americans for Prosperity (Koch creation) came on the scene in Maryland and initially Tea Party groups were thrilled to have a well-funded ally—that is, until it became clear that the subject of immigration (the hottest issue in Maryland at that time) was off the table.

Now comes news that the Koch name is front and center in support of the so-called ‘Dreamers’ as Trump’s effort to dismantle an Obama era executive order that gave amnesty to scores of ‘children’ (not adults) who came to America illegally were given permission to stay and work in America (of course the plan is to eventually give them citizenship and voting rights) goes to the Supreme Court.

Koch’s interest is financial as the subject of labor, and lots of it, is the driving force behind much of the Open Borders movement’s agenda.  Humanitarian lingo is a shield they hide behind!

Here is The Hill:

Koch groups take immigration art exhibit to DC ahead of DACA hearing at Supreme Court

The top nonprofit groups affiliated with conservative mega-donor Charles Koch are unveiling a pop-up art exhibit in Washington, D.C., meant to extol the benefits of immigration.

The “Common Ground” exhibit comes ahead of a Nov. 12 Supreme Court hearing on the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

It features nine doors with life-size video screens that show different aspects of immigrant life in the United States.

The exhibit is being brought to Washington by Stand Together, the main nonprofit arm of the Koch network, in conjunction with Americans for Prosperity and the Libre Institute, also nonprofit groups within the Koch orbit.

The exhibit will open Tuesday in Washington’s renovated Wharf area, after showings at Nashville’s Politicon and Miami’s Wynwood Art District.

It shows nine aspects of immigrant life, starting with a door titled “Meet Dreamers,” in allusion to DACA recipients, commonly known as “Dreamers.”

Dreamers are on the forefront of the immigration debate as the Supreme Court gears up for the Nov. 12 hearing, where it will decide on the legality of President Trump’s 2017 order to revoke the Obama-era program.

Under DACA, undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors, registered, paid a fee and passed a background check were given a reprieve from deportation and permission to work in the country. Those permits are renewable every two years.

The program was meant as a bridge while Congress legislated a permanent solution for Dreamers.

Trump in September 2017 canceled the program, arguing President Obama had overreached and single-handedly legislated on immigration by granting work permits in addition to deferred action on deportation.

And, for you, the worker whose salaries are kept low by a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor, or you whose community is destroyed by diversity, or you, taxpayers, who pay for welfare benefits and health care for Koch/Soros workers and non-workers, there are no money bags supporting your side of the argument.

There is only the President.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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

House Votes to ‘Enhance the Border Security’ of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia — Not the USA

RELATED VIDEO: Mexican War.

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

Did Schiff’s witness Lieutenant Colonel Vindman violate the Manual for Courts-Martial?

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I received an email from a fellow retired officer about U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Alexander Vindman. The officer sent a link to an article published on American Greatness titled Retired Army Officer Remembers Lt. Col. Vindman as Partisan Democrat Who Ridiculed America by Debra Heine.

Heine wrote:

A retired Army officer who worked with Democrat “star witness” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in Grafenwoher, Germany, claims Vindman “really talked up” President Barack Obama and ridiculed America and Americans in front of Russian military officers.

In an eye-opening thread on Twitter last week, retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Jim Hickman said that he “verbally reprimanded” Vindman after he heard some of his derisive remarks for himself. “Do not let the uniform fool you,” Hickman wrote. “He is a political activist in uniform.”

The officer believes that LTC Vindman’s testimony violated the Manual for Courts-Martial. Specifically:

14. Article 88 (10 U.S.C. 888)—Contempt toward officials

a. Text of statute.

Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a courtmartial may direct.

In the transcript of Vindman’s sworn testimony released by the House Intelligence committee, Vindman stated:

I was concerned by the call [between Trump and Zelenskyy]. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security.

Following the call, I again reported my concerns to NSC’s lead counsel.

It is clear from the transcript of the call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy that there was interest in the possible Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, but there was no request by President Trump to investigate “the Bidens and Burisma.” It was Zelensky who brought up the Bidens and Burisma. What President Trump said was:

I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.

The officer in the email referred to the below quote from Ms. Heine’s article:

Hickman said he decided to come forward because Vindman “disobeyed a direct order from the commander-in-chief, his boss,” made his testimony “about his foreign policy opinions versus facts,” and “wore his Army service uniform to make a political statement” against the president.

Vindman may have violated another section of the Manual for Courts-Martial as follows:

69. Article 123 (10 U.S.C. 923)—Offenses concerning Government computers

a. Text of statute.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Any person subject to this chapter who—

(1) knowingly accesses a Government computer, with an unauthorized purpose, and by doing so
obtains classified information, with reason to believe such information could be used to the injury
of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation, and intentionally communicates,
delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted such information to any person not entitled to receive it;

(2) intentionally accesses a Government computer, with an unauthorized purpose, and thereby obtains classified or other protected information from any such Government computer;

or

(3) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a
result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization to a Government computer;

shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Both of these sections of the Manual for Courts-Martial, and perhaps other articles, could cause Vindman to be investigated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. Depending on what they find it could lead to a courtmartial.

The plot thickens in the effort by Democrats to impeach a sitting President based upon, so far, foreign policy differences, speculation, hearsay and third hand knowledge.

As most people understand if you read the transcript of the call there is nothing there. All the rest is a dog and pony show.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Schiff Show – Produced and Directed by Nancy Pelosi

Majority of Americans Say U.S. Is Nearing Civil War

Debunking the Myth of ‘Concealed-Carry Killers’

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UPDATE: Click here for an Infographic on Burglary Statistics by Safety.com.

The Violence Policy Center—a gun control advocacy group—released a study last month it wrongly claims shows that “too many concealed-carry permit holders are a direct threat to public safety.”

That claim rests on an analysis of a database documenting “non-self-defense incidents,” which the organization says proves that “allowing random people to carry guns endangers public safety.”

On its face, that claim is contrary to the wealth of data indicating that concealed-carry permit holders are one of the most law-abiding populations in the nation.

Moreover, concealed-carry permit holders are not “random people,” but individuals with the government’s affirmative approval to carry a concealed firearm in public places after having completed a series of steps required by the government.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

It’s hardly surprising, then, that the Violence Policy Center claim falls apart when even the slightest bit of scrutiny is applied to it.

Not only is the claim based on a grossly misleading characterization of what the database actually captures, but the numbers from the database flatly contradict the Violence Policy Center’s claim that America’s 18 million concealed-carry permit holders represent a serious risk to public safety.

That’s particularly true in light of the role permit holders play in actively protecting themselves and the public from violent crime.

The Study Grossly Mischaracterizes the Data

Beyond the immediately suspect nature of the Violence Policy Center’s claims, the database erroneously includes many deaths that are not attributable to the misuse of a concealed-carry permit.

The anti-gun group defines “non-self-defense incident” to include virtually any fatality involving a concealed-carry permit holder, including ones that do not remotely resemble the type of intentional homicide evoked by the Violence Policy Center’s strong claims about public safety.

For example, roughly 40% of the deaths (534 of 1,335) are suicides. While tragic, firearm suicides are not what a term like “concealed-carry killer” brings to mind.

Moreover, analysis of the remaining “non-self-defense” deaths also belies the group’s use of the term.

The Violence Policy Center includes many fatalities where the shooter’s concealed-carry permit was irrelevant because he or she did not carry a concealed weapon in public while perpetrating the crime.

For example, the database includes a Nov. 11, 2008, death where a permit holder fatally shot her husband in their own backyard, and a June 12, 2012, death where the permit holder fatally shot his wife while she slept in their own bedroom.

Had their respective states never issued a concealed-carry permit to a single person, these shooters still would have been in lawful possession of these firearms inside their own homes.

Also of dubious inclusion are at least 10 cases that involve someone other than the permit holder using the permit holder’s firearm, and a number of cases where the individual’s permit either should have been suspended or was actually suspended under state law at the time of the death.

Finally, despite the Violence Policy Center’s claim that it only analyzed non-self-defense shootings, in 72 of the 801 homicide deaths included in the database, the shooter’s claim of self-defense is still pending in court.

In other words, the anti-gun group has preemptively convicted those parties before a jury has had the opportunity to determine whether they acted in lawful self-defense.

The Data Paints a Different Picture

As a result of the report, the Violence Policy Center’s legislative director stated that “concealed-carry killers continue to claim innocent lives at a shocking pace.”

The only shocking thing about the pace of crimes committed by concealed-carry permit holders is just how slow it is compared with the statistical expectation.

According to the data, America’s 18 million concealed-carry permit holders accounted for 801 firearm-related homicides over a 15-year span, which amounts to roughly 0.7% of all firearm-related homicides during that time.

That percentage drops even lower if any of the defendants in the 72 cases still pending in court are determined to have acted in lawful self-defense.

Since 2007, when the Violence Policy Center started tracking these concealed-carry permit holder deaths, there has been a 304% increase in the number of Americans with a concealed-carry permit.

At the same time, the national violent crime and homicide rates in 2018 were actually lower than they were in 2007, and substantially lower than their historical highs in the early 1990s, when far fewer Americans had concealed-carry permits.

Similarly, despite the anti-gun group’s claim that concealed-carry permit holders represent a severe danger to law enforcement officers, the data indicates that they are accountable for a disproportionately small number of law enforcement deaths.

The FBI recorded 608 law enforcement officers who were killed in “felonious acts” between 2007 and 2018. According to the Violence Policy Center, 18 concealed-carry permit holders killed 23 law enforcement officers during that time.

That accounts for roughly 3.7% of law enforcement officer felonious deaths, even though concealed-carry permit holders account for 5.5% of the population.

Just as with non-law enforcement deaths, many of the cases the Violence Policy Center includes as law enforcement officer deaths involve scenarios where the killer’s status as a permit holder played no role in the crime.

In fact, by our count, only 10 of the 24 law enforcement officer deaths between 2007 and the time of publication involved permit holders actually carrying concealable firearms in public places.

For example, the database includes the case of Ryan Schlesinger, who in November 2018 used a rifle from inside his own home to kill an officer in Tucson, Arizona, serving him with an arrest warrant.

The concealed-carry permit was not only completely irrelevant in that situation—one does not need a concealed-carry permit to lawfully possess a rifle inside one’s home, nor is a rifle a “concealed carry” weapon—but Schlesinger was prohibited under state law from possessing firearms.

Even if his permit was, through some technicality, still “valid” under state law, the permit would have been automatically suspended upon his arrest for a felony.

Concealed-Carry Permit Holders Regularly Save Lives

As we have often noted, Americans defend themselves with their firearms between 500,000 and 3 million times every year.

It’s unclear how many of these defensive gun uses involve concealed-carry permit holders carrying in public places, but our own records show that concealed-carry permit holders can and do save lives.

Consider the following recent examples:

  • Sept. 27, Redding, California: A concealed-carry permit holder helped stop a kidnapping after it became clear to him that another customer at a gas station was holding a woman against her will. The man had kidnapped the woman earlier in the evening, and the permit holder, noticing the woman’s clear distress, confronted the man and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.
  • Sept. 19, Miami-Dade County, Florida: An armed good Samaritan with a handgun concealed in her purse intervened to stop a brutal robbery and assault occurring outside a Popeyes restaurant. The woman drew her weapon and fired at a man who was pummeling a helpless victim lying on the concrete, sending the attacker fleeing.
  • Sept. 3, Coshocton County, Ohio: A concealed-carry permit holder stopped a knife-wielding man who was threatening customers and employees at a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant. The Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office later posted on Facebook: “Due to the heroic actions of [the permit holder], deputies were able to take the suspect into custody without injury or loss of life.”

Moreover, concealed-carry permit holders have intervened to stop many scenarios that likely would have turned into mass killings but for their actions.

For example, on Feb. 13, a permit holder in Colonial Heights, Tennessee, was deemed a “hero” by local police after he prevented a deadly encounter at a dentist’s office from turning much worse.

In the end, the Violence Policy Center’s database does nothing more than confirm that concealed-carry permit holders are, on the whole, incredibly law-abiding, and that allowing more Americans to exercise their constitutional right in more places does not result in a serious threat to public safety.

COMMENTARY BY

Amy Swearer

Amy Swearer is a senior legal policy analyst at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

Cooper Conway

Cooper Conway is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

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Horror: Brutal Cartels Massacre American Mothers and Children in Northern Mexico

A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

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

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

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

CHANGED: Former gays against the Democrat’s ‘Equality Act’ — ‘Sexual behavior should not be a protected right.’

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“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” – Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher.

NBC News’ Gwen Aviles in an article titled Ex-gays descend upon D.C. to lobby against LGBTQ rights quotes Kathy Grace Duncan, a member of Changed who formerly identified as a transgender man,

They’re [the Democrats] asking for certain rights in this legislation [the Equality Act – H.R. 3570/the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act], but these are rights that they [the LGBTQ+ community] already have.

Aviles goes on to quote Jim Domen, founder of Church United, who identifies as formerly gay,

“Sexual behavior should not be a protected right.”

Aviles noted,

Domen and Duncan claim that sexual orientation and gender identity are choices, and individuals displeased with their current status can “overcome” it through therapy and religious support.

I was cleaning out some old research materials and pamphlets about homosexuality from the Family Research Institute founded by Dr. Paul Cameron, headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Family Research Institute also created the Empirical Journal of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior website.

Replacing ‘sex’ with ‘gender identity’

The idea of same-sex attraction is an issue that is coming to the forefront. The U.S. Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in two cases involving LGBTQ rights. In an October 6, 2019 article Ryan T. Anderson wrote:

This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in cases that ask whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination on the basis of sex, extends to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and transgender status.

It’s an odd legal argument, given that the public meaning of the word “sex” in 1964—and today, for that matter—refers to our status as male or female, not our sexual attractions, desires, actions, or identity.

That’s why progressive activists have been trying for the past forty years to get Congress to pass laws that would add “sexual orientation” as a protected class, and it’s why they’ve been doing the same for “gender identity” for the past dozen years.

What does past research tell us about sexual orientation?

In the Family Research Institute 2007 Year End Report we find a reference to an article by Paul Cameron, Ph.D titled Teacher-Pupil Sexual Interaction: How Much is Homosexual? Dr. Cameron found:

In news stories in English across the world for 1980-2006, 902 teachers engaged in sex with 3,457 pupils. Teachers engaging in same-sex sex constituted 63% of perpetrators in Ireland, 62% in New Zealand, 60% in Canada, 54% in Scotland, 48% in Australia, 47% in England, and 35% in the U.S.; in smaller samples, homosexuals accounted for 71% of perpetrators in mainland Europe, 26% in Africa, and 13% in Asia. 

Proportionately more same-sex sexual activity with pupils occurred in the West as compared to Asia and Africa. Most (54% of 810 male, 83% of 92 female) teachers violated only opposite sex pupils; 43% of perpetrators engaged in homosexuality; and 55% of victims were boys. Findings for each country or set of countries were consistent with U.S. studies based on superintendent report, principal report, self-report, and convictions indicating that a male homosexual is the most and a female heterosexual the least apt to have sex with pupils.

In a second 2007 report by Dr. Cameron titled Do Those Who Engage In Homosexual Sex More Frequently Rape and Murder The Underage? A Test Of Traditional Morality noted:

Traditionalists regard those who engage in same-sex sex (e.g., ‘homosexuals’) as immoral; psychiatric professional associations consider morality unrelated to participation in homosexuality. Frequency of committing a heinous crime – rape and murder of children — was examined as one empirical test of this disagreement. For 1980-2005, 668 stories about the rape and murder of children (<18 yr.) in 50+ major newspapers in the USA, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, etc. indexed by Lexus-Nexus were found: 202 (30%) involved perpetrators who engaged in homosexual sex (35% of
the 206 stories from 1980-1994; 28% of the 462 from 1995-2005).

Males constituted 96% and boys (<18 yr.) 6% of the 714 perpetrators. The 209 perpetrators who engaged in homosexual sex accounted for 364 (40%) of the 914 victims – 53.5 (9%) of the 600 girls,
and 310.5 (99%) of the 314 boys. About three-quarters of children victimized were <13 yr. In Britain, 30 (51%) of 59 stories involved homosexuality.

Fast forward to 2019

Today we find the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts of America and public schools in the United States and abroad are immersed in homosexual scandals.

Church Militant has been in the forefront in reporting on the “gay mafia” that now runs the Catholic Church. Watch: Sodomitic Filth.

Florida, the state in which I live, has seen a steady rise in the number of HIV/AIDs cases between 2013 to 2018. The Florida Department of Health HIV Data Center reports that the number of Floridians diagnosed with HIV has gone from 4,360 in 2013 to 4,906 in 2018. Florida currently has 119,661 individuals with HIV/AIDs living in the sunshine state. Health statistics for HIV, AIDS and HIV-related deaths in Florida can be found at this web link.

According to a December 12, 2018 report in the Wall Street Journal, the Boy Scouts of America may be filing for bankruptcy in the near future due to escalating legal costs related to lawsuits over how it handled reports of child sexual abuse allegations and child molester Scout leaders.

Public schools across America are now hosting “drag queen” reading hours for young children in libraries, much to the chagrin of parents who can’t opt-out.

Conclusion

The Family Research Institute in a 1992 pamphlet titled What Causes Homosexual Desire: Can It Be Changed concludes with:

Can homosexuality be changed?

Certainly. As noted above, many people have turned away from homosexuality — almost as many people as call themselves “gay.”

Clearly the easier problem to eliminate is homosexual behavior. Even as many heterosexuals control their desires to engage in premarital or extramarital sex, so some with homosexual desires discipline themselves to abstain from homosexual contact.

One thing seems to stand out: associations are all-important. Anyone who wants to abstain from homosexual behavior should avoid the company of practicing homosexuals. There are organizations including “ex-gay ministries,” designed to help those who wish to reform their conduct. Psychotherapy claims about a 30% cure rate, and religious commitment seems to be the most helpful factor in avoiding homosexual habits. [Emphasis added]

Today groups like Changed are making a difference in turning men and women away from homosexuality. The best way is to keep homosexuals away from our our youngest and most vulnerable – our children.

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