False Claims to U.S. Citizenship — Far from a “victimless crime”

Virtually all criminals lie.

Lying is a common tactic used by criminals to conceal their identities, their backgrounds and their crimes.  They lie to cover their tracks, to evade detection and to escape from the reach of the “long arm of the law.”

This is why suspects who are taken into custody are fingerprinted and photographed, to attempt to make certain that the name the suspect provides is truly his/her name.  Often criminals use multiple false identities whether by committing identity theft or fabricating altogether fictitious identities.

In point of fact, the 9/11 Commission found that in the aggregate, the 19 hijackers who participated in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, used more than 300 false identities or variations of false identities to conceal their identities and their movements as they went about their deadly preparations.

The 9/11 Commission also identified other terrorists who had entered the United States in the decade leading up to the attacks of 9/11 and found that the majority of all of these terrorists engaged in multiple forms of immigration fraud.  This was the starting point for my recent article, Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill.

The act of lying is, itself, a crime when it is done in furtherance of other criminal activities.  A section of federal law, 18 U.S. Code § 1001, addresses this crime.  Here is how this statute begins:

  1. Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;

shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years.

Please notice that the statute cited above noted the potential nexus between false statements and terrorism.

Getting back to immigration, aliens who enter the United States without inspection or who enter the United States legally but then violate the term so their immigration status may lie to authorities about their names, their countries of birth and/or countries of citizenship in order to evade detection by immigration law enforcement, to create the appearance that they are entitled to various public assistance programs or to be able to be employed in the United States and to achieve other illegal goals.

Such false claims to United States citizenship is a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 911.  The description of this crime and the punishment for this violation of law is contained in this brief sentence:

Whoever falsely and willfully represents himself to be a citizen of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

The primary goal of illegal aliens is to not be arrested and deported (removed from the United States).

It is not uncommon for illegal aliens to make false claims about being United States citizens when they are encountered by law enforcement.  Citizens of countries where Spanish is the predominant language may attempt to pass themselves off as being from Puerto Rico.  Citizens of Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and St Lucia may make false claims to having been born in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

They may even purchase birth certificates in false names to back up their claims.

Back when I was an INS special agent, I encountered this sort of situation almost routinely.  Some illegal aliens even managed to obtain United States passports under assumed identities.

On May 8, 2017 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a news release, 15 illegal aliens arrested in East Texas for identity theft that reported on precisely this crime that was allegedly committed by 15 illegal aliens to easily enable them to defeat the E-Verify system by purchasing birth certificates in false names.

Many folks believe that simply mandating the use of E-Verify by all employers would turn off the “job magnet” that draws many illegal aliens to the United States.

In reality, while E-Verify most certainly should be mandatory, without an adequate number of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel to conduct field investigations, unscrupulous employers could still hire people “off the books” and illegal aliens could defeat the system the way that the 15 aliens reported on in the ICE press release did.

Additionally, more than ever before, the public and our political leaders have developed an extreme fascination with statistics.  Almost every report about immigration includes the supposedly reliable statistic that there are 11 or 12 million illegal aliens in the United States.

Various “think tanks” periodically release reports in which they provide estimates about the size of the illegal alien population both at large and also the number of such aliens who are incarcerated.

Prior the Amnesty of 1986 that was part and parcel of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), it was estimated that roughly one million illegal alien would “emerge from the shadows” under the auspices of that “one time” amnesty program.

By the time the IRCA amnesty program ended more than 3.5 million such aliens stepped out of the “shadows.”

Some may have entered the United States after the estimate was made and then lied about their actual dates of entry into the United States, however, it is likely that for various reasons, such as the issue of aliens making false claims to United States Citizenship the efforts to estimate the true number were way off base.

What what likely blithely ignored then, as well as today, is how the number of such illegal aliens is determined.  Aliens who evade the inspections process at ports of entry do not create a record of arrival as they run the border or, perhaps, stowaway on a ship.

Furthermore, it is not unusual for criminal aliens to make false claims to being citizens of the United States, not unlike those 15 illegal aliens noted previously.

When an alien has been deported and illegally reenters the United States, it is to be expected that in running the individual’s fingerprints, his/her criminal history and immigration history will be discovered.

However, when an illegal alien who is arrested for the first time lies about his/her citizenship, falsely claiming to be a United States citizen, unless that individual is questioned by someone with an understanding as to how to break such false claims to citizenship, there is a strong possibility that the deception will not be caught.

Such a criminal alien may well do his/her sentence and then be released into the community without notification being made to ICE because of the mistaken notion that the criminal is a U.S. citizen.

For INS personnel, one of the items on our training curriculum addressed the tactics by which such false claims to United States citizenship could be uncovered- both during questioning and by other means.

I hope that this class is still being taught at the academy to all ICE personnel, but I am skeptical, considering the way that the Obama administration refused to enforce the immigration law and even turned thousands of criminal aliens loose.

The issue of the training being provided to new ICE agents is one that the current administration must address, and the sooner the better, to make certain that this vital training is mandated for all ICE enforcement personnel.

Irrespective of how ICE agents are trained, this training into breaking false claims to United States citizenship is likely not being provided to any other law enforcement agencies.

Furthermore, where “Sanctuary Cities” are concerned, it is entirely possible that during the arrest and booking process, police and jail officials may simply ask the individual where he was born and dutifully record whatever he says without giving his claimed place of birth or his assertion of being a U.S. citizen a second thought.

It is, in fact, entirely possible that in such sanctuary cities any information about the number of criminal aliens in custody is not reported at all.

Consequently, not only would this result in criminal aliens not being identified and subsequently deported, but statistics concerning the actual number of criminal aliens who are incarcerated would be skewed with the number being reported being smaller, perhaps significantly smaller than the true number, downplaying the true impact of illegal immigration on the criminal justice system.

While there is no reliable way to know the actual number of illegal aliens present in the United States, (we don’t know what we don’t know) one thing is clear- that number is far greater than has been estimated and the detrimental consequences for America and Americans are far greater than most of our elected “representatives” are willing to admit.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

Reason to Build the Wall: Mexico second deadliest country in 2016

Americans are bombarded with news about protests against building a wall on the southern border. The Democrat Party is doing everything it can to stop the wall from being built. Certain judges, appointed by the previous administration, are hindering efforts to build a wall.

So, why is it necessary to build a wall along America’s southern border?

Perhaps one reason is that there is a war going on in Mexico and it is spilling over our southern border into our towns and cities. But the media does not report how this violence, primarily from drug cartels and gangs like MS13, are causing crime and violence to rise in our major urban areas.

CNN’s Elizabeth Roberts in an article titled Report: Mexico was second deadliest country in 2016 wrote:

It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines.

As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico’s drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 — second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.

In comparison, there were 17,000 conflict deaths in Mexico in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014 according to the IISS.

The Mexican government lashed out at the report’s writers. In a statement posted to its website, the government criticizes the report’s characterization of Mexico having a non-international armed conflict, saying the military’s policing of criminal gangs does not equate to what goes on in other countries. It also disagreed with the report’s methodology.

Read more…

And Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist.

Here are the top 5 countries for killings in 2016:

  1. Syria                             50,000 [Est.]
  2. Mexico                         23,000
  3. Iraq                               17,000
  4. Afghanistan                16,000
  5. Yemen                          7,000

Note that four of these “dangerous countries” are on President Trump’s travel ban, which several judges have stopped.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Corruption in Mexico to Blame for Human Smuggling Racket

Mexico: Muslim stabs priest at the altar of Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral

How This Maryland Police Department Is Combating the MS-13 Gang

ICE arrests 55 people in Arizona in connection to gangs, serious crimes

ICE removes Guatemalan national wanted for murder

Mexican Town Angry About Illegal Immigrants Bringing Crime to Their Streets (VIDEO)

Honduras: Exodus After Texas Enacts Anti-Sanctuary Law | The Daily Caller

DUI Hit-and-Run Suspect Previously Deported 15 Times | LifeZette

Six Republican Senators question Trump refugee admissions, appear to want MORE refugees admitted to the US

Don’t Scapegoat Gun Owners for Chicago’s Violent Crime Problem

The last two weeks have brought more evidence that Chicago’s gangland violence continues to spiral out of control. On May 2, two plainclothes police officers were shot while conducting an investigation in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. A van driven by an alleged gang associate pulled up next to the officers and a passenger in the vehicle opened fire. Then on Sunday, mourners were gathered at a makeshift outdoor memorial for an individual who had been shot and killed the night before in the City’s Brighton Park neighborhood, when two masked gunmen fired upon the crowd. Two were killed and eight were wounded in what police are characterizing as a gang retaliation shooting.

Sadly, such carnage is not outside the norm for a city with a murder rate so high that it skews efforts to measure violent crime in the country’s urban centers. However, that these crimes are alleged to have been perpetrated using semi-automatic rifles has led some gun control supporters to seize upon the incidents as justification to further restrict gun rights.

This week Chicago Police officers were given a safety bulletin warning of an increase in violent criminals using semi-automatic rifles. The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board quickly attempted to convert this bulletin into anti-gun capital, issuing a piece contending that the use of semi-automatic rifles posed a “new danger to cops and civilians.”

As one might expect, the editorial board’s answer to this “new” threat was to further burden the law-abiding. The board argued for federal legislation to prohibit the private transfer of firearms, which it terms “universal background checks.” The piece concluded by claiming, “Gun violence in Chicago and the rest of the nation is a dire, daily emergency. It’s time our lawmakers took serious measures to stem it.” The editorial was quickly spread by the typical gun control advocates via twitter.

Violence perpetrated with firearms is a serious problem in Chicago and certain other urban areas, but as for “the rest of the nation,” the national crime rate is still near record lows.

Moreover, the type of violence the editorial contemplates is not typical. Despite the oft-lamented increase in the popularity of semi-automatic rifles for lawful purposes, there has been no national-level increase in the use of rifles of any kind for murder. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting data, the number of murders committed with rifles fell each year from 2010 to 2015 (the most recent year for which this data is available). Even as the national murder total and murder rate rose slightly from 2014 to 2015, the number of murders perpetrated with a rifle fell.

Further, the Chicago Tribune’s proposed solution to the city’s woes ignores the prevalence of gang members acquiring their firearms via straw purchase. In Illinois an individual is already required to possess a Firearm Owners Identification Card in order to possess or acquire a firearm, but this has failed to impede violent criminals. In a 2013 survey of inmates in the Cook County Jail, one prisoner revealed the robust nature of the illegal gun trade in Chicago, telling the interviewer, “All they need is one person who got a gun card in the ‘hood’ and everybody got one.”

Even when Chicago police identify a straw purchaser, there is a reluctance to vigorously prosecute them. Last month, the NRA-ILA Grassroots Alert highlighted the story of a young woman with a FOID card who was convicted of providing firearms to a gang-affiliated individual. One of the firearms she supplied was later recovered in the possession of a juvenile. The woman was sentenced to 15 days in an “alternative work program,” 12 months of probation, and a $679 fine. At the outset of the case, the Chicago Police Department pointed out “these cases usually result in a plea of guilty in exchange for felony probation,” and that, “The felony arrest is not expected to result in jail time…”

The inadequate prosecution of dangerous criminals is endemic in Chicago and exacerbates another problem in the city; de-policing. A national survey of almost 8,000 police officers conducted by the Pew Research Center that was released in January found that reaction to recent high-profile encounters between citizens and law enforcement has had an effect on how officers are able to protect their communities. The survey found,

(72%) say officers in their department are now less willing to stop and question suspicious persons. Overall, more than eight-in-ten (86%) say police work is harder today as a result of these high-profile incidents.

Moreover, a recent report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of Partner Engagement, titled, “The Assailant Study – Mindsets and Behaviors,” observed a similar trend. The study contended that reaction to high-profile citizen-police encounters has had a chilling effect on law enforcement. According to the report,

Departments – and individual officers – have increasingly made the conscious decision to stop engaging in proactive policing. The intense scrutiny and criticism law enforcement has received in the wake of several high-profile incidents has caused several officers to (1) “become scared and demoralized” and (2) avoid interacting with the community.

In December, a report from CBS’s 60 Minutes showed just how acute this problem is in Chicago. The report pointed out that police activity fell as homicides skyrocketed, with an online article accompanying the program stating, “In August of 2015, Chicago cops stopped and questioned 49,257 people. But, a year later, stops dropped 80 percent and arrests fell by a third.” The article goes on to explain, “In a climate of increased scrutiny, a dozen beat cops and recently retired officers told 60 Minutes, off-camera, they’d stepped back and the data reflects that.”

Facing the intractable issues surrounding urban policing and criminal justice, politicians and anti-gun advocates have once again sought to blame law-abiding gun owners and certain types of firearms as responsible for society’s ills. The truth is, the problems facing Chicago and a handful of other cities are far more complicated than those pushing gun control care to admit. Scapegoating gun owners and firearms might be effective politics in parts of the country where a significant portion of one’s constituents have little experience with responsible firearm ownership, but it doesn’t make for effective policy.

Dethrone the FBI, Not Just Comey by James Bovard

President Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey provides a welcome chance to dethrone the FBI from its pinnacle in American politics and life. Last September, Comey denounced Twitter “demagoguery” for the widespread belief that the FBI was not “honest” or “competent.”

But the FBI has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that the bureau “has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” This has practically been the FBI’s motif since its creation.

Dirty Deeds

J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972, built a revered agency that utterly intimidated official Washington. In 1945, President Truman wrote: “We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. … This must stop.”

But the bureau’s power soared after Congress passed the Internal Security Act of 1950, authorizing massive crackdowns on suspected subversives. Hoover compiled a list of more than 20,000 “potentially or actually dangerous” Americans who could be seized and locked away at the president’s command. “Congress secretly financed the creation of six of these (detention) camps in the 1950s,” noted Tim Weiner in his excellent 2012 book, Enemies: A History of the FBI.

From 1956 through 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO (counterintelligence programs) conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to smear innocent people by portraying them as government informants, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist and anti-war organizations.

FBI agents also busied themselves forging “poison pen” letters to wreck activists’ marriages. COINTELPRO was exposed only after a handful of activists burglarized an FBI office in a Philadelphia suburb, seized FBI files, and leaked the damning documents to journalists.

FBI haughtiness was on display on April 19, 1993, when its agents used armored vehicles to smash into the Branch Davidians’ sprawling, ramshackle home near Waco, Texas. The tanks intentionally collapsed much of the building on top of the huddled residents. After the FBI pumped the building full of CS gas (banned for use on enemy soldiers by the Chemical Weapons Convention), a fire ignited that left 80 children, women and men dead.

The FBI swore it was blameless for the conflagration, but six years later, an investigation revealed that the FBI fired incendiary cartridges into the building before the blaze erupted. No FBI agents were penalized or prosecuted for their fatal assault against American civilians.

21st Century Scandals

Before the 9/11 attacks, the FBI dismally failed to connect the dots on suspicious foreigners engaged in domestic aviation training. Though Congress had deluged the FBI with $1.7 billion to upgrade its computers, many FBI agents had old machines incapable of searching the Web or emailing photos. One FBI agent observed that the bureau ethos is that “real men don’t type. …The computer revolution just passed us by.”

The FBI’s pre-9/11 blunders “contributed to the United States becoming, in effect, a sanctuary for radical terrorists,” according to a 2002 congressional investigation. (The FBI also lost track of a key informant at the heart of the cabal that detonated a truck bomb beneath the World Trade Center in 1993.)

In the late 1990s, the FBI Academy taught agents that subjects of investigations “have forfeited their right to the truth.” This doctrine helped fuel pervasive entrapment operations after 9/11.

Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, estimated that only about 1% of the 500 people charged with international terrorism offenses in the decade after 9/11 were bona fide threats. Thirty times as many were induced by the FBI to behave in ways that prompted their arrest.

The bureau’s informant program extends far beyond Muslims. It bankrolled an extremist right-wing New Jersey blogger and radio host for five years before his 2009 arrest for threatening federal judges.

And then there are the other scandals — the perpetual false testimony from the FBI crime lab, its use of National Security Letters and other surveillance tools to illegally vacuum up Americans’ personal info, its whitewashing of every shooting by an FBI agent between 1993 and 2011, and its operation of dozens of child porn websites (another entrapment operation gone awry).

Unleashed Power

The FBI’s power has rarely been effectively curbed by either Congress or federal courts. In 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs declared that the bureau’s power terrified Capitol Hill: “Our very fear of speaking out (against the FBI) has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny. … Our society … cannot survive a planned and programmed fear of its own government bureaus and agencies.”

Boggs vindicated a 1924 American Civil Liberties Union report warning that the FBI had become “a secret police system of a political character” — a charge that supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would have alternatively cheered last year.

If Trump fired Comey to throttle an investigation into Trump administration criminality, that is an impeachable offense. Otherwise, Comey’s fall provides an excellent opportunity to take the FBI off its pedestal and place it where it belongs — under the law.

It is time to cease venerating a federal agency whose abuses have perennially menaced Americans’ constitutional rights.

Reprinted from USA Today.

James Bovard

James Bovard

James Bovard

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. Find him on Twitter @JimBovard.

James Comey and the Stinking Fish Factor

(Author’s note: In August 2016, I wrote an article entitled “James Comey and the Stinking Fish Factor,” warning readers that the Comey fish was already rotting and that things were bound to get worse. Clearly, they just did. And it’s just as clear that the uncontrolled hysteria we are witnessing from Democrats has to do not with bogus accusations about Russia but about the criminal indictments coming down the pike for the people they’ve blindly defended for decades—that would be Bill & Hill Clinton—and possibly against even bigger fish! I’ve updated this article by abbreviating its length but also adding a few sentences. – JS)

I always thought that James Comey was a company man. As it happens, the company he headed is among the most influential, powerful and scary companies in the world—the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But still, a company guy. Whether working for a president on the moderate-to-conservative spectrum like G.W. Bush or for a far-left Alinsky acolyte like Barack Obama, makes absolutely no difference to this type of obedient—and also subservient—accommodator.

The red flag of skepticism should have gone up years ago to the American public when lavish praise was heaped on Comey by people who revile each other. While the spin insists that Comey is a lot of virtuous things—“straight-shooter,” “unbiased,” “fair-minded,” “non-partisan” “man of his word”—don’t be fooled. That’s Orwellian newspeak for someone who will do and say anything to keep his job, including, as Comey did in yet another Clinton fiasco case last summer, allow her to…

  1. Create out of whole cloth an “intent” criterion in federal law to let a clearly corrupt politician––that would be Hillary––off the hook, and,
  2. Appropriate the job of the Attorney General in announcing what the outcome of the FBI’s investigation should be.

While citing Hillary’s “extreme negligence” in handling classified information, a virtual litany of illegal acts committed by the then-Secretary of State, and the fact that hostile foreign operatives may have accessed her email account, Comey said he would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Hillary, he said, was “extremely careless” and “unsophisticated,” among other spitballs he hurled in her direction before completely letting her off the hook!

Comey’s friend and colleague, Andrew C. McCarthy, said that the FBI director’s decision is tantamount to sleight-of-hand trickery. “There is no way of getting around this,” McCarthy wrote. “Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation…in essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require.”

Thomas Lifson, editor and publisher of AmericanThinker.com, wrapped the entire debacle up neatly, saying that “the director of the FBI offered 15 of the most puzzling minutes in the history of American law enforcement. James Comey spent the first 12 minutes or so laying out a devastating case dismantling Hillary Clinton’s email defense. Then, “in a whiplash-inducing change of narrative, he announced that `no reasonable prosecutor’ would bring the case he had just outlined, an assertion that was contradicted within hours by luminaries including former U.S. attorney (and NY City mayor) Rudy Giuliani and James Kallstrom, former head of the FBI’s New York office.”

Which begs the question: Why would Comey act contrary to the wisdom of virtually every legal scholar who has written or spoken about this case?

It is certainly not because he wasn’t taught by his upstanding parents the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral. One could make the case—and many have—that he is as close to a moral man as it gets in public life. According to his bio in Wikipedia, Comey, a lawyer, majored in religion at the College of William and Mary, and wrote his thesis about the liberal theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and the conservative televangelist Jerry Falwell, emphasizing their common belief in public action.

THE LOOKING-THE-OTHER-WAY FACTOR

That’s what company guys do.

Affirming this unflattering opinion, Jerome Corsi, journalist and NY Times bestselling author, said that Comey has a long history of cases ending favorable to the Clintons.

In 2004, Corsi says, Comey was a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department when he “apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger…[and Berger’s] removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives. The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack.”

“Curiously,” Corsi continues, “Berger, Lynch and Cheryl Mills (Hillary’s longtime advisor and Chief of Staff during her years as Secretary of State) all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state.”

Corsi said that “various statements Comey made about Berger’s mishandling of classified documents bear comparison to his comments regarding Hillary Clinton’s email server” and that Berger, “a convicted thief of classified documents, had been advising Clinton while she served as secretary of state and had access to emails containing classified information.”

Yep… a company guy. As an editorial in The Wall St. Journal stated: “Three days after James Comey’s soliloquy absolving Hillary Clinton of criminal misuse of classified information, the big winner is—James Comey. He often poses as the deliverer of `hard truths,’ and the hard truth is that he has helped himself politically but not the cause of equal treatment under the law.”

Indeed, recommending that Hillary be indicted would have been bad for—ta da—James Comey! “Doing that, however,” the editorial goes on, “would have courted fury among Democrats and their media friends. And if Mrs. Clinton later won the election, Mr. Comey might have had to resign before his 10-year term expires in 2023. Otherwise he’d risk becoming persona non grata as Louis Freeh was under Bill Clinton.”

The entire, protracted, and fraudulent investigation seems now like a dog-and-pony show for the American public. Here, journalist Bill Still says that during Hillary’s interview with the FBI, not only was Comey not present, but it wasn’t recorded and she was not under oath!

 THE PERSUASION FACTOR

Let’s take another upstanding guy, the once-esteemed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, conservative John Roberts. Did I say “conservative”? Silly me. At midnight on Christmas Eve in 2009, the Democrats voted unanimously—without one Republican vote—for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, to inflict the proven-failure of socialized medicine on the American public.

When the constitutionality of the legislation was challenged up to the Supreme Court, a vote of 5-4 affirmed that the individual mandate was constitutional under Congress’s taxation powers. It was Roberts who tipped the balance, sending shockwaves of disbelief throughout the country—much like the reaction to Comey’s incomprehensible decision on Hillary.

At the time, there was talk of Roberts’ “caving” because “someone” had “reached” him and threatened to expose the fact that his two young children had been adopted illegally, a revelation that, if true, would have effectively forced him to resign in ignominy for lying under oath about the adoption. I have no idea if that allegation is true or not, but it made sense to me at the time, particularly because his decision made no sense.

I was also aware of the many allegations listed in websites like Clinton Body Count (and this one too), Bush Body Count, and Obama Body Count, which detail the many people who have gone missing, been killed, had “accidents,” or “committed suicide” under each president’s tenure, the implication being, of course, that each of these chief executives had a personal “hit” squad to, ahem, remove anyone who threatened their tenure in office, or, more seriously, could land them in prison. Oh, let’s not forget the Hillary list compiled by noted radio host Tami Jackson.

Around the time of Comey’s colossal whitewash of Hillary’s email scandal, the prominent former President of the United Nations General Assembly, John Ashe, died when a barbell dropped on his throat and crushed his larynx. Coincidentally, that very day he was scheduled to testify in a trial about “Chinagate” (of Bill Clinton fame) and, specifically, of the bribery charge against Chinese businessman Ng Lap Seng, and even more specifically of Hillary’s links to Seng.

I’ve followed the persuasion factor not only through “The Godfather” and other mafia-themed movies, but in real life watching Rudy Giuliani deal with and decimate the mob, first as Associate Attorney General under President Reagan and later as mayor of New York.

It’s really quite simple how the thug culture works, be it in the Mafia or in government: Find out what a person values and then home in on that vulnerability. Isn’t that how ObamaCare passed? Here Perry Peterson, a retired auditor and tax accountant, documents the many backroom deals that persuaded various politicians to sign on, such as Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson, who was promised the “Cornhusker kickback” that would pay the full price of expanded Medicaid coverage in Nebraska forever, or Senator Mary L. Landrieu’s agreement to sell her vote in the “Louisiana Purchase” for $300,000,000.00 that would flood into her state through added benefits in the ObamaCare bill, on and on and on.

There’s more hardball persuasion, to be sure, like reminding the target that you know that his daughter just moved to an off-campus apartment, or that his wife would feel terrible learning about his girlfriend.

Mmmmm…what “persuasion” could possibly be employed on a rich, successful guy like Comey?

THE CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST FACTOR

Well whaddaya know? According to Investment Watchdog, “It seems that our beloved FBI Director was once a director and board member of HSBC, which is tightly connected to the Clinton Foundation…this is the same HSBC [Swiss bank] that was accused of laundering drug cartel money, was heavily involved in the LIBOR scandal, and who knows what else, and all while our esteemed FBI Director was part of the senior leadership.”

Writer Kim McLendon elaborates upon a report issued by one of the few major whistleblowers about the foundation, Wall St. analyst Charles Ortel, who exposed AIG as well as the massive discrepancies in General Electric’s finances in 2008. Ortel found more massive discrepancies “between what some of the major donors say they gave to the Clinton Foundation…and what the Clinton Foundation said they got from the donors and what they did with it.” The letter he sent to donors, charity regulators, and investigative journalists labeled the charity “the largest charity fraud ever attempted‚Äö that being the network of illegal activities worldwide, whose heart is the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.”

Ortel goes on to say: “The Clinton Foundation…has been part of an international charity fraud whose entire cumulative scale (counting inflows and outflows) approaches and may even exceed $100 billion measured from 1997 forward. Yet state, federal and foreign government authorities, that should be keenly aware of this massive set of criminal frauds, so far, move at a snail’s pace, perhaps waiting for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to reveal the scope of its work and the nature of any findings.”

Aha! “Perhaps” the powers-that-be are “waiting for the FBI” to investigate this international con game. And wouldn’t that be one James Comey? Is there indeed a conflict of interest that prevents the esteemed director from looking into this ostensibly criminal enterprise?

Writer Tim Brown says that just because Comey was a Director with HSBC “does not assume corruption.” But it’s notable, he adds, that according to The Guardian, the “Clinton foundation received up to $81 million from clients of controversial HSBC bank.”

In March, Judicial Watch documented the piles of money taken in by The Clinton Foundation, and reported: “Our lawsuit had previously forced the disclosure of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to at least $48 million in speaking fees for the Clintons during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

All of this and more led InfoWars reporter Kit Daniels to conclude, “Comey may be on the periphery of Clinton’s use of foreign policy to raise money for her foundation, but his position at HSBC may explain in part why she received kid glove treatment while others accused of similar crimes were prosecuted. His connection, however tenuous, should be reason enough to revisit the case and appoint a special prosecutor, as Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona has demanded.”

According to a report by Investors Research Dynamics, “in 2003, Comey became the deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ). In 2005 he signed on to serve as general counsel and senior vice president at defense contractor Lockheed Martin. In 2010 he joined Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment fund, as its general counsel. On September 4, 2013, James B. Comey was sworn in as the seventh Director of the FBI. Talk about the revolving door in and out of government! A shill for the private defense industry and later a Wall Street investment firm, two of the groups that support Hillary’s ascent to the Throne.”

Meanwhile, last month, the IRS preempted the FBI by launching an investigation into what appears to be a full-blown, multi-tentacled criminal enterprise that spans the globe. Was this timed to let Comey slither away untarnished?

Is that why Comey failed to ask Hillary even one question about her Foundation and its seemingly nefarious Kremlin connections? About the indictments (as reported by Michael Sainato) of several of her super-delegates for corruption and ethics violations involving huge sums of money? Of her closest aides for funny money vis-a-vis the Clinton Foundation? About the 181 Clinton Foundation donors who lobbied the State Department while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state? About State Department favors for weapons manufacturers and foreign governments? How about how Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta bagged $35 million but failed to fully disclose this windfall, or about how Hillary showed remarkable disinterest in going after the murderous butchers of Boko Haram (as reported by Mindy Belz and J.C. Derrick in WORLD Magazine) because, allegedly, millions of dollars in donations were given to the Clinton Foundation by Nigerian billionaires with oil interests in northern Nigeria? On and on and on.

And is it not relevant that Comey’s brother, Peter Comey, works at the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes?

Do any of these (and other) “dots” connect to Comey? Did he ever wonder if any of the 33-thousand emails that Hillary destroyed involved these explosive subjects? Is he just an incurious guy, or does his high position with HSBC and its oh-so-close Clinton Foundation connection make the conflict-of-interest suggestion too uncomfortably plausible?

THE STINKING FISH FACTOR

Whether it’s in industry or the military or sports or show business, if failure occurs, it’s always the top dog who is accountable. Not the assembly line worker or the buck private or the third baseman who calls the shots, but the one who occupies the ultimate seat of power. Look at what happened at the Democratic National Committee…the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief of Communications, and Chairwoman all resigned because of the hacking that proved the DNC to be both crooked and racist.

That is why they say that the fish stinks from the head, or, in the DNC case, the hydra-headed monster. And the same is true in politics. Which may be the real reason why Comey punted, taking the coward’s way out in steadfastly refusing to do what both the law and morality demanded of him.

No matter how you look at Hillary’s email scandal, as well as the murders of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, information Officer Sean Smith, and CIA operatives Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods in Benghazi—and for all we know, a dozen paths to the Clinton Foundation—they all led directly to the Oval Office and its former occupant, one Barack Obama. Reminds me of the cards in a Monopoly game: Go to Jail, Go Directly to Jail, Do not Pass Go!

Legal scholar Henry Mark Holzer reminds us that,” Hillary was not under oath when she testified before Comey’s FBI investigators. Seems to get her off the hook, doesn’t it? But under 18 United States Code Section 1001, it is a five-year felony to lie to an FBI agent (and other government officials) about a material fact relevant to an investigation. The federal criminal dockets are loaded with convictions of people who beat the underlying charge only to be convicted of an 18 USC 1001 offense. If Hillary loses the election, keep an eye out for an Obama pardon, to choke off a retributive indictment by a Trump Department of Justice. There is a long road ahead for Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton before the statutes of limitations expire on her crimes.”

Whether or not it’s the stinking fish factor or something else that compelled James Comey to cave to the Obama Justice Department and the Clinton Machine will be for historians to determine. Personally, however, I can’t imagine a man of James Comey’s stature tolerating the fact that history will include obituaries of him that state in their opening paragraphs that he was the first Director of the FBI who took a fall—and now the second FBI Director in history to be fired!

Acting FBI Director McCabe needs to go because of his wife Jill

The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and CNN all reported that the acting FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe contradicted the White House’s assertion that James B. Comey had lost the support of rank-and-file FBI agents. So why are these news organizations highlighting McCabe? Perhaps it is because of his wife Dr. Jill McCabe, who ran for the Virginia state Senate as a Democrat?

What these news outlets fail to tell you about his wife Dr. Jill McCabe is her connection to long time Hillary Clinton supporter and governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe.

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe campaigning with his wife Jill.

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe campaigning with his wife Jill.

In The Daily Signal article Here Are 12 Possible Comey Replacements at FBI Fred Lucas reports:

Andrew McCabe, the acting FBI director who was the deputy director under Comey, testified on Capitol Hill Thursday. He is also reportedly a contender for the job, but could be challenged due to potential conflicts.

McCabe served as an FBI special agent since 1996, and was elevated to the No. 2 spot in 2016. However, while he was moving up in the FBI during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, his wife Dr. Jill McCabe ran for the Virginia state Senate in 2015, with a financial boost of almost $500,000 from Common Good VA. The political action committee is controlled by longtime Clinton ally Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

In a statement to The Wall Street Journal last year, the FBI said, “Months after the completion of [his wife’s] campaign, then-Associate Deputy Director McCabe was promoted to deputy, where, in that position, he assumed for the first time, an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails.”

“It needs to be somebody independent,” said Ron Hosko, the FBI’s former assistant director of the criminal investigative division and now president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. “With McCabe, this day and age, even the appearance of impropriety is a problem … An appearance can be fatal—maybe not to a career—but to advancement.”

Hillary Clinton campaigning with long time ally Terry McAuliffe, governor of Virginia.

Hillary Clinton campaigning with long time ally Terry McAuliffe, governor of Virginia.

The Daily Beast reports:

The news [of Dr. Jill McCabe’s McAuliffe connection] drew calls for McCabe to publicly recuse himself from anything involving the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s email scandal. But he didn’t do that, and conservatives haven’t forgotten.

“He should be removed as acting director and then either fired or demoted,” Mark Corallo, spokesperson for John Ashcroft when he was Attorney General, told The Daily Beast. “When he did not recuse himself from the investigation despite knowing his wife received major campaign contributions from Terry McAuliffe, he broke the ethics rules and tainted the investigation. Time for him to go.”

It appears the reason McCabe is defending Comey and wants the Russian investigation to move forward may be because he is complicit in the failure by the FBI to indict Hillary Clinton and those implicated in creating, maintaining and scrubbing the email server, which contained classified information.

Mr. McCabe needs to go.

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The suppression of expression on campus needs to stop

As I have noted many times, and experienced firsthand in the last few weeks at the University at Buffalo, Truman State University, and Gettysburg College, colleges and universities today are not institutions of higher learning, but factories of hard-Left and pro-jihad indoctrination, propagandizing and brainwashing students into becoming ugly little fascist shock troops for twenty-first century totalitarians. Administrators, as I have also experienced firsthand, not just at the University at Buffalo but also in the past at Temple University, Saint Anselm College and DePaul University, actively aid and abet all this.

Public universities and colleges must cease to be indoctrination centers for the hard-Left, and ensure that dissent from the Leftist line is not censored and the dissenters brutalized, or they should receive no taxpayer funding of any kind, and required to include in all promotional literature a statement to the effect that they don’t receive any public funding because of their intolerance of all intellectual dissent. If they are private universities or colleges, they should be required to include a warning label on all their promotional literature: “Warning: this institution does not tolerate views that deviate from the mainstream Leftist line. Enroll at your own risk.”

“Editorial: The suppression of expression on campus needs to stop,” Daily Commercial (Leesburg, Florida), May 5, 2017:

President Donald Trump has rattled some in our political chattering class with overtures to some of the ruthless dictators stalking our globe. We’ve lived for months with unsupported speculation about Trump’s bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has exacerbated the hand-wringing recently by positive references directed at the likes of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egypt’s Abdel ¬Fatah al-Sissi.

One chief complaint from the president’s critics is that Trump is inappropriately extending goodwill to strongmen with weak records of tolerating dissent, free expression and human rights.

Perhaps we would better served if those who questioned the president’s attitude toward the world’s worst authoritarians would stop tolerating homegrown forces who emulate their behavior.

Last week outspoken conservative pundit and author Ann Coulter was slated to shake up the hallowed halls at California’s premiere state university in Berkeley, which prides itself on uninhibited expression. Invited by a pair of conservative student groups, Coulter was expected to talk about her support for Trump and his immigrati0n views. It didn’t happen.

University administrators cancelled her April 27 appearance in mid-April, a few days after an unrelated brawl broke out in downtown Berkeley between pro- and anti-Trump forces. The college then offered to reschedule for Tuesday (when classes would be out). Coulter rejected the offer and vowed to come to Berkeley on the original date, and then watched as her sponsors bailed, leading her to ditch the idea for good.

The reason provided by the university and Coulter’s sponsors was the same: the atmosphere on campus had become so poisonous that neither side could guarantee the safety of Coulter or, presumably, her fans or the protesters.

Yet Coulter’s was the third appearance by a conservative at the supposed birthplace of the Free Speech Movement that was cancelled because of fear about the violent reaction of those who despise the president. In February UC-Berkeley dropped former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos after an anti-Trump protest devolved into a riot.

The College Republicans at Berkeley then invited David Horowitz, a UC-Berkeley grad and one-time apologist for the Black Panthers who converted to conservatism, to his alma mater in mid-April as a substitute for Yiannopoulos. The group pulled the plug on that after campus police declared that, in order to diminish the threat of violence, Horowitz could only speak in the afternoon, not in the evening, and only to students. The event was cancelled, the College Republicans’ president wrote, because the police rules left only one venue, located some seven blocks from campus, and would have cost the group several thousand dollars for security.

Such ill-tempered, anti-Trump fretting has been occurring again and again on campuses of all sizes.

Earlier this year conservative author Charles Murray’s attempt to speak at Middlebury College in Vermont sparked a brawl that left Murray’s campus sponsor in the hospital with a concussion, and him writing afterward that he feared for his safety.

Another conservative writer, Heather Mac Donald, was not allowed to speak publicly at Claremont McKenna College in California, but instead was ushered to a private room, where she gave her talk via livestream as demonstrators pounded on the windows of the room and hurled expletives at police.

At New York University, a protest of conservative journalist Gavin McInnes turned ugly, with demonstrators fighting police, pepper-spraying McInnes himself and nearly a dozen people arrested.

At the University of Buffalo this week, Robert Spencer, a conservative speaker who discusses Islamic terrorism, was shouted down and denounced as a Nazi by critics. No violence occurred, but audience members told reporters they feared the tension created by his appearance could have prompted it….

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Comey got fired — will Clinton get indicted?

We are just at the beginning of the story of the extraordinary firing of FBI Director James Comey late Tuesday afternoon.

The ostensible cause for his firing by the president was his handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal last July, not the investigation into allegations of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the government of Russia.

As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote in his memo recommending that Comey be fired, the FBI director “was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that [the Clinton email case] be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement.”

Anyone who was politically engaged in the 2016 election remembers Comey’s performance that day. After giving a detailed account of Clinton’s serial violations of U.S. national security protocols by transmitting classified information through her unsecured private email server at the State Department, Comey then discussed the fact that prosecutors, not the FBI, make decisions on whether or not to prosecute such cases.

statement from press secretary on comey firing

He could have left it there, and said he was transmitting the FBI investigation to federal prosecutors so they could make the decision whether or not to prosecute.

Instead, Comey decided to cross the line, concluding — clearly beyond his reach — “that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

Comey was criticized at the time for that statement. Today, it came back to haunt him, with a vengeance.

Rosenstein’s memo focused on Comey’s public exposure of what the FBI normally keeps quiet, and he cited multiple former top Justice Department officials, from Democratic and Republican administrations, who agreed with his conclusion that Comey had departed from long-standing DOJ tradition.

But Comey’s firing also comes just days after another round of pathetic congressional testimony, in which Comey said he was “mildly nauseous” by what he felt was an obligation to intervene in the U.S. presidential election, and where his testimony has already been corrected by the FBI because of a substantial inaccuracy in his description of the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner laptop.

Let’s be clear: We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg on this story. It will take some time for all the facts to emerge.

Comey earned his 2013 nomination to head the FBI by Barack Obama on an afternoon in 2004, when he was serving as acting attorney general.

His boss at the time, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was in the hospital recovering from gall bladder surgery in March 2004 when the AG’s office was apprised of a certification notice he was required to sign to reauthorize a key National Security Agency program in the war on terror.

The NSA program involved warrantless wiretapping of terrorist targets in the United States, and Comey didn’t like it. He was credited by the left-wing media for years of single-handedly having killed the NSA program, and with causing Congress to delete key portions of the USA Patriot Act, which had initially authorized it.

Comey has always had a Boy Scout aura about him. And while Americans might feel comfortable with a Mr. Goodie-Two-Shoes in charge of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, Comey’s recent performance shows the limits of a simplistic Boy Scout view of the world when dealing with complex affairs of state.

The Boy Scout in Comey wanted to respond immediately — and impulsively — to what his instincts told him was wrong.

The public servant in him should have put the Boy Scout on pause.

That is what Rod Rosenstein recommended to his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And that is what Sessions ultimately recommended to the president.

We need Boy Scouts in government. We need officials who speak out when they perceive that an injustice has been committed. And they need to be protected from retribution.

But we also need to have adults in charge, who know the difference between a perceived injustice and the slow workings of government.

The real question raised by Comey’s firing is whether Justice Department prosecutors are finally getting ready to pick up the Clinton email investigation where the FBI left off last year and make a determination on whether to prosecute Hillary Clinton and her associates, based on the evidence FBI investigators so ably gathered.

President Trump's letter firing James Comey. Photo: White House

President Trump’s letter firing James Comey. Photo: White House

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Hill.

FBI looking at 2,000 cases of U.S. links to foreign terrorists, 300 are refugees

Just when you thought you had had it with FBI Director Comey he admits something that you would never expect a politically-correct Washington insider to reveal.

FBI Director James Comey testifying before Congress.

FBI Director James Comey testifying before Congress.

Comey grilled on the Hill:

All they ever want to hear from Comey is information about Hillary and how the Russians elected Trump. No mention that I’ve seen anywhere, except from Mark Krikorian, about the stunning news that 300 refugees are being watched.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Wednesday, Director Comey said in response to questioning by Senator Thom Tillis of NC about those being watched by the FBI who are in contact with foreign terrorists (from a transcript published by the WaPo):

Then we have another big group of people that we’re looking at who we see some contact with foreign terrorists. So you take that 2,000 plus cases, about 300 of them are people who came to the United States as refugees.

As far as I know no reporter has mentioned this stunning news.  Mark Krikorian, Director of the Center for Immigration Studies caught it though and published the revelation at National Review Online here yesterday.  Krikorian reminds us that Comey had testified to Congress on more than one occasion where he admitted that there is no way to thoroughly screen refugees from failed states like Syria and Somalia.

Krikorian:

So 15 percent of the FBI’s terrorism cases are refugees – far more than their share of the immigrant population, let alone the general population. And that denominator of 2,000 presumably includes people with no immigration nexus at all – skinheads, antifa, Klan, environmental and animal rights extremists, et al. So the refugee share of immigration-related terrorism investigations is more than 15 percent, perhaps much more.

Krikorian goes on to argue that, except for a few special cases, we should help legitimate refugees where they are in the world and not risk bringing them to your town and mine.

Read all of Krikorian’s post here.

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Florida legislature guarantees religious liberty in the Sunshine State’s public schools

religiousfreedomThe Christian Family Coalition Florida reports:

MIAMI, Florida — On Friday night May 5th at 9:04 pm, the last day of the regular statewide legislative session, the Florida House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved Christian Family Coalition (CFC) Florida endorsed SB-436, the Florida Student and School Personnel Religious Liberties Act (FSASPRLA) by a smashing 103-12 margin!

SB-436 is CFC Florida’s top legislative priority for the 2017 statewide legislative session in Tallahassee. CFC Florida was the only organization to publicly endorse, submit testimony, testify, lobby and deploy emails in support of this groundbreaking proposal!

Starting on March 6th CFC Florida speakers were the only ones who showed up to testify and face off in a dramatic hearing against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Florida Humanist Society (FHS) and the National Organization for Women (NOW), before the Senate Education Committee in support of SB-436 resulting in its first committee approval by a 5-2 margin.  We continued to testify at every single committee hearing: Senate Judiciary, House PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee and House Education Committee, thus, ensuring its passage.

This historic bill dramatically expands religious liberty in Florida’s public schools in the following way:

  • Requires a school district to adopt a policy that establishes a limited public forum for student speakers at any school event at which a student is to speak publicly.
  • The Florida Department of Education (F.D.E.) must develop and publish on its website a model policy regarding a limited public forum and the voluntary expression of religious viewpoints by students and school personnel in all public schools.
  • The model policy must be adopted and implemented by each district school board.
  • The right is extended to students in public elementary and middle schools.
  • A school district may not prevent school personnel from participating in religious activities on school grounds that are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the school day if such activities are voluntary and do not conflict with the responsibilities or assignments of such personnel.
  • Requires each district to state in written or oral form that the student’s speech does not reflect the endorsement, sponsorship, position, or expression of the school district. The school district must deliver this disclaimer at all graduation events and any other event at which a student speaks publicly.

Read the full text of SB 436: Religious Expression in Public Schools.

French Election: Multiple outlets reporting on Macron scandal

ZeroHedge, Reddit, iBankCoin.com, Free Republic and others are all reporting on a scandal that hits the Emmanuel Macron campaign just three days before the French presidential election.

French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel MacronDisobedient Media in a column titled Documents Indicate That Emmanuel Macron May Be Engaging In Tax Evasion reports:

Documents leaked online today appear to show that French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron entered into an operating agreement for a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the Caribbean island of Nevis, and that the company may have had a business relationship with a bank which has been previously involved in tax evasion cases in the Cayman Islands. Macron claimed he was not concealing assets or holding secret offshore accounts less than a month ago.

The first document is an operating agreement drawn up on May 4th, 2012 to form “La Providence LLC” under the 1995 Nevis Limited Liability Company Ordinance bearing Mr. Macron’s name and signature. La Providence is the name of Macron’s former high school in Amiens, where he first met his wife. The decision to form a company in Nevis is suspect, as the Nevis Confidential Relationship Act prohibits the disclosure of information and guarantees the secrecy and privacy of offshore LLCs in Nevis. Information about company owners is not published nor is it available to the public. Nevis has been described by Bloomberg as one of a number of popular tax havens in the Caribbean.

Screenshot of document showing Macron’s name on the operating agreement for La Providence LLC

Screenshot of document showing Macron’s name on the operating agreement for La Providence LLC

A second document is a letter sent to La Providence Ltd. from the First Caribbean International Bank, indicating a business relationship with Macron’s LLC. Forbes reported that First Caribbean International Bank was implicated as a facilitator of tax evasion in 2013. It has also been named by Reuters as a player in fraud relating to the 2015 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) scandals, after it emerged that a representative for First Caribbean had personally collected a check from a FIFA official and then returned to deposit it in an account in the Bahamas.

In April, Macron denied that he was hiding offshore accounts or inheritances from French authorities, even as his opponent Francois Fillion became mired in similar allegations. If confirmed as authentic, the documents would prove these claims to be untrue and provide important clues as to where the hidden funds might be located.

With the race for president tightening all bets are off given this revelation, if it is true.

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Trump Administration’s Office to Assist Victims of Criminal Aliens, Prioritizes Innocent Lives

On April 26, 2017, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) posted a news release, “DHS announces launch of new office for victims of illegal immigrant crimeOffice built with input from victims impacted by crime,” that is illustrative of President Trump’s pro-American mindset and commitment to keeping his immigration campaign promises.

This unprecedented action sent a loud and clear message that the administration will prioritize the needs of the victims of criminal aliens and their families over the desires and interests of criminal aliens.

Commonsense and morality should have compelled prior administrations to have similarly looked out for victims of criminals aliens. However, for a multitude of reasons, it took the administration of President Donald Trump to finally do the “right thing.”

Meanwhile, “sanctuary cities,” whose mayors should be given an MVP Award by ISIS and drug cartels, continue to refuse to cooperate with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) even where aliens who have committed serious crimes are concerned.

These mayors and even some governors have crafted a false narrative that begins with insisting that illegal aliens are actually “undocumented immigrants.” This bogus use of language attempts to confound any honest discussion about the nature of our immigration laws and their importance to national security and public safety, as well as the overall well-being of America and Americans.

America’s immigration laws were enacted to protect national security, public safety, public health and the lives and livelihoods of Americans.

Title 8 U.S. Code § 1182 – Inadmissible aliens provides clear and unequivocal evidence of how reasonable and vital our immigration laws are to America and Americans.

Therefore it is hard to imagine who could be opposed to the effective and fair enforcement of such fundamental laws. However, for decades, the enforcement and administration of our immigration laws, under a succession of administrations from both political parties, put the desires of aliens, special interest groups and corporations ahead of Americans.

Consequently, many Americans have lost their lives and livelihoods as a direct result of what I have come to refer to as Immigration Failures – By Design.

I recently wrote, “Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill – 9/11 Commission identified immigration fraud as a key embedding tactic of terrorists,” in which I not only explored the two traditional forms of immigration fraud that involve fraudulent documents and fraud schemes such as marriage fraud and visa fraud, but also looked at the fraud perpetrated upon Americans by politicians, pollsters and special interest groups.

This fraud involves the use of Orwellian Newspeak and false arguments to convince Americans that it is reasonable to provide potentially tens of millions of illegal aliens with lawful status and import unlimited numbers of foreign workers, including high-tech workers, who displace experienced, successful and loyal employees for lower wages.

For these despicable fraudsters the loss of innocent lives is simply “collateral damage.”

MS-13 gang membersOn April 28, 2017, NBC reported, “AG Sessions Addresses the Street Gang MS-13’s Violent Grip on Long Island Suburbs.”

In the mid-1990s as a member of the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force, I began an investigation into the drug trafficking and violent crimes that this transnational gang was perpetrating on Long Island. Back then, the number of gang members was relatively small. The not-so-benign neglect of immigration law enforcement and immigration policies of the Obama administration enabled that pernicious gang and other such gangs to grow dramatically in numbers and metastasize across the United States.

The Trump administration, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has served notice that our immigration laws will be effectively enforced to protect national security and public safety.

That long-overdue message should encourage all Americans and also serve as notice to politicians who still “don’t get it.”

The immigration crisis has a simple solution. I refer to it as deterrence through enforcement. Any politician, on any level of government, who is not willing to act in the best interests of America and his/her constituents can expect consequences when they run for re-election.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump has admitted 13,224 refugees since January 20th, 5,135 since supposed moratorium began

FBI translator marries Islamic State terrorist

“‘It’s a stunning embarrassment for the FBI, no doubt about it,’ said John Kirby, a former State Department official. He said he suspects Greene’s entry into Syria required the approval of top ISIS leaders. Most outsiders trying to get into an ISIS region in Syria risk ‘getting their heads cut off,’ said Kirby, now a CNN commentator on national security matters. ‘So for her to be able to get in as an American, as a woman, as an FBI employee, and to be able to take up residence with a known ISIS leader, that all had to be coordinated.’”

And then the FBI protected her: “It also raises questions about whether Greene received favorable treatment from Justice Department prosecutors who charged her with a relatively minor offense, then asked a judge to give her a reduced sentence in exchange for her cooperation.”

Imagine what she could have told the Islamic State leaders that they might have found useful. If ever a swamp was in need of draining, it’s the FBI.

“The FBI translator who went rogue and married an ISIS terrorist,” by Scott Glover, CNN, May 1, 2017:

An FBI translator with a top-secret security clearance traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key ISIS operative she had been assigned to investigate, CNN has learned.

The rogue employee, Daniela Greene, lied to the FBI about where she was going and warned her new husband he was under investigation, according to federal court records.

Greene’s saga, which has never been publicized, exposes an embarrassing breach of national security at the FBI—an agency that has made its mission rooting out ISIS sympathizers across the country.

It also raises questions about whether Greene received favorable treatment from Justice Department prosecutors who charged her with a relatively minor offense, then asked a judge to give her a reduced sentence in exchange for her cooperation, the details of which remain shrouded in court-ordered secrecy.

The man Greene married was no ordinary terrorist.

He was Denis Cuspert, a German rapper turned ISIS pitchman, whose growing influence as an online recruiter for violent jihadists had put him on the radar of counter-terrorism authorities on two continents.

In Germany, Cuspert went by the rap name Deso Dogg. In Syria, he was known as Abu Talha al-Almani. He praised Osama bin Laden in a song, threatened former President Barack Obama with a throat-cutting gesture and appeared in propaganda videos, including one in which he was holding a freshly severed human head.

Within weeks of marrying Cuspert, Greene, 38, seemed to realize she had made a terrible mistake. She fled back to the US, where she was immediately arrested and agreed to cooperate with authorities. She pleaded guilty to making false statements involving international terrorism and was sentenced to two years in federal prison. She was released last summer.

The FBI, in a statement to CNN, said as a result of Greene’s case it “took several steps in a variety of areas to identify and reduce security vulnerabilities. The FBI continues to strengthen protective measures in carrying out its vital work.”

The FBI did not identify what steps were taken and declined further comment.

“It’s a stunning embarrassment for the FBI, no doubt about it,” said John Kirby, a former State Department official. He said he suspects Greene’s entry into Syria required the approval of top ISIS leaders.

Most outsiders trying to get into an ISIS region in Syria risk “getting their heads cut off,” said Kirby, now a CNN commentator on national security matters. “So for her to be able to get in as an American, as a woman, as an FBI employee, and to be able to take up residence with a known ISIS leader, that all had to be coordinated.”

In court papers filed in US District Court in Washington D.C., prosecutors characterized Greene’s conduct as “egregious,” deserving of “severe punishment.”

Assistant US Attorney Thomas Gillice said Greene had “violated the public trust, the trust of the officials who granted her security clearance, and the trust of those with whom she worked and, in doing so, endangered our nation’s security.”

Even though Greene’s “conduct skirted a line dangerously close to other more serious charges,” the prosecutor argued she should receive a lighter sentence because of her cooperation.

Greene’s two-year sentence was less than punishments given other defendants charged with terrorism-related crimes.

Even failed attempts to travel to Syria and join ISIS have earned defendants much stiffer prison sentences. Americans convicted in dozens of recent ISIS prosecutions received an average sentence of 13 1/2 years in prison, according to an analysis in April by the Center on National Security at Fordham University.

A Justice Department official, however, said Greene’s sentence was “in line” with similar cases, but declined to cite examples….

Fluent in German, Greene went to work for the FBI as a contract linguist in 2011. It was a job that, following a grueling application and vetting process, came with a top-secret national security clearance.

Greene was assigned to the bureau’s Detroit office in January 2014 when she was put to work “in an investigative capacity” on the case of a German terrorist referred to in court records only as “Individual A.”

CNN identified “Individual A” as Cuspert using court documents, newspaper articles about his music career and transformation to jihadist, government bulletins, videos and other sources. His identity was ultimately confirmed by a source familiar with the investigation.

From Gangsta Rapper to Jihadist

Before Cuspert became a front man for jihadists, he was known as Deso Dogg in Germany. Tattoos on each hand spell out the image he cultivated in the mold of American gangsta rappers.

“STR8” was inked on one hand, “THUG” on the other.

One CD cover featured Cuspert with a menacing glare, holding a gun to his own head. His image was backed up by a real life rap sheet with a string of arrests. He had a lean, muscular physique and trained in various martial arts.

Cuspert never achieved star status in the music world, but he did enjoy some success: In 2006, he opened for popular US rapper DMX.

A near-death experience in a car accident prompted Cuspert to turn to religion, according to numerous press accounts. In 2010, he quit the rap world and converted to Islam. He traded his hard driving gangsta-style lyrics for Islamic devotional songs called Nasheeds, including one that praised bin Laden.

Cuspert gained some notoriety as an extremist in 2011 after he posted on Facebook a fake video purportedly showing US soldiers raping a Muslim woman. The video motivated a man to carry out a terrorist attack on the Frankfurt airport, killing two US airmen and wounding two others, according to The New York Times.

In 2012, Cuspert fled Germany, reportedly spending time in Egypt and Libya. The following year, he arrived in Syria, where he would emerge as “ISIS’s Celebrity Cheerleader,” according to a report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a group that monitors various topics in the region, including violent extremism.

As part of the FBI’s investigation into “Individual A,” Greene identified several online accounts and phone numbers used by the terrorist, according to the court file.

Among them were two Skype accounts. She maintained “sole access” to a third Skype account, the records state.

It was in April 2014, during Greene’s work on the investigation, that Cuspert appeared in a video declaring his allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

He called ISIS “the state that no one can stop,” adding, “we will continue to build it until it reaches Washington… Obama!” He then made a throat-cutting gesture with his finger, according to the MEMRI report.

On June 11, 2014, Greene filled out a Report of Foreign Travel form — a document FBI employees and contractors with national security clearances are required to complete when traveling abroad.

Greene, who was still married to her American husband at the time, characterized her travel on the form as “Vacation/Personal,” court records show.

“Want to see my family,” she wrote. Specifically, Greene said, she was going to see her parents in Munich, Germany.

She boarded an international flight on June 23, 2014. But her destination wasn’t Germany. She flew instead on a one-way ticket to Istanbul, Turkey, where she had reservations at the Erguvan Hotel. From there she traveled to the city of Gaziantep, about 20 miles from the Syrian border.

She contacted “Individual A,” the documents state, and with the assistance of a third party arranged by him, crossed the border into Syria. Once there, according to the court records, she married him.

Shortly after, Greene sent emails from inside Syria to an unidentified person in the US showing she was having second thoughts and suggesting she knew she was breaking the law.

“I was weak and didn’t know how to handle anything anymore,” she wrote on July 8. “I really made a mess of things this time.”

In another email the following day she wrote: “I am gone and I can’t come back. I wouldn’t even know how to make it through, if I tried to come back. I am in a very harsh environment and I don’t know how long I will last here, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all a little too late…”

On July 22, 2014, she again wrote to the unidentified recipient: “Not sure if they told you that I will probably go to prison for a long time if I come back, but that is life. I wish I could turn back time some days.”

While Greene was expressing regrets, Cuspert was actively fighting ISIS’s battles.

A video from July 2014 “showed glimpses of him in the bloody aftermath of the ISIS takeover of the Al-Sha’er gas fields in Homs,” according to the MEMRI report on Cuspert. In a field covered with dead bodies, Cuspert “is seen for several seconds beating a corpse with a sandal,” the report said.

Back in the US

It is unclear from the court file precisely when or how authorities learned of Greene’s actions, but on Aug. 1, 2014, five weeks after she left for Syria, federal authorities secretly issued a warrant for her arrest.

“At that time,” prosecutors would later write, “the defendant was at large in Syria or Turkey in the company of the leader of a terrorist group.”

After about a month in Syria, Greene somehow was able to leave the war-torn country and returned to the United States. She was arrested on Aug. 8, 2014….

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Promise Kept: President Trump Assists the Victims of Criminal Illegal Aliens

On April 26, 2017 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) posted a self-explanatory news release, “DHS announces launch of new office for victims of illegal immigrant crime, Office built with input from victims impacted by crime” that is illustrative of President Trump’s pro-American mindset and commitment to keeping his immigration campaign promises.

This long overdue approach to immigration stands in stark contrast to the Obama administration that sought to portray illegal aliens, including such aliens who committed serious and often heinous crimes, of being the “victims” while blithely ignoring the true victims, those who either fall victim to the violence of criminal aliens or are members of the families of such victims.

This bogus and morally bankrupt perspective is still a fundamental element of the policies of the leaders of the Democratic Party and is behind the creation of “Sanctuary Cities” whose mayors should be given an MVP Award by ISIS and drug cartels.

America’s immigration laws were enacted to protect national security, public safety, public health and the lives and livelihoods of Americans.

A review of a section of law comprehended within the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S. Code § 1182 – Inadmissible aliens provides clear and unequivocal evidence of how reasonable and vital our immigration laws are to America and Americans.

Therefore it is hard to imagine who could be opposed to the effective and fair enforcement of such fundamental laws.  However, for decades, the enforcement and administration of our immigration laws, under a succession of administrations from both political parties, put the desires of aliens, special interest groups and corporations ahead of Americans.

Consequently, huge numbers of Americans have lost their lives and livelihoods as a direct result of what I have come to refer to as Immigration Failures – By Design.

The artful use of Orwellian language by politicians, pollsters and pundits and the steady drumbeat of propaganda by the mainstream media has, over the past several decades, obfuscated the important distinction between lawful immigrants and illegal aliens.

Proponents of effective immigration law enforcement have come to be vilified as being xenophobes, racists and haters.

Journalists routinely castigate immigration law enforcement proponents by branding them “Anti-Immigrant” while immigration anarchists are glowingly praised as being “Pro-Immigrant.”

Americans have been told that the “immigrants” (illegal aliens) are willing to do the physically demanding work Americans are too lazy to do while America must important foreign workers to do the high-tech jobs Americans are too dumb to do.

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy he made it clear that if elected he would end the immigration madness.

Yet, since his election, President Trump’s immigration policies have been opposed by the leadership of the Democratic Party and even from some members of the Republican Party.

The manifestation of that resistance includes lawsuits and withholding of funds for the construction of the border wall and the hiring of more immigration enforcement personnel.

Nevertheless he continues to try to keep his promises that the enforcement and administration of our immigration laws would prioritize the needs and interests of Americans over aliens and the various globalist corporations and special interest groups who oppose border security and effective immigration law enforcement- no matter the costs to America and Americans.

Consider that just over one year ago, on April 19, 2016, during the final year of the Obama administration, the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security conducted a hearing on the topic:  “The Real Victims of a Reckless and Lawless Immigration Policy: Families and Survivors Speak Out on the Real Cost of This Administration’s Policies.”

Two of the witnesses who testified at that hearing, were Michelle Root and Laura Wilkerson, the mothers of two children who were killed by illegal aliens.

Michelle Root’s poignant and heart-breaking prepared testimony at the hearing was reported on by Breitbart “Mother of Daughter Killed by Illegal: His Bail Was ‘Less Than it Cost to Bury My Baby.’

CNS reported on Laura Wilkerson’s testimony in which she provided horrific details about the torture and murder of her high school student son by Hermilo Vildo Moralez, an illegal alien whom he had befriended.

The title of that article was,Mother of Teen Murdered by Illegal Immigrant Tells Congress: ‘Do Something – It Is Your Job.’

Now the Trump administration is attempting to do precisely what Laura Wilkerson so passionately implored Congress to do.

The administration’s multi-pronged strategy would include the construction of a wall along the U.S. /  Mexican border and adding more Border Patrol agents to combat the flood of illegal aliens and narcotics into the United States and by enforcing the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

For many decades the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States, constituting the third leg of what I have come to refer to as the “Immigration Law Enforcement Tripod” has been all but missing.

This deficiency is being addressed by President Trump and by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

President Trump is seeking the funds to triple the number of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) enforcement personnel and expand the number of immigration judges to help clear the backlog of deportation (removal) cases.  His policies also include ending the lunacy of declaring categories of illegal aliens to be “protected” from removal as was done by the Obama administration.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is hiring more federal prosecutors and tasking them with enforcing criminal violations of our immigration laws such as 8 U.S.C. § 1326 – Reentry After Deportation (Removal).

In April 2015 the United States Sentencing Commission published an Analysis of Illegal Reentry Offenses that reported that in FY 2013 illegal reentry prosecutions accounted for 26% of all federal prosecutions, noting 18,498 such prosecutions were conducted and involved aliens with serious criminal histories as well as aliens who had no prior convictions.

However, the fact that the U.S. Sentencing Commission analysis reported that most of the aliens who were prosecuted for unlawful reentry were apprehended at or near the border illustrates the lack of enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

This provides evidence that resources for  interior enforcement must be greatly increased.

The leadership of the Democratic Party, however, is adamant about not funding the border wall and has resisted efforts to hire an adequate number of ICE agents.  Further complicating this issue is the fact that there are Republicans who are also opposed to some of these essential measures.

It would be difficult to find a better (worse?) example of politicians playing politics with innocent lives and national security.

On a personal level, the actions and statements by Attorney General Session are extremely gratifying for me.  In the early 1980’s I approached then New York Senator Al D’Amato with the proposal that the reentry laws be modified to make unlawful reentry by criminal aliens a crime that would carry a maximum penalty of 20 years.  At the time the reentry laws made no distinction about whether an alien had been convicted of any crimes and the maximum penalty for unlawful reentry was two years in prison.

Senator D’Amato and his staff worked with me, met with a number of my colleagues I introduced to him and his staffers.

We convinced him to draft the legislation and, in an example of serendipity, the chief of investigations for the INS in New York City, Walter Connery, wrote a legislative initiative to enact such legislation and sent it to Senator D’Amato shortly after we had concluded our meetings with the Senator and his staff.

However, we did not know about Walter’s efforts and he knew nothing of our efforts until I mentioned it to him casually during a meeting.

Walter was the former head of Internal Affairs for the NYPD and became the director of the equivalent bureau at INS Headquarters (Office of Professional Responsibility) before he was assigned to head up the Investigations Branch in New York City.  It certainly did not hurt that he was also an attorney.

Senator D’Amato was, ultimately, instrumental in drafting the legislation and getting it enacted.

The Senator also met with President Reagan to implement a program that would come to be known as the “Institutional Hearing Program” I suggested be created.  Under this program deportation hearings would be conducted inside prisons for aliens who had been convicted of committing serious crimes.  This would enable their deportations to be finalized before they were released from custody.

This way they could, immediately upon completion of their jail sentences, be deported from the United States.

That program has been extremely successful but needs more funding.

Solutions to “fix” the immigration system are not that difficult to devise.  All it requires is a sincere desire to actually enforce our immigration laws and imbue the immigration system with real integrity.

Too many of our political “leaders” lack that sincere desire.

This problem also has a simple solution.  Any politician, on any level of government, who is not willing to act in the best interests of America and his/her constituents, must come to understand that elections have consequences – for them.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

New York Times defends Antifa thuggery on college campuses

The thrust of the argument here is that to shut down voices that the Leftist establishment considers odious — which includes mine, although I am not mentioned in this article (no, I am not Richard Spencer) — is aiding the oppressed to have a voice that they are usually denied.

This is an argument for Brownshirt thuggery and/or totalitarian control of the public discourse.

Who will be entrusted with the power to determine whether a group is sufficiently oppressed to be allowed to be heard? Whoever will have that power will be able to impose his or her views tyrannically, with all dissent suppressed.

Moreover, the idea that these oppressed groups have no voice as it is, and conservative speakers coming in would further silence and marginalize them, is sheer Leftist fantasy. In reality, the overwhelmingly dominant point of view on university and college campuses today is that of the hard-Left. Jihad is a response to U.S. imperialism, Muslims are always and in every case oppressed victims of racism and “Islamophobia” — try uttering a word of disagreement to those propositions on a university or college campus today, and see what happens. These idea have near-total dominance on campus today. Letting me speak (and I did speak at Truman State University a couple of weeks ago, and have two more university appearances coming up) or others with dissenting points of view is simply allowing a small opposing word to be uttered amid the relentless and never-ending bleat for the other side.

The New York Times, perhaps realizing that it cannot win with its ideas on a level playing field, has now published here a sly apologetic for totalitarian censorship. To its everlasting shame, although I doubt that Ulrich Baer or the Times editors will notice my indictment amid all the applause they’re receiving for this piece from their peers.

milo burning berkeley“What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech,” by Ulrich Baer, New York Times, April 24, 2017:

At one of the premieres of his landmark Holocaust documentary, “Shoah” (1985), the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann was challenged by a member of the audience, a woman who identified herself as a Holocaust survivor. Lanzmann listened politely as the woman recounted her harrowing personal account of the Holocaust to make the point that the film failed to fully represent the recollections of survivors. When she finished, Lanzmann waited a bit, and then said, “Madame, you are an experience, but not an argument.”

This exchange, conveyed to me by the Russian literature scholar Victor Erlich some years ago, has stayed with me, and it has taken on renewed significance as the struggles on American campuses to negotiate issues of free speech have intensified — most recently in protests at Auburn University against a visit by the white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Lanzmann’s blunt reply favored reasoned analysis over personal memory. In light of his painstaking research into the Holocaust, his comment must have seemed insensitive but necessary at the time. Ironically, “Shoah” eventually helped usher in an era of testimony that elevated stories of trauma to a new level of importance, especially in cultural production and universities.

During the 1980s and ’90s, a shift occurred in American culture; personal experience and testimony, especially of suffering and oppression, began to challenge the primacy of argument. Freedom of expression became a flash point in this shift. Then as now, both liberals and conservatives were wary of the privileging of personal experience, with its powerful emotional impact, over reason and argument, which some fear will bring an end to civilization, or at least to freedom of speech.

We should resist the temptation to rehash these debates. Doing so would overlook the fact that a thorough generational shift has occurred. Widespread caricatures of students as overly sensitive, vulnerable and entitled “snowflakes” fail to acknowledge the philosophical work that was carried out, especially in the 1980s and ’90s, to legitimate experience — especially traumatic experience — which had been dismissed for decades as unreliable, untrustworthy and inaccessible to understanding.

milo yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos

The philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, best known for his prescient analysis in “The Postmodern Condition” of how public discourse discards the categories of true/false and just/unjust in favor of valuing the mere fact that something is being communicated, examined the tension between experience and argument in a different way.

Instead of defining freedom of expression as guaranteeing the robust debate from which the truth emerges, Lyotard focused on the asymmetry of different positions when personal experience is challenged by abstract arguments. His extreme example was Holocaust denial, where invidious but often well-publicized cranks confronted survivors with the absurd challenge to produce incontrovertible eyewitness evidence of their experience of the killing machines set up by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Not only was such evidence unavailable, but it also challenged the Jewish survivors to produce evidence of their own legitimacy in a discourse that had systematically denied their humanity.

Lyotard shifted attention away from the content of free speech to the way certain topics restrict speech as a public good. Some things are unmentionable and undebatable, but not because they offend the sensibilities of the sheltered young. Some topics, such as claims that some human beings are by definition inferior to others, or illegal or unworthy of legal standing, are not open to debate because such people cannot debate them on the same terms.

The recent student demonstrations at Auburn against Spencer’s visit — as well as protests on other campuses against Charles Murray, Milo Yiannopoulos and others — should be understood as an attempt to ensure the conditions of free speech for a greater group of people, rather than censorship. Liberal free-speech advocates rush to point out that the views of these individuals must be heard first to be rejected. But this is not the case. Universities invite speakers not chiefly to present otherwise unavailable discoveries, but to present to the public views they have presented elsewhere. When those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good.

In such cases there is no inherent value to be gained from debating them in public. In today’s age, we also have a simple solution that should appease all those concerned that students are insufficiently exposed to controversial views. It is called the internet, where all kinds of offensive expression flourish unfettered on a vast platform available to nearly all.

The great value and importance of freedom of expression, for higher education and for democracy, is hard to underestimate. But it has been regrettably easy for commentators to create a simple dichotomy between a younger generation’s oversensitivity and free speech as an absolute good that leads to the truth. We would do better to focus on a more sophisticated understanding, such as the one provided by Lyotard, of the necessary conditions for speech to be a common, public good. This requires the realization that in politics, the parameters of public speech must be continually redrawn to accommodate those who previously had no standing.

The rights of transgender people for legal equality and protection against discrimination are a current example in a long history of such redefinitions. It is only when trans people are recognized as fully human, rather than as men and women in disguise, as Ben Carson, the current secretary of housing and urban development claims, that their rights can be fully recognized in policy decisions.

The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community. Free-speech protections — not only but especially in universities, which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities — should not mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned.

THE STUDENT ACTIVISM that has roiled campuses — at Auburn, Missouri, Yale, Berkeley, Middlebury and elsewhere — is an opportunity to take stock of free speech issues in a changed world. It is also an opportunity to take into account the past few decades of scholarship that has honed our understanding of the rights to expression in higher education, which maintains particularly high standards of what is worthy of debate….

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