Lisa Miara is doing amazing work with children who’ve been to hell and back – saving them from the jaws of terror.
The founder of Springs of Hope, Miara left her family behind to work with Yazidi child victims of Islamic State – those both brutalized and radicalized.
She tells nightmare stories and explains what we can learn in the West:
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Saving the Kids – Tales of Former ISIS Child Prisoners
A man’s home is supposed to be his castle. But this is no longer the case in New York City, according to a Brooklyn man who says that Big Apple officials are aiding and abetting a next-door neighbor’s attempt to steal his property.
It has been a long ordeal for John Hockenjos, 62, and his wife Irina, one whose twists and turns include a false arrest by the NYPD. The problems started in 2009, they say, when the couple Argo and Elen Paumere “purchased the home next to them with plans for an ambitious overhaul. According to the Hockenjoses, red flags flew fast when they were approached to sign documents turning over a two-foot easement to their new neighbor,” as Bklyner reported in 2013.
I spoke to the Hockenjos recently on the phone, and Irina told me their suspicions were borne out. After refusing to sign the documents, the Hockenjoses say that Argo Paumere “went and created a fraudulent land survey that marked a chunk of the driveway as theirs,” as Bklyner put it. The kicker?
The city’s Department of Buildings (DOB) approved it, the Hockenjoses report — and they’ve been battling the Paumeres and City Hall ever since.
It’s a battle that has cost the Hockenjoses their jobs, their health and more than $150,000 in legal fees, they say. But the real shock came in February 2012 when John, a former Metropolitan Transit Authority engineer, was falsely arrested by 61st Precinct police.
That dark day was Feb. 5 of that year. The police arrived at the Hockenjoses’ property, in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay section, after being called by Paumere, according to NY’s Daily News. The incident culminated in John’s arrest and felony charges being brought after he was accused of driving at a “high rate of speed, causing an officer “to jump out of the way,” the News reports. But the police had a problem.
No such thing ever happened.
John had video surveillance footage to prove it, too, which showed “the Brooklyn man slowly pulling into his driveway and the cop not even flinching,” to quote the News again.
In fact, so egregious was the police frame-up that Officer Diego Palacios, who was involved in the arrest, resigned from the NYPD and was indicted by a grand jury “on five kinds of illegal lying, one of them a felony,” reported The New York Times in 2012.
Palacios pled guilty in exchange for a sentence of just four days in prison — just one day longer than John spent in jail after his arrest — but ended up serving only one night. Call it Kim Foxx justice.
Oh, had Palacios’ frame-up been successful, John would have faced seven years behind bars.
As for the land dispute, the Hockenjoses told me they know of other NYC residents in their shoes, people who face what’s essentially the theft of their property due to DOB corruption or incompetence. If this sounds fanciful, consider the comments of former Queens-based state senator Tony Avella, who was a staunch critic of the DOB.
“It’s something that’s a bottom line issue with the DOB where an applicant just presents an application and they never really check it to see if the size of the property is correct, or whether they own the property or not,” he told Sheepshead Bites (now part of Bklyner) in 2013.”
“The builder says they own part of the property that’s actually the neighbor’s, and the DOB approves it,” he continued. “It’s a very serious issue. Anyone can submit a false application, fraudulent documents and fraudulent land surveys, and no one checks it.”
And once this happens…well, go fight City Hall. As Bklyner also tells us, “According to both Avella and the Hockenjoses, the DOB’s modus operandi when they receive complaints about fraudulent documents is to wash its hands of the problem and declare it a property dispute to be handled in civil court.”
“That comes with its own set of problems,” Bklyner further informs. “The Hockenjoses have gone through lawyer after lawyer, some of which [sic] they say took their money and never did any work. Others have refused to take the case because it appears to exist in a sort of legal no-man’s-land.”
“‘They’re saying I’m not going to take this case because it’s not a real estate case, it’s not a property dispute case, it’s a criminal case,’” Irina told Bklyner (this echoes what she related to me). “‘And we go to criminal attorneys and they tell us we need to go to prosecutors. And the prosecutors say it’s a civil case.’”
The bottom line is that the Hockenjoses have spent a good part of the last decade in court, all due, they say, to a neighbor who’s quite a malevolent character. In fact, Irina told me that shortly after the Paumeres moved in, Argo Paumere said bluntly, “I’m going to take your property from you.” After being informed that it wasn’t for sale, he made known that this didn’t matter, Irina states.
And aside from the false arrest, the Hockenjoses say that the Paumeres have continually made false charges against them, resulting in actions by city inspectors that the couple has had to fight. The stress has been overwhelming, they state.
The Hockenjoses also believe that more than just garden-variety bureaucratic incompetence is at work: They suspect that Argo Paumere has connections with city officials. The false arrest certainly lends this theory credence, of course. Whatever the case, it’s a very strange story — and one many Americans wouldn’t expect to hear in these United States.
It’s a continuing story, too, as the Hockenjoses fight on. Hopefully, they’ll get the help they deserve, somewhere, and justice will finally be done.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
Forbidden Knowledge TV published the below video about a new book by Diane West. Stefan Molyneux interviews Diane West, author of ‘The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy‘, which investigates why a ring of senior Washington officials went rogue to derail the election and the presidency of Donald Trump.
Watch the interview, then buy Diane’s book ‘The Red Thread’:
The question isn’t what went wrong at the SPLC; it is why it took so long for the rest of the country to learn what local reporters already knew.” – (Jim Tharpe, former managing editor of the Montgomery Advertiser)
The problems at the Southern Poverty Law Center could be bigger than discomfort by staff about racism and sexism in the internal office culture says the former managing editor of the Montgomery Advertiser who penned an op-ed in the Washington Post last week entitled,
Editor: It is important that all of you, all fair-minded people! especially those who have been targets of the SPLC’s infamous hate lists, keep all of the unfolding news about the SPLC ‘s frauds in the public eye. Tina is Tina Tchen Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff brought in by the board to help clean up the mess. She will be working to downplay information like this!
Author Jim Tharpe, a retired journalist who lives in Atlanta and was a former managing editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, says federal investigators need to investigate the finances of this massive ‘non-profit’ group.
Here is some of Tharpe’s thesis at the Washington Post,
(Emphasis is mine.)
There’s something strange afoot at the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the nation’s richest civil and human rights charities. In March, the center abruptly fired legendary co-founder Morris Dees. Dees’s biography was quickly scrubbed from the center’s website, and the SPLC announced this week that Karen Baynes-Dunning would serve as interim president and CEO, giving the civil rights organization its first black female leader.
In confirming Dees’s departure, then-President Richard Cohen emphasized the center’s values of “truth, justice, equity, and inclusion,” and said vaguely, “When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.”
Subsequent news reports pointed to allegations of racial discrimination and sexual harassment inside an organization that had raised hundreds of millions of dollars from donors to fight just that type of injustice.
Dees has said little about why he was shown the door after 48 years at the organization he had come to define. But to those of us familiar with the SPLC and its inner workings, the allegations swirling around the latest drama were familiar. The question isn’t what went wrong at the SPLC; it is why it took so long for the rest of the country to learn what local reporters already knew. It will probably take a federal investigation to fully unravel this deep-South mystery and provide a credible, long-term fix.
Twenty five years ago an investigation first revealed the problems at the SPLC and nothing was ever done about it.
In February 1994, after three years of research, the Advertiserpublished an eight-part series titled “Rising Fortunes: Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center” that found a litany of problems and questionable practices at the SPLC, including a deeply troubled history with its relatively few black employees, some of whom reported hearing the use of racial slurs by the organization’s staff and others who “likened the center to a plantation”; misleading donors with aggressive direct-mail tactics; exaggerating its accomplishments; spending most of its money not on programs but on raising more money; and paying its top staffers (including Dees and Cohen) lavish salaries.
Dees and Cohen vigorously denied its findings. And the SPLC mounted an aggressive campaign against the series when it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — it was a 1995 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism.
Too late for Tina, says Tharpe. Bring in the IRS and the Civil Rights Division at DOJ!
Cohen, before he announced his own departure, said the center would bring in well-regarded lawyer Tina Tchen to conduct an investigation. It’s too late for that.
The Internal Revenue Service, which grants the SPLC tax-exempt status, and the civil rights division of the Justice Department would be the best bets to really figure out what’s up at the center.
Any investigation should take a close look at the SPLC’s finances. It should look at what the center has told donors in its mail solicitations over the years. And it should take a close look at how that donor money has been spent.
Investigators should also look at how SPLC staffers have been treated over the years. Where was the center’s board when this mistreatment was going on? And why did no one step up sooner?
[….]
The feds owe that to the young progressives who work at the SPLC. And they certainly owe that to the donors who have put their own first-class stamps on the checks they mailed to Montgomery.
More here. (I know it may be behind a paywall, I was able to read it on my first visit.)
Follow the money!
I don’t know that the feds owe anything to “young progressives” who naively work at the SPLC, but investigating a politically motivated ‘non-profit’ group for possible financial wrong-doing sure is a good idea.
And, to answer Tharpe’s question about why it took so long for the rest of the country to learn the truth about the SPLC, it is because the mainstream media protected and coddled the SPLC because the mainstream media wanted to believe that America was filled with hatersbeing exposed by the good and pure-minded staffers struggling for the little guy! (And, I include Fox News in that bunch of protectors!)
It doesn’t take a genius to know that Fox stopped bringing on certain guests after calls from the SPLC!
Your job is to continue to post news like this about the SPLC to your social networks! Do not let Tina and Karen sweep the dirt under a rug!
I’ve got another post if I get to it today about malfeasance with non-profit groups — many are run by frauds and crooks (with do-nothing boards of directors).
EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals is republished with permission.
I woke up this morning to find that my Facebook page was blocked because I had violated their “community standards.” When I finally was able to open my account I found seven recent posts with the following notice posted by Facebook below each:
This post goes against our Community Standards, so no one else can see it.
This has been known as “shadow banning.” Or perhaps Facebook has taken the next step and is actually openly banning freedom of expression to interact with like minded Facebook friends in certain areas? You be the judge.
Here are the seven posts that go against FB’s community standards:
The first was a One America News Network article titled “Pres. Trump To Deliver Remarks At Republican Jewish Coalition In Vegas.” Blocking reporting on a Jewish Republican event smacks of anti-Semitism?
The second violation of FB’s community standards was an article titled “Breaking News: President Trump to speak at NRA-ILA Leadership Forum in Indianapolis.” This FB community standards ban appears to be anti-Second Amendment and specifically anti-NRA.
The third was blocking a quote made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The AOC quote published on BraineyQuote.com is, “Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.”
This community standards violation prevents restating what a politician has been quoted as saying. This community standard has a chilling effect by denying freedom of expression and free speech under the First Amendment. What possible community standard blocks anyone’s ability to quote any politician from any party (or from just one party)?
The fourth block was a column titled “Filing Income Taxes? Remember, TurboTax Funds Planned Parenthood.” This violation of FB’s community standards appears to be pro-abortion/infanticide and pro-Planned Parenthood.
The fifth block was a column titled “VIDEO: Muslim sociologist demonstrates proper Islamic way to beat one’s wife.” This violation of FB’s community standards indicates their adherence to Islamic Shariah Law and suppression of anything said that may offend the Muslim community (a.k.a. anything FB deems Islamophobic).
The sixth block was a meme that showed a serving of Chick-Fil-A waffle fries with the words under it “Come And Take It.” Chick-Fil-A is under attack by various Democratic controlled cities to ban it opening stores in airports. Chick-Fil-A is known for its pro-traditional marriage and pro-Christian stances, including its policy not to open on Sundays, as this is a day best spent worshiping. Are FB’s community standards anti-Christian?
The seventh block is of an April 2019 a cartoon by Michael P. Ramirez titled “Democratic Field.” FB’s community standards appear not to allow political satire, especially when it targets Democratic Party candidates for president.
Each of the above posts has a “Request Review” option. When you click on “Request Review” the words “Delete this post” appear. The only option offered by Facebook is to delete the post that violates their “community standards.” No appeal no review. Just delete.
Are you seeing any pattern in these violations of Facebook’s community standards?
If you or a friend have experienced something similar please leave a comment about it below.
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The “Green Whitehouse” Agenda (full series)
The Enemies List | Green Pays | Sheldon’s Endgame
Summary: Americans are accustomed to politicians saying one thing and doing another. But arguments about the funding behind think tanks and advocacy organizations are perhaps the most one-sided of the recurring debates on Capitol Hill. Few are as outspoken on the issue as Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. The wrinkle? Senator Whitehouse has a prolific portfolio of stocks that oddly aligns with industries he oversees.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is a supporter of socialist New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal (GND). A radical environmental/economic fantasy that proposes to tear up and rebuild the U.S. economy over a ten-year period, the GND price tag, according to a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, will check in at between $51 trillion and $93 trillion. The high-side estimate roughly equals the combined annual economic output of . . . Earth.
Sen. Whitehouse disputes the characterization that this is a “radical” proposal, telling Salon in February that the true radicals are the “misbehaving” Republicans deluded by their “fossil fuel funding.”
This is one of many examples where there’s an ironic (less charitably, we might say “hypocritical”) twist in the character of one of the nation’s most influential left-wing politicians. Whether he’s trying to turn a climate policy disagreement into a federal racketeering lawsuit, or sheepishly dodging responsibility when his money and his mouth seem to be running in different directions, Whitehouse can be relied upon to replace accountability with accusations, and to wield his power and privilege in the service of gaining more of both.
Whitehouse has been berating the energy industry since 2007 and is arguably the Senate’s most accomplished practitioner of climate panic. In a 2008 news release, he denounced the oil industry for its “obscene” profits and doing “little to invest in the alternative energy technologies that will help end our dependence on fossil fuels.” In an October 2009 floor speech pitching a “clean energy” proposal he warned his colleagues not to “sit idle” and be “beguiled by the money and spin of polluting industries.”
But as he was talking, Whitehouse owned between $250,000 and $800,000 in ten different oil and gas industry stocks. This is according to his 2008 financial disclosure forms, as reported by the Center for Responsive Politics (the forms record a range of value for each investment, not a specific value). Giant oil and gas exploration and servicing firms, such as Devon Energy and Schlumberger Ltd, were two of his largest energy industry holdings.
For 2009, CRP reported his energy industry stock holdings at between $145,000 and $475,000.
So, while denouncing the energy company profits and preaching to the Senate about avoiding the beguiling money of the so-called “polluting industries,” his personal financial stake in “beguiling pollution” reportedly fell somewhere between “more than the value of most people’s homes” and “more than the total net worth of most Americans.”
This state of affairs seemed to hold until at least 2014, when he reported selling his stake in Schlumberger. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the same year GoLocalProv, a news service in Providence, Rhode Island, began looking into whether Whitehouse’s investments squared with this ideology. In December 2014 they posted a report showing Whitehouse owned between $15,000 and $50,000 in Duke Energy (a large, coal-burning electric utility) as recently as the end of 2012.
Noting Whitehouse had (at that point) delivered “80 floor speeches about the adverse impact of global warming,” GoLocalProv speculated about the “conflict” between the politician’s “economic interests” and his “environmental pronouncements.”
Whitehouse usually escapes such media scrutiny. His complicated history with energy investments wasn’t mentioned in a March 2019 report in Roll Call, which gave critical examination to three Republican U.S. House members on a newly-formed “Select Committee on the Climate Crisis” because of their “personal investment in fossil fuel companies.” One of the three, Congressman Gary Palmer (R—Alabama), was questioned by the reporter due to his owning just $1,000 to $15,000 in each of three energy firms. This means Palmer’s total “personal investment” could be as small as the price of a cheap used car ($3,000) – hardly enough to motivate the congressman to become a cartoonish climate villain.
A Whitehouse staffer wouldn’t fess up to the specific details regarding what the boss owned and when, but tried to explain that it had been taken care of, saying “the Senator divested his investments from fossil fuels during the past couple of years” and “feels strongly about his work on environmental issues.”
Maybe critics should go easy on him: His heart’s in the right place, even if his wallet is still trying to catch up.
But where Whitehouse has been very generously willing to excuse his own complicity, while literally being an owner of the fossil fuel industry, he thinks the industry itself needs a knock on the door from the FBI.
Writing in the Washington Post in 2015, he proposed using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against energy companies that disagree with his climate policy agenda. A year later, during a March 2016 hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, he asked then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch what the Department of Justice thought of this.
The stunning reply from President Obama’s top cop: “This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on.”
Richard Nixon analogies should be used sparingly but are sometimes too on-point to ignore. An infamous 1971 White House memo, titled “Dealing with our Political Enemies,” summarized what became known as Nixon’s “enemies list”—a plot to inflict IRS audits and other federal harassments on people whose only offense was disagreeing with a powerful politician.
“This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration,” wrote Nixon Administration lawyer John Dean. “Stated a bit more bluntly—how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
Almost five decades later, Sheldon Whitehouse seems to be using the Nixon White House as a role model. And the next time he gets friendly climate cultists in the White House willing to listen to him, he won’t just be coming after the companies who keep the economy humming with low-cost energy, but anyone who speaks up to defend the good work they’re doing.
He’s tried it already.
In July 2016, just a few months after Lynch assured him the FBI was taking him seriously, Whitehouse and 18 other Democratic senators (including former and current minority leaders Harry Reid of Nevada and Chuck Schumer of New York) spent two days on the floor of the Senate denouncing dozens of free enterprise policy organizations that disagree with Whitehouse’s environmental extremism. Special times were reserved for verbal lashings directed at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and many others Whitehouse has elsewhere referred to as part of a “corrupt monster.”
Few relevant friends of the free market were excluded from this attack. In a joint letter responding to the assault, some of the think tanks denounced the creation of the “enemies list” by Whitehouse and the others, calling the Senators “tyrants” who were using their offices to “to bully and single out groups to blame rather than ideas to debate.”
In the next installment of The “Green” Whitehouse Agenda, learn how deep-pocketed environmentalist groups help support their man in the Senate.
COLUMN BY
Ken Braun is CRC’s senior investigative researcher and authors profiles for InfluenceWatch.org and the Capital Research magazine. He previously worked for several free market policy organizations, spent six… + MORE BY KEN BRAUN.
EDITORS NOTE: This Capital Research Center column is republished with permission.
People who pursue a cross-sex identity aren’t born that way, and children should not be encouraged to “transition” to the opposite sex, according to a reference work endorsed by the American Psychological Association.
Yet every day I hear from another parent who tells me that a child’s therapist, after an appointment or two, strongly recommends that the parent allow the child to change his or her name and personal pronouns, live as the opposite sex, and get on the track toward irreversible medical interventions.
Laura Haynes, a licensed psychologist in California, recently reviewed the APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology and highlighted its research findings about transgender children.
Among those findings, cited on page 744 of Volume 1:
Yet we all have been bamboozled by distorted claims to the contrary from sex-change advocates, who insist the science is settled.
They say people who identify as the opposite sex will never change their mind, the cross-sex identity is fixed and the earlier the child, teen, or adult is affirmed as the opposite sex and makes the transition, the better off he or she will be.
In fact, however, the American Psychological Association and the weight of historical evidence both challenge society’s affirmation of cross-sex identities.
The preface to the APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology, published in 2014, says it is endorsed and approved by the American Psychological Association, which describes itself as “the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and the largest association of psychologists in the world.”
I underwent my own “sex change” in April 1983. I had no idea then that I would be here today talking about the subject, or that the evidence against “born that way” had started oozing out as early as 1979, four years before I was mutilated.
In 1979 an endocrinologist, Dr. Charles L. Ihlenfeld, sounded a warning on using hormones and surgery on the transgender population in remarks to a group of clinicians. Ihlenfeld had administered hormone therapy for six years to a large sample of 500 trans-identified adults.
Ihlenfeld, who is gay, told the clinicians that “80 percent of the people who want to change their sex shouldn’t do it.” Desires to change sex, he said, “most likely stem from powerful psychological factors—likely from the experiences of the first 18 months of life.”
Ihlenfeld’s comments 40 years ago foreshadowed the evidence provided in the APA Handbook, where page 743 of Volume 1 says that identifying as the opposite sex is “most likely the result of a complex interaction between biological and environmental factors.”
“Research on the influence of family of origin dynamics,” it adds, “has found some support for separation anxiety among gender-nonconforming boys and psychopathology among mothers.”
Ihlenfeld and the APA, generations apart in time, came to a similar conclusion: The desire to change sex most likely stems from early life experiences and psychological factors.
As to the wisdom and effectiveness of using cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgery to treat gender dysphoria, the evidence does not exist.
Above: The author, Walt Heyer, takes part in a related panel discussion at The Heritage Foundation. His remarks begin at 47:30 in the video.
In the United Kingdom, the University of Birmingham’s Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility conducted a review in 2004 of 100 international medical studies of “post-operative transsexuals.” It found “no conclusive evidence [that] sex-change operations improve the lives of transsexuals.”
Additionally, the evidence showed that the transsexual person, after undergoing reassignment surgery, “remains severely distressed to the point of suicide.”
A professor at Oxford University, Carl Heneghan, is one recent voice questioning cross-sex hormone use in children and adolescents. Heneghan is editor-in-chief of a respected British medical journal, BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.
On Feb. 25, Heneghan and a fellow researcher reported significant problemswith how evidence is collected and analyzed, concluding:
Treatments for under 18 gender dysphoric children and adolescents remain largely experimental. There are a large number of unanswered questions that include the age at start, reversibility, adverse events, long-term effects on mental health, quality of life, bone mineral density, osteoporosis in later life and cognition.
So the negative findings stack up, and alarms are raised about the lack of proof concerning effectiveness and safety. But administering unnecessary hormones and rearranging healthy body parts with sex-change surgeries continue undaunted by a deaf medical community.
I feel like I’m standing alongside the road shouting to warn approaching drivers: “The bridge is out! The bridge is out!”
Because I know—I drove off that cliff, and I’m still affected 35 years later.
The APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology, again, says that transgender people are not born that way, that cross-sex identification can change, and that the majority of children grow out of a desire to change sex if they don’t engage in social transition.
Strangely, the medical and psychological community doesn’t follow its own evidence and seems oblivious to the experiment they’re conducting on real lives, especially those of children.
The sex-change cheerleaders falsely claim, “Affirmation is the only solution.” They use distorted doctrine to lobby for laws that punish counselors and parents who say otherwise, laws that take away the rights of patients to choose their own therapy goals.
Organizations such as The Trevor Project are lobbying in all 50 states to outlaw any therapy that suggests interest in cross-sex transition can change.
Meanwhile, accounts such as these of families and lives being ripped to shreds by sex change appear in my inbox daily. I have compiled 30 of the stories I’ve received, along with recent research, in my own book “Trans Life Survivors.”
We must wake up and use the evidence provided in the APA Handbook to counter those who say transgender people are born that way.
Instead, we must fight loudly for the rights of patients to choose their counseling goals and against laws that legislate affirmation as the only therapy allowed.
COMMENTARY BY
Walt Heyer is an author and public speaker. Through his website, SexChangeRegret.com, and his blog, WaltHeyer.com, Heyer raises public awareness about those who regret gender change and the tragic consequences suffered as a result.
RELATED ARTICLE: My ‘Sex Change’ Was a Myth. Why Trying to Change One’s Sex Will Always Fail.
Just two short years after the end of the Obama administration’s disastrous policies, America is once again thriving due to conservative solutions that have produced a historic surge in economic growth.
The Trump administration has embraced over 60 percent of The Heritage Foundation’s policy recommendations since his inauguration. But with the House now firmly within the grips of the progressive left, the victories may come to a screeching halt.
Why? Because they are determined more than ever to give the government more control over your lives. Restoring your liberty and embracing freedom is the best thing for you and the country.
President Donald Trump needs all of the allies he can find to push through the stone wall he now faces within this divided government. And the best way you can partner with him is by becoming a member of his greatest ally in Washington: The Heritage Foundation.
Will you activate your membership with a tax-deductible gift today?
ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission.
The Democratic Party clearly has an anti-Semitism problem, but too many Jewish Democrats have been restrained in their responses.
Anti-Semitism is reaching epidemic levels in the United States, enabled by progressives who disparage traditional values, misrepresent Jewish history, and delegitimize Israel. They also tend to secularize Jewish identity and interpret the Jewish experience as a universal metaphor devoid of substantive religious or cultural content. In so doing, they often trivialize what it means to be Jewish. The result is an identity detached from heritage and defined by a progressive political allegiance that blinds many to the anti-Semitism that has infected the Democratic Party, but which has done little to shake partisan loyalty.
As many Democrats embrace the BDS movement, anti-Zionism, and global conspiracy theories, as feminist leaders honor Louis Farrakhan and purge Jews from their ranks, and as progressive universities tolerate anti-Jewish hostility on campus, liberals often misdirect by blaming conservatives and Republicans. However, the forums where anti-Semitism flourishes today (e.g., college campuses, BDS programs, internet websites) are overwhelmingly progressive and far less tolerant of conservative thought than Jew-hatred.
The 2018 midterm elections demonstrated how inured liberals have become to progressive extremism. Among the new Democrats representatives in Congress are Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose words and actions have raised concerns for many Jews, though apparently not so much within the party.
In a Twitter message in January, Rep. Tlaib suggested that members of Congress who voiced support for a pro-Israel Senate bill “forgot what country they represent,” which implicitly raised the old canard of divided Jewish loyalties. In addition, she supports BDS, has written for Farrakhan’s “The Final Call,” and seems quite appealing to anti-Israel activists and radicals. Though some Democrats have expressed concern, there has been no real demand for discipline or restraint by the party hierarchy. Instead, she was given a position on the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services.
Rep. Omar made similar waves with a tweet implying that AIPAC uses money to influence government Mideast policy saying, “it’s all about the Benjamins, baby.” This time, there was criticism from some Democrats, though there was much wider outrage from Congressional Republicans, who tend to be more pro-Israel and mindful of anti-Semitism than their liberal counterparts. Democratic criticism was not unanimous, however, and the sincerity of those who did speak up was questionable considering their failure to do so last November – despite her public statements against Israel.
It was commonly known, for example, that during the war instigated by Hamas in 2012, Omar had stated on Twitter that “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” Republicans were aware of this comment and deemed it anti-Semitic, but Democrats seemed to ignore it – even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed her to the prestigious Foreign Affairs Committee. Although Omar issued an apology for this comment, it was qualified and did not renounce her disparagement of Israel – and she was thereafter portrayed as the victim of a hate campaign perpetrated by those who took offense to her remarks.
Incredibly, some Jewish progressives came to her defense, although fallacious claims of Jewish “hypnosis” and financial influence echo hoary themes as old as the blood libel. Others displayed cognitive dissonance, as evidenced by a tweet from the ADL stating, in relevant part: “[H]ats off to Rep Omar for her honest apology & commitment to a more just world. Open & respectful conversations will help us achieve this goal.” But her apology failed to disavow claims of Israeli “evil”; and party leaders were subsequently reluctant to describe repeated comments as anti-Semitic. In contrast, the Zionist Organization of America described her attempted conciliation as a “non-apology.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is another freshman Democrat whose conduct has raised concerns among Jews. In a television interview during the campaign, for example, she intoned the revisionist myth that Israel was occupying “Palestine,” a country that never existed, before demurring that she was not a geopolitical expert. In other forums, she would not condemn Jew-hatred within the women’s movement, was evasive about her stance on BDS, and engaged in a fawning dialogue with British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is widely regarded as anti-Semitic.
Despite such comments and actions (or perhaps because of them), Ocasio-Cortez asserted claims of Jewish ancestry last Hanukkah in an apparent effort to ingratiate herself to New York’s Jewish community. Whether she truly has any Jewish blood is irrelevant, however, because attenuated ancestry neither confers Jewishness nor absolves one of bias. Facile assertions of common descent should be as grating to Jewish ears as the lame statement that “some of my best friends are Jewish.”
Progressive extremism is clearly influencing the Democratic mainstream, as illustrated by: Senator Elizabeth Warren’s public failure to deny that Israel is an apartheid state; the refusal of twenty-three Democratic senators to support the “Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act,” which inter alia condemns BDS; the snubbing of AIPAC by all declared Democratic presidential hopefuls; and the refusal to single out anti-Semitism for condemnation.
The Democratic Party clearly has an anti-Semitism problem, but too many Jewish Democrats have been restrained in their responses. Many were reluctant, at least initially, to call for serious reprimand of Tlaib, Omar or Ocasio-Cortez, or to characterize their comments as biased. And liberals who did speak out seemed more concerned that the representatives’ comments “could be interpreted” as bigoted, not that they were inherently so. It is no coincidence that so many defended Barack Obama against charges of anti-Semitism in 2015, when White House mouthpieces implied that critics of his Iran nuclear had divided loyalties or wielded disproportionate influence.
Liberal hypocrisy comes into sharper focus when compared to the excoriation of Rep. Steven King (R. Iowa) for comments deemed racist and supportive of white supremacism. After his comments became known, King was upbraided by Democrats and Republicans alike and stripped of his Congressional committee assignments, and liberal groups like the ADL called for his censure. But if outrage against King was justified based on the tenor of his statements, why have relatively few liberals chastised the Democratic Party’s rising stars with similar indignation? The Democrats’ reaction has been woefully inadequate, falling well short of demands for censure. Moreover, their Congressional resolution against hate – which was occasioned by Omar’s remarks – was diluted to avoid focusing on anti-Semitism or mentioning her use of abhorrent stereotypes.
In contrast, Republicans have been consistently proactive regarding both Democratic anti-Semitism and charges of racism against members of their own party.
The tendency of liberals to ignore progressive anti-Semitism goes hand-in-hand with the impulse to misrepresent Jewish history to validate their political agenda. They debase the meaning of the Holocaust by analogizing it to the illegal immigration crisis or using it as a catchall metaphor for any generic hatred. But the plight of Jews trying to escape Nazi genocide has nothing in common with today’s migrants seeking better economic opportunity or political stability. And anti-Semitic genocide – whether during the Holocaust, the pogroms, the Crusades, the Khmelnytsky rebellion, or the Muslim conquests – is simply not comparable to prejudice against racial, ethnic, religious or sexual minorities that were never targeted for extermination as the Jews have been for two millennia.
Hatred of Jews today can be ugly and crass or it can masquerade as political discourse, but is identifiable regardless of packaging. Disproportionate criticism and delegitimization of Israel are forms of anti-Semitism. So are anti-Zionism and the elevation of a Palestinian narrative lacking historicity over documented Jewish history that is corroborated by the historical, archeological, and literary records. These modern manifestations of the oldest hatred are no different from the ancient libels that inspired massacres and pogroms – and which are enthusiastically embraced by the left today.
Though secular liberals may be loath to admit it, Jewish authenticity cannot be imputed to lifestyles that are largely devoid of traditional values and observance. Some define Jewishness as purely cultural and others by adherence to political beliefs that actually conflict with Jewish law and tradition. But what these secularized identities all have in common is their drastic deviation from historically-normative Judaism, their focus on universalism instead of cultural self-preservation, and the failure to acknowledge G-d’s influence in the lives of Jews individually and collectively.
The alarming incidence of assimilation and anti-Israel rejectionism among Jewish progressives suggests that many of them have little or no connection to their tradition or history. And it is this detachment that enables so many to ignore anti-Semitism within their political ranks, remain silent when confronted with it, or justify it based on blind partisan allegiance.
RELATED ARTICLE: Israeli Attitudes Towards American Jews
EDITORS NOTE: This Israel National News column is republished with permission.
The Democratic Party has become the party of “cultural Marxism.” Urban Dictionary defines cultural Marxism as:
A social and political movement that promotes unreason and irrationality through the guise of various ’causes’, often promoted by so-called ‘social justice warriors’. These causes and their proponents are often contradictory and are almost never rooted in fact. Indeed, true argument or discussion with proponents of these causes is almost impossible, as most attempts at discourse descend quickly into shouting, name-calling and chanting of slogans.
In 2013 I wrote a column titled “How did we become addicted to big government?” In this article I traced the beginnings of socialism in the United States to a meeting of intellectuals in New York City 114 years ago writing:
We the people began to embrace big government 104 [today 114] years ago with the founding of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) in New York City on September 12, 1905 in Peck’s Restaurant. An organizational meeting was held and Jack London was elected President with Upton Sinclair as First Vice President. The ISS was established to, “throw light [in America] on the world-wide movement of industrial democracy known as socialism.” Their motto was “production for use, not for profit.”
Cultural Marxism’s goal is “production for use, not for profit.” The Democratic Party’s goal is “production for use, not for profit.”
Below is a list of ten policies promoted by the Democratic Party that prove they are the party of cultural Marxism. The cultural Marxists in the Democratic Party support:
First they had to gain unfettered control of production. On February 3, 1913 Congress passed and the states ratified the Sixteenth Amendment to our Constitution. Congress grabbed control of production via the federal income tax. America taxed its productivity by tapping every American’s wages. With the millions, then billions, and now trillions of dollars that Congress collected, they could entice or even force the strongest American to take the big government drug.
Then on April 8, 1913 Congress passed and the states ratified the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution which transferred U.S. Senator Selection from each state’s legislature to popular election by the people of each state. These two events made it much easier to collect and distribute big government as now Senators were no longer loyal to their state legislatures or primarily concerned with state sovereignty. Now U.S. Senators, along with U.S. Representatives, saw the value of spreading the big government drug amongst the people in return for votes.
During the Great Depression Congress created the first “opiate for the masses” and named it Social Security. It was to be a social insurance program run by government, in other words guaranteed government largess for life. The Social Security Act was signed into law in 1935 by President Franklin Roosevelt. He and Congress said this new drug would keep those unemployed, retirees and the poor financially secure. He called it the New Deal. All we needed to do was just pay in and all would be well.
In 1937 the United States Supreme Court in U.S. vs. Butler validated the Social Security Act and stated that, “Congress could, in its future discretion, spend that money [collected from the income tax] for whatever Congress then judged to be the general welfare of the country. The Court held that Congress has no constitutional power to earmark or segregate certain kinds of tax proceeds for certain purposes, whether the purposes be farm-price supports, foreign aid or social security payments.” All taxes went into the general fund.
Testifying before the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives in 1952, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration said—“The present trust fund is not quite large enough to pay off the benefits of existing beneficiaries”—those already on the receiving end, in other words. In 1955 chief actuary believed that it would take $35 billion just to pay the people “now receiving benefits”.
In 1935 under the Social Security program the Congress included the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Act (AFDC). During the late 1950s many states realized that this act, while created to help widows with children, was being used to subsidize women having children with men they were not married to. Louisiana alone took 23,000 women off the AFDC act rolls based upon their immoral behavior.
In effect big federal government became the pimp, the homes of single mothers became the brothels and the fathers became the Johns. The children begotten by these women became the next generation of big government addicts. Just as a baby born to a mother doing crack is addicted to cocaine, so too are these children born with a lifetime addiction to the onerous and destructive drug – big government.In 1960 Arthur S. Flemming, then head of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Dwight David Eisenhower and a key architect of Social Security, issued an administrative ruling that states could not deny eligibility for income assistance through the AFDC act on the grounds that a home was “unsuitable” because the woman’s children were illegitimate. In 1968, the United States Supreme Court’s “Man-in-the-House” rule struck down the practice of states declaring a home unsuitable (i.e., an immoral environment) if there was a man in the house not married to the mother. Thus, out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation were legitimized. In very short order, the number of women on welfare tripled and child poverty climbed dramatically. The assault on the family was on and Congress and the Supreme Court were co-pushers of this new government largess drug called AFDC.
Then Congress added a new ingredient to the powerful Social Security drug called Medicare on July 30, 1965.
Congress created Medicare as a single-payer health care system. Medicare was for those over 65 years old and was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson called it part of his Great Society program. Congress immediately got more addicts to begin taking this drug. At the same time Congress added a second even more powerful ingredient to this drug called Medicaid. This new ingredient brought into being an entirely new distribution system – all of the states of the union. Even though this new program violates state sovereignty it was passed anyway, in no small part because Senators were no longer accountable to the State Legislatures but rather committed to pushing government largess.
In an article titled “Antonio Gramsci: the Godfather of Cultural Marxism” Bradley Thomas wrote:
There’s little debate that modern-day American universities, public education, mainstream media, Hollywood, and political advocacy groups are dominated by leftists. This is no accident, but part of a deliberate strategy to pave the way for communist revolution developed more than eight decades ago by an Italian political theorist named Antonio Gramsci.
Described as one of the world’s most important and influential Marxist theorists since Marx himself, if you are not familiar with Gramsci, you should be.
The Italian communist (1891 – 1937) is credited with the blueprint that has served as the foundation for the Cultural Marxist movement in modern America.
Thomas notes, “Gramsci spoke of organizations including churches, charities, the media, schools, universities and ‘economic corporate’ power as organizations that needed to be invaded by socialist thinkers.” And so they have been invaded, if not conquered, in America. From Silicon Valley to Yale, from New York to LA, the cultural Marxists won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election. What saved America was the Electoral College.
The Democrats want to buy votes by promising things that they know will, and are, bankrupting America. By bankrupting America the cultural Marxist can then, in the name of saving America, enslave Americans.
Who stands in the way of cultural Marxists? One man, President Donald J. Trump.
RELATED ARTICLES:
4 Reasons Why Africa’s Experiments in Socialism Failed
How Medicare for All Would Insert Government in Doctor-Patient Relationship
RELATED VIDEO: Jamie Glazov Confronts The Cultural Marxists.
It had to stare down a media blackout, an R-rating, even a suspended Twitter account, but the pro-life movie Unplanned still defied all the odds. On opening weekend, the true story about former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson stunned Hollywood by climbing to number five on the box office charts and doubling projections with $6 million dollars in ticket sales.
“We are thrilled, gratified, and humbled,” co-directors Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman said Sunday. “We are so pleased that the American people have responded with such an enormous outpouring of support at the box office… [W]e look forward to seeing what happens in the weeks ahead.” Like Gosnell, the movie had a tough time getting visibility in the mainstream press. Several TV networks refused to sell advertising time to the project, while the Motion Picture Association of America tried to dissuade audiences with a Restricted rating.
But never underestimate pro-lifers. An outpouring of support helped Unplanned break through all of the obstacles, even earning a rare A+ from CinemaScore in the process. For the film’s distributor, Pure Flix, it was the second-best start ever — coming in just slightly behind God’s Not Dead 2. For lead actress Ashley Bratcher, whose own story took a surprising twist when she got the job, the response is overwhelming. “I am blown away by the public response to Unplanned, as well as the box office numbers,” she said. “Not only is it beyond my wildest dreams, but it has surpassed the expectations of critics across the country. Despite biased critic reviews written more like op-eds, the audience has spoken.” Still, she pointed out, “the most rewarding thing about this weekend’s opening is the flood of messages I’ve received from people experiencing healing and a change of heart.”
That’s exactly what social media giants like Twitter must be afraid of. After a blockbuster weekend for the film’s social media page, the Unplanned account was mysteriously suspended — just as followers jumped to 100,000. Coincidence? Investor Mike Lindell doesn’t think so. “They don’t want you to see this movie!” the My Pillow founder tweeted. “Make your voices heard and tell your friends to go see the movie this weekend!”
Frustrated, co-director Konzelman spoke out. “It’s a sad state of affairs when the right to free speech gets shut down with the flick of a switch… Whether this was an executive decision by Twitter, or a reaction by Twitter to complaints from those opposed to the pro-life viewpoint, either reason is unacceptable.” Actress Bratcher piled on. “If Twitter is committed to helping increase the ‘openness and civility of public conversation’ and to hold themselves ‘accountable towards progress,’ then what’s with the censorship of a differentiating opinion?”
Fortunately, after a groundswell of protest started hitting Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account, the page was suddenly live again. The social media giant insisted the suspension was an accident. Even so, the Unplanned account seems to be locked in a see-saw battle for followers, since tens of thousands seem to keep vanishing. PJ Media’s Tyler O’Neil was one of the many people who tried — unsuccessfully — to follow the film’s page and got an error message instead.
Of course, it’s no mystery why social media would want to keep the movie quiet. Like most of the liberal platforms in America, they know how powerful the truth about abortion can be. That’s why they’ve spent years hiding the violent reality of what happens behind Planned Parenthood’s closed doors.
But this is one of those rare moments in time — like Gosnell, like New York’s abortion law — when the pro-life movement has the opportunity to break through to the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. So what can you do? Go see the movie! Take your church group, your family, or your Bible study. If your local theater isn’t playing the movie, call them up and demand it. Then have your friends do the same. Can a handful of movie tickets change the debate? Buy some and let’s find out!
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
RELATED ARTICLES:
President Trump Issues New Pro-Life Rules Protecting Doctors and Nurses From Having to Do Abortions
Man Who Portrays Abortion Doctor in ‘Unplanned’ Former Abortionist
EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with video is republished with permission.
The biggest political scandal in US history has been exposed. The treasonous illegal take down (insurance policy – which has lapsed), and the failed coup d’ etat is exposed for the world to see. We are now living in a post Mueller Investigation. It’s a brand new day! The disruptive cloud of the collusion hoax has been lifted. President Trump is unchained. Watch Trump at this recent rally in Michigan as he unleashes on the fake news, democrats and the deep state. Furthermore, we will begin to see even greater success with international leaders and negotiations with such countries as China and North Korea etc. Any delays or uncertainties that the witch hunt created will no longer be an obstacle to forging ahead with our allies and trading partners as Trump dismantles globalism and the new world order.
With this hoax, for all intents and purposes behind us, President Trump has now openly gone on the offense. The enemy has been and continues to be doing an excellent job at destroying themselves. The president has expressed his views on the dedicated one hour show with Sean Hannity (a must watch), as well as to the international media and from his busy Twitter account. The president acknowledged that this was not only a complete fabricated hoax, but in fact a treasonous illegal take down and failed coup d’ etat against a duly elected president. Trump vows to expose this so that justice will be served. The president stated this must never happen again to any president.
When asked by Hannity about declassifying FISA and other intel records and releasing this to the public, the President concurred that this will now take place. Trump indicated to Sean Hannity that he will now look into Hillary Clinton which I have a well documented track record stating this day would come. President Trump has used words such as evil individuals. Sick people doing really bad things. With regards to the media in a tweet, the president said “The Fake News Media is going Crazy! They are suffering a major “breakdown,” have ZERO credibility or respect, & must be thinking about going legit. I have learned to live with Fake News, which has never been more corrupt than it is right now. Someday, I will tell you the secret! Looking forward to the secret revealed Mr. President.
The president talked with Sean about Obama and his responsibility in all this since it was under BHO’s watch and BHO’s DOJ, FBI, CIA where and when all this originated. We’ve known all along about the Bushes, Clinton’s and Obama’s. The Bush’s are now under Trump’s control. Beginning perhaps from the bottom up, we will see Clinton and Obama in due time, facing justice. What did the founding fathers say is the punishment for elected officials guilty of high crimes, sedition and treason? Oh yeah, execution.
Keep in mind that Google hearings are on going. Facebook is under federal investigation and frantically data dumping as an attempt to hide their crimes. FB, Twitter, Google, Microsoft YouTube etc. will be challenged further. Are they news sites? Are they breaking any laws with regards to censorship? Shadow banning? Data mining? Algorithms designed to silence the opposition? Leave this up to intel and the lawyers but I am sure we will be hearing about monopolies and anti trust laws along the way.
Q has told us there are over 82,000 sealed indictments. We are witnessing sedition and treason. We are witnessing felonies, high crimes and misdemeanors. These acts will now see the light of day and the facts will be known as the day of reckoning is upon is. Comey, Shiff, Schummer, Pelosi, Feinstein, Ryan, Burr along with McCabe, Clapper, Brennan and so many others.
Watch Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul. The probes, hearings, investigations, grand juries, subpoenas, indictments as well as military tribunals, will now commence and quicker than we may think. This will, however go on for several years. But it’s a new day dawning. In fact, President Trump stated on that Hannity interview I mentioned, that we are in a very dark, dark period but we are now shedding light and coming into the truth and into the light. Yes, from dark to light.
President Trump mentioned in the Hannity interview that he is working on restoring election integrity of which I have written extensively about in my book “Trump and the Resurrection of America“. Trump talked about the importance of a paper ballot back up to computers which we now all know are rigged. The chapter in my book titled “Free and Fair Elections” is perhaps among the first to reveal what really went on rigging the polls, election theft and voter fraud. We have now officially entered steps six, seven and eight on the scale of discovery and action which will prove to be the longest and most dangerous phase as we are well engaged in America’s second revolution. The democrats, fake news and the deep state will fight back with a vengeance. Expect further false narratives and legal attacks and attempts against the president. False flags will continue and perhaps escalate in terms of damage. Be prepared spiritually, personally and economically.
The hoax has ended. Take a win. Calm down and enjoy the ride. And so the Nuremberg style trials that I wrote about back in August of 2017 are now at our doorstep. In fact with the tribunals of both John McCain and George Herbert Walker Bush already behind us, I stand corrected as this has already begun. Get the popcorn and enjoy the show.
Read through my books and nearly 400 articles here on this website. Sign up for the JMC Report. I have a pretty good track record for over two decades. It’s either us or them. Mark my words. They are all going down. The global financial reset and the rule of law reset are the underlying policies of which our brilliant and brave President is operating. President Trump is restoring power to the people and re-directing the course for humanity. We are on God’s side. May the force remain with us.
RELATED ARTICLE: Clapper: Obama Ordered The Intelligence Assessment That Resulted In Mueller Investigation
Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association
Statement on Jussie Smollett Case Dismissal
The Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association serves as the voice for nearly 1,000 front line prosecutors across the State who work tirelessly towards the pursuit of justice. The events of the past few days regarding the Cook County State’s Attorney’s handling of the Jussie Smollett case is not condoned by the IPBA, nor is it representative of the honest ethical work prosecutors provide to the citizens of the State of Illinois on a daily basis.
The manner in which this case was dismissed was abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in criminal courthouses across the State. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges alike do not recognize the arrangement Mr. Smollett received. Even more problematic, the State’s Attorney and her representatives have fundamentally misled the public on the law and circumstances surrounding the dismissal.
The public has the right to know the truth, and we set out to do that here.
When an elected State’s Attorney recuses herself from a prosecution, Illinois law provides that the court shall appoint a special prosecutor. See 55 ILCS 5/3-9008(a-15). Typically, the special prosecutor is a neighboring State’s Attorney, the Attorney General, or the State Appellate Prosecutor. Here, the State’s Attorney kept the case within her office and thus never actually recused herself as a matter of law.
Additionally, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office falsely informed the public that the uncontested sealing of the criminal court case was “mandatory” under Illinois law. This statement is not accurate. To the extent the case was even eligible for an immediate seal, that action was discretionary, not mandatory, and only upon the proper filing of a petition to seal. See 20 ILCS 2630/5.2(g)(2). For seals not subject to Section 5.2(g)(2), the process employed in this case by the State’s Attorney effectively denied law enforcement agencies of legally required Notice (See 20 ILCS 2630/5.2(d)(4)) and the legal opportunity to object to the sealing of the file (See 20 ILCS 2630/5.2(d)(5)). The State’s Attorney not only declined to fight the sealing of this case in court, but then provided false information to the public regarding it.
The appearance of impropriety here is compounded by the fact that this case was not on the regularly scheduled court call, the public had no reasonable notice or opportunity to view these proceedings, and the dismissal was done abruptly at what has been called an “emergency” hearing. To date, the nature of the purported emergency has not been publicly disclosed. The sealing of a court case immediately following a hearing where there was no reasonable notice or opportunity for the public to attend is a matter of grave public concern and undermines the very foundation of our public court system.
Lastly, the State’s Attorney has claimed this arrangement is “available to all defendants” and “not a new or unusual practice.” There has even been an implication it was done in accordance with a statutory diversion program. These statements are plainly misleading and inaccurate. This action was highly unusual, not a statutory diversion program, and not in accordance with well accepted practices of State’s Attorney initiated diversionary programs. The IPBA supports diversion programs, and recognizes the many benefits they provide to the community, the defendant and to the prosecuting agency. Central to any diversion program, however, is that the defendant must accept responsibility. To be clear here, this simply was not a deferred prosecution.
Prosecutors must be held to the highest standard of legal ethics in the pursuit of justice. The actions of the Cook County State’s Attorney have fallen woefully short of this expectation. Through the repeated misleading and deceptive statements to the public on Illinois law and circumstances surrounding the Smollett dismissal, the State’s Attorney has failed in her most fundamental ethical obligations to the public. The IPBA condemns these actions.
This irregular arrangement was an affront to prosecutors across the State, the Chicago Police Department, victims of hate crimes, and the people of the City of Chicago and Cook County. We strongly encourage our members and the public to review the National District Attorneys Associations statement on prosecutorial best practices in high profile cases.
Best Regards,
Lee Roupas
President,
Illinois Prosecutor’s Bar Association
“Russian collusion wasn’t just a hoax, it is a criminal abuse – which is why Judicial Watch has fought and will continue to fight for Russiagate documents in federal court. It’s time to investigate the ‘investigators.’” – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, Inside Judicial Watch Special Edition video
Robert Mueller has finally brought his bogus, politically motivated assault on Donald Trump – and everyone around him – to an end…
But only after spending more than two years — and tens of millions of tax dollars — chasing his tale (pun intended) and doing Hillary Clinton’s bidding.
Not so surprisingly, the conclusion at which Mueller arrived is precisely what Judicial Watch has said all along: There was no collusion.
In fact, Judicial Watch filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits to prove it…
And had the Deep State not fought every one of them, the phony case against Trump could have been closed before it was even opened.
Now, in the riveting Inside Judicial Watch interview video below, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton puts the entire Mueller witch hunt into perspective…
And he explains why the collusion delusion hasn’t really ended –
Because now, Judicial Watch intends to investigate the “investigators”!
This is one 20-minute video you won’t want to miss.
RELATED VIDEO: Now To Investigate Mueller.
These are the victims of voter fraud.
Project Veritas has uncovered a group of Florida voters whose identities may have been unlawfully used to cast ballots in their names in their former state of New York.
Here are the facts:
These aren’t the culprits of voter fraud. These are the victims.
View the latest video HERE.
When our investigators told these individuals that a ballot was cast in their names in Florida and New York, they were outraged.
Here’s what they told our journalists:
Florida Voter #1: Yeah, someone’s voting with my name in New York . . . I haven’t voted in New York, I mean let’s face it, I was what 25, 26 when I moved out here . . .
Florida Voter #2: Well, we’ve been residents in Florida, that’s our old address.
Florida Voter #3: It wasn’t me. It was voter fraud apparently.
This second video in our series of voter fraud investigations shows that the real victims of voter fraud aren’t politicians and campaigns, but normal and unknowing people.
Who voted in their names? Is this yet another systemic voter fraud problem? How many hundreds or thousands of ‘extra votes’ were cast under the same scam?
You might recall our 2016 investigation where our journalists was offered the ballot of top a Clinton ally, Huma Abedin, in New York City.
Can anyone walk into a New York polling place and vote, using the identity of another person?
Stay tuned . . . more on voter fraud soon.
Randall Smith visited Cuba, a nation with lively nightlife in which daily the people awaken to the dull realities of a failed socialist worker’s “paradise.”
I had the privilege of visiting Havana, Cuba, recently. I probably won’t be allowed back anytime soon for reasons that will shortly become clear. While I was there, someone emailed to say, “You have a ‘Catholic Thing’ article up today on clericalism.” When I finally got Internet access, I found that The Catholic Thing is blocked by the government in Cuba. You cannot read it there.
When I mentioned this fact to Robert Royal, he told me he had been in Cuba when John Paul II visited and afterward had written an article critical of the government. He has not been able to get a visa to return ever since. “Be very careful,” he advised.
I found the Cuban people to be ceaselessly kind and generous, always willing to give directions or help you find your way. Havana is an amazing city with so many houses that are architectural gems, it is hard to believe that they all existed in one city. Architects and designers who specialize in classical architecture would have high-quality work in Havana to keep them occupied for the next forty years.
The reason traditional architects and designers would have so much work in Cuba, however, is because the government has done absolutely no maintenance of the architectural heritage in sixty years. The city of Havana is literally crumbling. Glorious houses with stately Corinthian columns and marble hallways are now dilapidated tenements with collapsed floors and pillars. Most of the prime waterfront property along the Malecón, the wonderful waterfront esplanade in Havana, looks as though it came through a war. But war did not cause this destruction. It was sixty years of authoritarian rule of a Marxist government claiming to be “for the people” and “for the workers.”
That’s an interesting concept given that the one new building we toured, a luxurious waterfront hotel, was financed by the Cuban military, designed by a French firm, and built by workers imported from India – in the great “worker’s paradise” the Cuban revolution was supposed to bring about.
An interesting tourist spot is the house Che Guevara was given to live in after the revolution, the man on all those T-shirts. It’s large, on the top of a hill, looking down on the city from across the harbor. Che didn’t live down among “the common people.” He looked down on them, from above.
And the stories! One man’s father who dealt with public infrastructure was called in one day to meet the new Minister of Industries. Like most Cubans, he usually dressed in a light shirt without a tie because of the heat. But since he was meeting the new minister, he put on a coat and tie, as a sign of respect. When he walked into the office, he saw a man from Argentina sitting behind a desk in a green army uniform, smoking a cigar, with his bare feet up on the desk, something the Cuban found disgusting and disrespectful. The new minister glanced at him in his suit and said, “You are bourgeois. You have three choices. You can leave the country in a week, stay and be thrown in jail, or you will be shot.” He fled.
You learn many things in Cuba about living under a totalitarian government. There isn’t room to detail them all here, but many are things you might expect. “Life in Cuba,” as one Cuban employer who hires actual Cuban workers told me, “is …” – and here he paused searching for the right word — “hard.”
But I also learned something I hadn’t expected. Movies and television shows make you expect that tyrannical governments force the people to be puritanically conservative, stifled, and repressed. What I discovered in Cuba to my surprise is that avant-garde art and bohemian lifestyle liberalism can co-exist quite comfortably with an authoritarian regime.
Cuban women are quite the opposite of “buttoned up.” And the music and art in Cuba are superb. Havana may have crumbling houses, but the clubs and bars are lively. The parks are filled at night with people staring blankly at lighted cell phones screens, enjoying the public Internet service the government has installed around the city.
Our group had lunch every day at a parador, one of the private restaurants cropping up in Havana that the government no longer seeks to shut down because they need the tourist dollars. Each day on the television there was a show called “Cuban Clips,” which showed Cuban music videos. There are a lot of them, it seems, and like all music videos, they are filled with young people dressed in the latest fashions, driving the nicest cars, dancing in the streets, in a bar, or on the beach, no scene over two seconds long, the lead singer gesturing directly into the camera the way all singers in music videos do.
Watching young Cubans in a club gyrate for hours to Cuban and American music videos (the line to get in the club stretched around the block) made me wonder whether Marx, if he were alive today, might have to re-think his comment about religion being the opiate of the masses. An honest assessment now would be that music videos are the opiate of the masses.
Then again, given the drug problems in America and elsewhere, perhaps we should simply say that opium is the opiate of the masses – opium and alcohol and music videos and “bohemian” clubs where kids can dance the night – and any concern they might have had for the common good of the society – away.
The Cuban government doesn’t care if you dress sensually, drink profusely, urinate on the street, make indecent art, or use half-naked women painted blue in your music videos as long as you don’t oppose the government. And when you’re busy partying and dancing and being a “bohemian” rebel in your Che t-shirt, you don’t.
Randall B. Smith is the Scanlan Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His most recent book, Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, is now available at Amazon and from Emmaus Academic Press.
EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.